Re: Open Street Maps

Scott Walde wrote:
> Sean Cavanaugh wrote:
>> Thanks for giving me one more reason to get off my fat ass and
>> walk/ride around town. I went almost 5k today just walking around
>> recording my steps as I went through several cul-de-sacs around here.
>> The only sad thing is that I can't seem to set my GPS to record more
>> frequent track points... it's OK when I'm walking but when I drive the
>> points are too far apart to get a good idea of the shape of curvy roads.
>>
>> Anyways, you can bet I'll be uploading more. It's strangely addictive
>> to see the map get filled in.
>
> So, are you LaRonge Road and Sagueney Drive? I didn't remember entering
> those. It's a bit of a strange feeling seeing some roads show up when
> I've been the only one in town for the past two days.

Yep, that's me. I expect I'll be filling in that area more in the coming
days, as well as Innovation Place on my lunch breaks. OSM combines my
lifelong obsession with maps (I had a map collection as a kid, where I
had to get every single free map I could get my hands on when we went on
road trips) and my computer habit... Dangerous combination. ;)

> My GPS does the same. I just bang on the Mark button any time I'm going
> around a curve, then I import my waypoints, and match the curve to that
> rather than my track.
> Sadly, as far as I can tell, you can't upload waypoints to the
> collective pool of GPS trails. I was thinking of writing a bit of perl
> to convert a waypoint file into a track file, but I don't know if it's
> really worth it.

I wish I'd known about the site when I got the GPS, I might have shelled
out more for the fancy Garmin they had at Canuck Tire. Ah well.

It'll be interesting to see how it works when I'm on my bike this
summer. If it's even half as good as my walking tracks, I should be able
to get good road outlines with much better speeds.
Received on Fri Mar 2 00:20:20 2007