User:LA2/Diary for Q3 2007
LA2's OpenStreetMap Diary for the 3rd Quarter of 2007
August 10, 2007: Joy, joy, when I'm cleaning up my old computer, I find a planet.osm dump from May 1, 2006 that I thought was lost. Please copy it from here, http://aronsson.se/openstreetmap/ because Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS).
July 15, 2007: SOTM day 2. After the conference has ended, I join three members from Norway, and we spend the evening discussing how we can cooperate more to get OSM off the ground in Scandinavia. The following day I go back home the same way I came here: Milton Keynes, Stansted, Skavsta, Linköping. Everything runs on time.
July 14, 2007: SOTM day 1. In the evening, a big dinner at an Indian restaurant.
July 13, 2007: In Manchester, I have been told that the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI or www.msim.org.uk) has "Baby" on display, the world's first stored program computer from 1946. It turns out it is shown on Tuesdays by some enthusiasts, but museum staff shows me where it is, finds a light switch and allows me to have a look. It's alone in an empty room that next year might become a display of the history of information processing. I spend the rest of the morning looking through MOSI's other exhibitions. When walking through the rainy town, I stumble upon the John Rylands Library and the city library, both worth seeing. After some coffee I head down Oxford Road to find OSMers arriving for the meetup at 18:00. As I pass Oxford University, I can't resist entering a building where a sign says "Manchester Computing". On the bottom floor is the computing centre, on the upper floor the computer science department. In their corridors, some historical artifacts are on display, but nobody is there to show me around.
July 12, 2007: Starting my journey to the State of the Map (SOTM) conference at 04:00 by bus from Linköping to Skavsta (this airport is marketed as "Stockholm-Nyköping", but situated 100 km south-west of Stockholm and conveniently 100 km north-east of Linköping), flying Ryanair to Stansted, then investigating my options for further travel via Bletchley Park to Manchester. I decide for going by bus with National Express to Milton Keynes coachway. This is an ugly bus stop off the motorway. A local bus (line 20) takes me to Milton Keynes centre (mk:c) and a third bus (line 5) takes me south to Bletchley bus station. Just across the railroad is Bletchley Park (BP), where I spend the afternoon. BP is an old mansion which during WWII was the home to codebreakers such as Alan Turing. Now it is a growing museum. (Lots more to write about this.) On my way out of the museum area, I run into Peter Chivers of the Retrobeep museum organization, who generously shows me the parts of the National Museum of Computing that aren't yet open. When the museum closed at 17:00 I took bus 5 back to mk:c, had some food, then caught bus 20 back to the coachway. When the bus for Manchester arrived, apparently on time, at 19:25 it turns out that this is not my bus but the 17:25 bus with a 2 hour delay. And it's full. I prepare for a 2 hour wait, but my bus arrives after only 10 minutes. In Manchester the bus station is just off Portland Road, at a walking distance from Hatters, the hostel where I stay.