User:NicRoets

My interest in mapping was originally sparked when wireless internet became available in South Africa and it was important to know where coverage was available.

So when I researched GPS coordinates on the internet, I came across geocaching and had to buy a GPSr immediately. After a year or so, the effort of finding geocaches became too 'scripted' and most of the good geocache hiding places were already occupied.

Then I did a little bit of wardriving.

My next hobby was to photograph Pretoria and South Africa and upload them onto the web. From the tracklogs I generate KML placemarks for the photos and post them on the Google Earth Community Layer.

In 2006 I also started collecting tracklogs for Tracks4Africa.com and shortly afterwards I started sharing it with OSM. At first I would cycle every street in Eastern Pretoria with my Garmin Etrex.

Now thanks to Yahoo!, its only necessary to collect street names and restrictions. Twice a week I would cycle approximately 30km and collect in the region of 100 new street names. Many trips involve some unexpected challenge like crossing a railway line or entering or exiting a fenced off neighbourhood. Currently my map of Pretoria is nearly complete and I'm slowly making progress with Johannesburg.

I also mapped a significant part of rural Zanzibar (Tanzania), while on vacation there.

For some reason I've done a lot of my editing as User:Nic.