User:Longbow4u/Notes
30.08.2008 After I forgot again how to tag a Grillplatz, now I post it here for reference. The key is tourism=picnic_site. It even has an icon in JOSM. ATM I am busy in real life, I really would like to organize another meeting of OSM Mittelhessen, but cannot find the time. Perhaps later.
24.02.2008 Yesterday I had a nice walk to the Dünsberg peak near Gießen with my girlfriend. We explored and mapped some tracks and walkways. There was also an abandoned mine. Perhaps there should be a tag for it, e.g. k=man-made, v=mine; k=status, v=abandoned (active, inactive); k=product, v=limonite (salt, iron, gold, silver, uranium). See also: Proposed features/Mineshaft
15.10.2007 After the change to protocol version 0.5 I had some problems with the WMS plugin. It did not work. Someone suggested to remove the WMS plugin from the plugin folder. Unfortunately I had installed the plugin in various folders before to install it, so I was not sure which plugin file I had to delete. On my windows machine, I finally found it in the folder C:Dokumente und Einstellungen/Username/Anwendungsdaten/JOSM/plugin. After deleting it, it worked again. But the color scheme of the plugin was still different. It appeared in a greyish tone. This was due to a property which had somehow changed. I could resolve this with a change in the JOSM menu "Preferences", there in "Display Settings". I had to uncheck the box "Draw inactive layers in other color". After that it looked the same again. Perhaps this is obvious, but it took me some time to get WMS going again. Well, now I can continue.
05.10.2007 I think vandalism will become a more pressing issue as the project develops. I noticed vandalism in the Göttingen map, version of 06.10.07. Apparently, someone removed the trunk road and a large stretch of the B3 primary road between Northeim and Göttingen till the motorway link Göttingen. There was other damage, too. Admittedly, the Göttingen map was far from complete, there were only some main roads. Nonetheless, this episode shows how immensely vulnerable the project is in the face of deliberate vandalism. I can urge everyone to do regular backups via JOSM of their mapped areas. Even so, a full restore will result in a lot of work.
On a lighter tone, I am very pleased that there are dedicated mappers immediately south of my area of operation. A more complete map is within grasping distance. Perhaps we can organize a OSM meeting in the Frankfurt/Main area soon.
18.09.2007 Trying out new program on PDA: BSGPSPDA v.1.7.0. I had some initial problems with connecting the GPS mouse. I found this forum posts by Stuart und Gregory, which sounded helpful Posts. The program would not save my settings for the GPS mouse in the "Settings" tab of BSGPSPDA. It has the default setting of COM1, BaudRate 300, while my GPS mouse has COM6, BaudRate 38400. There is another text document BSGPSPDASettings.txt in the folder "My Documents" on the PDA. There, on the 1st line is an entry COM=1 which I changed to COM=6, and on the second line BaudRate=300 to BaudRate=38400. Hope this will help with getting a satellite fix. Ok, this worked. Next I will try to load some tiles from OSM of my area Gießen. Some minor issue was that after installing, the program did not create a link to the program menu. I had to start it from the "Datei Explorer", not sure what the English name is (file explorer?). And I did not see a "quit"-button like in NoniGPSPlot, so I am not sure if I entirely shut down the program at leaving. This could drain the battery. But the program looks fine, and I am anticipating eagerly to try out the map overlay.
27.07.2007 A good day, I completely mapped Launsbach today and created the Gießen page on OSM. Now I can wait for the rendering on Infostreetway.
24.07.2007 I attended the Wikipedia Meeting for Central Hessen in Wetzlar WP:MH last Friday and talked briefly about the Openstreetmap project, especially the efforts to create a freely licensed map of Gießen and Mittelhessen, to them. The result were very positive. I had the impression they all had heard about OSM before, but never met someone involved in the project. As a kind of advertisement, I placed a little map snippet of the next meeting venue on their club page, wiith ample links to OSM (I summarily credited Openstreetmap contributors, we should provide a constantly updated contributor page online with the names of all the participants to OSM online for attribution). Perhaps someone else will be interested to help me fill the large blank spaces around Gießen, because it is two much for only two persons. I would like to know who is mapping the streets around Buseck, just east of Gießen. Today I read the CC-BY-SA 2.0 license text, and under point 4 b it states that the material can be re-licensed by users under later versions of the CC-BY-SA license themselves. This is very important IMO for downstream compatibility with other free material. To respond to Steve Coast's comment on the mailing list "will we be nuked from orbit?", I can say: definitely not. Even if there are other user generated map projects, this one is unique because of its free license. We are compatible to other great free projects like GNU and Wikipedia and share the same values, attract the same people. Others do not.
28.06.2007 I have recently discovered the maplint annotation on the informationfreeway.org map of OSM,provided by the tiles@home project Gießen. I suspected that there were some problems on the Gießen map, the result is a little bit disturbing. I think it is mainly the problem of dual notes on the same spot (double-click by accident at retracing gpx-tracks), and I did fork ways. I will repair this the next weeks, but at the moment I am rather busy at work atm. As a little success story, my girl-friend asked me for a street name in Gießen (Alfred-Bock-Straße), and I could give her the answer using FREE map material, by the openstreetmap finder and the OSM map Alfred-Bock-Straße. I had forgotten were I had mapped the street earlier.
18.06.2007 After a long time and some failed attempts I finally managed to install the Landsat-Plugin (wmsplugin) into JOSM. This came after a mailing list post where a user asked how to do it, and the following answers. Now I can start mapping the forests, rivers and lakes around Gießen. Of course, the landsat images are very low resolution, so I will have to correct them in trips to the actual locations, for example when I map the villages at the forest borders, or retrace the paths along the Lahn river. At least it should give the map a more lifelike aspect.
At the moment, I have mapped most of Gießen city inside the motorway/trunk ring "Gießener Ring". There are still some weaknesses in the map, though, where I have to return for mapping. At the moment, the industrial area to the north is still not complete, as is the hospital area east of Frankfurter Straße. I have to add the "Hinter der Ostanlage" street, and follow the cycleway south of the campus in Schiffenberger Tal. The campus itself needs a lot more detail, especially on the parking lots and cycleways. Then I have to add the US Army Depot east of the A485 exit Ursulum. That is a little bit difficult, because it is a fenced and restricted area. I probably will concentrate in the next time on the surrounding villages and suburbs, as well as the secondary roads leading to the neighbouring towns and villages. I more or less completed the Heuchelheim, Kinzenbach villages, and have already tracked parts of Rodheim-Bieber. I will probably continue with Rodheim-Bieber, Vetzberg and turn then to Krofdorf-Gleiberg. Next stops will be Launsbach and Wißmar.