Today is November 1 (All Saints' Day) and, just like the millions of Catholic Filipinos all over the country, my family went to the cemetery to pay our respect to our dearly departed loved ones (and have a mini-family reunion while we're at it). In this case, it's my paternal grandfather at the Garden of Memories Memorial Park in Taguig City.

And just like any good OSMer, I noted down as many details as I can of the memorial park and the surrounding areas. After I got back home and opened up OSM, I noticed that somebody has outlined the basic shape of the memorial park based on the Yahoo! imagery. Of course, looking at the satellite imagery is just an aid and no substitute for real on-the-ground surveying, so I went ahead and corrected the landuse region to the best of my recollections and added the internal roads and as many of the footpaths as I can remember (and see from the Yahoo! imagery).

I also went ahead and mapped some of the surrounding areas, including the finished main road we took to get to the park (which was still unfinished in Yahoo!'s imagery).

I was browsing for the location of a building in Ortigas Center when I stumbled onto this website, Ortigas Online, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it uses OpenStreetMap for its map section. :-)

I believe that OSM has the best online map of Eastwood City (apart from the the static map available at its website). Eastwood City is a mixed-use compact district containing malls, condominiums, and office buildings. Since I go to work here, it's just appropriate that I make this area as complete as possible.

Anyway, I just tweaked several things here based on the last look-around that I did this morning. I finally got the name of the northwestern exit road (Richmond Road), fixed the name of Palm Tree Avenue, and confirmed that a building is actually named Athena Building and not BPO Building. There's still plenty to do here such as putting the building footprint of the finished but still unopened 1880 Eastwood Avenue.

My next area of focus is the Fort Bonifacio Global City. I've already written a diary entry for that area.

I was invited to attend the official launch of the Google Map Maker service in the Philippines last October 7. I blogged about the event in my blog here: http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com/posts/google_map_maker_philippine_launch

The post is quite lengthy and the last part talks about OSM vis-a-vis Map Maker so you guys might be interested in that.

But ITO (http://www.itoworld.com/) is better than nothing! :-)

Now if only there was a way to graphically see diff's; that would be really sweet!

I always pass by Serendra, a really high-end residential condominium by Ayala Land, on my way to work. So I guess it's prudent to add the building footprints of the buildings there that are already finished.

I didn't really intended to start fixing up the data for Ayala Center Makati. But since I went to the Gold's Gym branch in Glorietta last Friday, I wanted to lay down the information I memorized in OSM as soon as possible.

One thing I noticed ever since I started mapping in OSM is that I became more observant of the roads and buildings that I go to or pass by. I guess I'm an OSM addict that way. Hehehe.

I didn't think I would have a use for OSM's built-in diary feature. I have my own personal/tech blog at vaes9 (http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com/) where I have written several pieces about OpenStreetMap. But lately I thought that it would be interesting to write down here the minutiae of my activities while contributing to OpenStreetMap--things that my regular blog audience might find utterly boring. At least here in OSM, I can be assured that people reading the diary would be somewhat interested (at least I hope so!).

So welcome. :-)