bxl_forever

bxl_forever, 5 days ago to random

I like the beauty of the history window in JOSM, which shows how a node travelled on the map across its lifetime.

And as you can notice here, moving a railway stop right only the North Sea is very probably a mistake.

bxl_forever, 9 days ago to random

A very common sequence.

1. Survey a street, take notes about everything.
2. A few days later, try to edit OSM from personal notes.
3. Realize that existing data has serious problems, e.g. wrong geometries or addresses.
4. Try to fix that first. Spend days cleaning up the mess.
5. Spend the next days dealing with notes or various repairs.
6. Find out that the survey is now 6 months old and information about shops may be outdated.
7. Abstain from mapping it by fear of introducing outdated data.

bxl_forever, 14 days ago to random

Things that are hard to get right in OSM. 😉 1/∞

1. Finding the right type between amenity=cafe, amenity=bar, amenity=pub or amenity=restaurant.

A lot of places are really something in between, they do a bit of everything.

It is frustrating because I always feel I am using the wrong tags and that people will miss opportunities to enjoy those places.

Same for all those places that are not really a school but they teach things, and also organise workshops while being somehow an office. 🤯

bxl_forever, 1 month ago to random

Hard work often pays off, especially with the nice rendering of Tracestrack Topo.

Here is a street where we cared to map entrances of every door and shop very accurately.

Fun fact: before uploading several floating nodes like here it’s a good idea to align them in a straight line, parallel to the front wall of the buildings. This makes the result particularly pleasing.

bxl_forever, 3 months ago to random

It’s somehow gratifying when we are reducing the number of open notes. For Brussels alone, about 2,000 notes were created in 2023.

Dealing with notes is interesting, you always learn a lot of new things about what is going on. But it also takes a lot of time, especially when notes are asking for a survey or need complicated detective work to be solved.

bxl_forever, 3 months ago to random

Have you noticed this new change when viewing data about an object on osm.org?

"View History" is still there, but there are extra links to the first and last version in the history.

bxl_forever, 4 months ago to random

The feature I’d love most in OSM?

A grace period (say, 1 or 2 minutes) after uploading a changeset where I would be allowed to edit the changeset title.

bxl_forever, 6 months ago to random

This is a sign that OSM is becoming mainstream: we are becoming a popular online battlefield.
A few weeks ago there was a major flood of vandals erasing Russian names on OSM. Now, this is about Israel.

bxl_forever, 9 months ago to random

Valhalla, OSRM and possibly others ignore bus platforms for pedestrian navigation.

Always make sure you provide regular highway=footway connectors across or along bus platforms.

bxl_forever, 1 year ago to random

I added this shop to OSM.
opening_hours=We-Sa 14:03-19:07
😅

bxl_forever, 4 years ago to Funny

Ever heard of "pareidolia"?
This is a psychological tendency to see familiar objects or faces at places where one shouldn’t. (Think of Rorschach test too.)

Who sees a robot here?

#OSM #OpenStreetMap #funny