http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine Notes From A Strange Place Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:47:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A few weeks ago I was discussing the progress of mapping the UK at one of the London OSM pub meetups (Harry picked up on it in his diary entry for the evening). I was making the point that we're making great progress, and if things continue as they are ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2010/02/17/finishing-the-uk-road-network/ A few months ago NASA caused a stir by releasing a new global height dataset called ASTER. I use an earlier dataset (SRTM) for OpenCycleMap, which has a few problems that ASTER, at least initially, promised to solve. The three of primary interest to me are: Voids - SRTM has "no ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2010/01/13/aster-not-worth-it-yet/ It was over 18 months ago that I was originally trying to get hill-shading and hill-colouring working on OpenCycleMap (in fact, it wasn't even called that back then, but that's a different story). I eventually dropped the hill-shading part of it due to nasty boundary artefacts between source tiles, and ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2010/01/05/hill-shading-on-opencyclemap-org/ Over the last few months I've been involved in three different aerial imagery projects, all of which were to make imagery available for OpenStreetMap contributors. It's nice that we have imagery available from the guys at Yahoo!, but on occasion we lay our hands on some better stuff. First off was ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2009/12/09/the-view-from-above/ I wonder whether everyone missed the donations link last time, so I'll put it first instead! Go on, drop a pound in the collections tin. When Jon Burgess found out that I was editing the 2008 videos, he dug out his recordings of the first SOTM conference and sent me a ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2009/11/27/state-of-the-map-2007-video/ Imagine, if you will, a small town with a surprisingly active pottery club. Every week they gather in the local arts centre, and spend long evenings making pottery together. They take lumps of clay and sculpt them into vases, mugs, bowls, teapots and all kinds of things. They share tips ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2009/11/10/the-pottery-club/ I'm sure we've all got videos that we mean to edit, or photos we mean to upload, but we never really get round to it. OpenStreetMap has been in a similar position for the last few years regarding videos of its annual conference - the "State of the Map" - ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2009/11/02/state-of-the-map-2008-videos-online-at-last/ I like how this giant skyscraper - going to be taller than the adjacent Tower 42, and taller even than One Canada Square in Canary Wharf, is slowly inching its way skywards. I wonder whether people will only really notice it when it becomes higher than Tower 42? But it won't ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2009/10/29/heron-tower/ I've heard this a few times over the years, and it always bamboozles me. Yesterday it cropped up again, when someone was referring to an immersion heater, and said: It's more efficient if you leave it on all day - that way it's just topping it up. It uses more electricity ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2009/10/27/more-efficient/ Recently I got hold of the original video files from the OpenStreetMap State of the Map 2008 conference. Now I realise that the 2009 conference has been and gone in the meantime, but I think there's still value in the old videos - whilst a year is a long time ... http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2009/10/01/from-the-archives/