[talk-au] Hi, a noob starts some mapping.

[Lindley Bowers]

Hello all,

drlizau invited me to this mailing list, so I thought I'd say hi. I'm
mapping under the name Brentyn.

Since discovering both Trails and the gps on my iPhone, I thought I'd do a
little mapping around the Toowoomba area near where I live. I've never had
anything to do with mapping, gps or gis before so I'm a bit of a noob with
it all. (So feel free to send any advice/corrections my way if I'm doing it
all wrong).

Anyway I've been having fun discovering the rich diversity of houses and
scenic routes in our area. But the best part is just cruising around in the
car with my 11-yo son who's getting quite good at writing down street names
now. :)

So far I mapped Meringandan and Meringandan West, 1/3 of Highfields and a
few blocks in West Toowoomba. I don't always get to grab the street names so
sometimes I might just be adding in streets without their names.

Just one question for now ... (I couldn't find the answer anywhere after
looking around for an hour or so). I'm guessing that roads or highways with
a median strip need to be set up as two oneway ways so that routing
understands where you can turn around. What I don't know is that when a
turning opportunity comes up (either a break in the median strip or a road
intersection) how you are meant to tag the little bit of road between the
two ways? With the name of the main road, or the name of the intersecting
side street? Any other tags as well? eg In Toowoomba I split Taylor Street
between Greenwattle and Tor Streets so that I could do the block on the
south side correctly. However at the intersection of Taylor and McGregor you
can cross over Taylor. How is the bit of road to be tagged? (I also added
crossovers to Warrego Highway where Postmans Ridge Road joins up). I'm also
guessing that if the median break only allows turning into a road, no U-turn
or only turning from one direction that some kind of relation needs to be
constructed but relations are beyond me for now.

One motivation for helping out with mapping is the number of times I've
ended up in the middle of some poor farmer's paddock by trying to follow the
directions from other various online maps. But the clincher for me was when
I saw on more than one popular online map was falsely drawn a railway line
up a very steep hill beside Hogg Street between Mort and Tor Streets in
Toowoomba. Is it ironic that that is just beside the Baillie Henderson
Hospital (a mental institution)?

Trails on the iPhone uses the maps from cloudmade ... but it seems to takes
weeks for osm data to appear on their map. Is there a better iPhone app I
should be using?

Anyway, I'm having fun and hope that I contribute more than I break as a
noob.

Cheers,
Brentyn.
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