This weekend the people of openstreetmap.org are going to walk/cycle/drive around Manchester with their GPS receivers, recording the locations of all the streets in the city (or as many as possible). This information can be used to make a streetmap of Manchester. They already did a similar workshop on the Isle of White.

The idea is to free the information. Although websites like multimap.com, streetmap.co.uk, and maps.google.co.uk will give you a free map of Manchester, it’s not really free. It’s copyrighted. Want to print out a poster size detailed map of Manchester? Want to show a map of Manchester on a website? Want to create a new stylised map of Manchester? You can’t do any of that without breaching copyright.

…and what about building other clever geospacial applications? Google maps have an API for acheiving many clever mapping tricks, and embedding these on your own website. But they’re all based on linking into google, and the tricks only go so far. What about new websites / software to search and manipulate map data in new and innovative ways? Can’t do it. The data is copyrighted.

Generally the open source community is pretty quick to step in, when information is not available for free, but with map data it’s tricky. The underlying data all comes from the same source: The Ordnance Survey. A government agency which should be dishing out this information for free anyway (like in the U.S.). The act of looking at any map, and drawing another map based on it, is a breach of copyright. There are ways they can detect it.

So there’s only one thing for it… They’re going to go out there with GPS receivers, gather latitude/longitude readings, build maps from scratch, and release it all with an open licence!

Yesterday I passed out. I’ve only passed out two and half times in my life. It’s a very weird feeling. Like falling into a dream, after which it seems like lots of time has passed, when it hasn’t.

The first time I only half passed out. Beezly will remember this well. We were riding down the hill from his house to my house, two people on a pedal bike, when we hit a pot-hole in the road. We swerved and both flew over the handlebars, at high speed. I landed on top of Beezly and kind of surfed on his face, leaving him a lot worse off than me injury-wise.

But for some reason the shock of the incident caused me to start seeing stars. I slumped over a nearby wall and felt myself start to lose conciousness. I dont think I actually passed out, but eventually the stars filled my vision completely, and I lost control of my limbs. My legs couldn’t take my own weight, as Beezly and the other guy carried me somewhere to sit down. Given that Beezly’s face was pooring with blood, I was being a bit of a wuss. …This must’ve been about ten years ago now.

The second time I had been lying on the sofa for hours watching a long episode of touch of frost. It came to a commercial break, and I stood up and ran upstairs to use the toilet. I quickly felt very dizzy, and sat down on the toilet. I put my head between my knees, but it was too late. I woke up sprawled all over the bathroom floor, with my trousers round my ankles and my ear pressed against the base of the sink. This left me with a painful bruise on the side of my head, I must’ve hit the sink quite hard. Luckily not too hard. I wouldn’t have wanted to be found dead in that position. …This was a couple of year ago.

The third time was yesterday! I went snowboarding with my housemates. I’d been out drinking the night before, and what with the early start, I was feeling a little ill. We went up in the gondala and did one run down. I was having fun, but starting to feel a little rough. Then in a crowded gondala on the way to the top of the mountain again, I started feeling very ill. I told my mates I was going to be sick, which prompted the usual joking discussions about seafood etc, but then strangely, rather than spewing all over their feet, I passed out. I woke up on the floor of the gondala, lying on my back, with a whole crowd of swiss skiers looking down at me. One of them was holding my legs above me, which I think helped the blood come back to my head. The hangover was a factor, but I had only become ill later on in the morning, and very suddenly. I decided that it was probably more to do with the undercooked egg I ate for breakfast yesterday morning.

We had a bit of an incident on my latest whitewater kayaking trip. As always we’ve got a trip report on the canoe club website. Normally these are not so interesting, if you’re not into kayaking, but I wrote the trip report for last weekend’s trip to the river Dart, and this time you may be interested to read about a helicopter rescue! (twas very exciting)

It’s like a snowman… only made of rice

When I’m shaving in the morning, a strange reverse psychological phonomenon often ocurrs.

“I’m running late…” I think to myself (most mornings I’m running late)

“…so I’ll get this shaving done quickly.”

“Now how can I optimise the process of shaving off all this stubble, so that I don’t miss any bits, but also I don’t go over the same patch unnecessarily thoroughly”

So then I concentrate on the shaving process, carefully planning the path which my electric shaver must take across my chin to achieve this fine balance. I don’t want to leave any patches of stubble, or individual hairs which will later irritate me throughout the day, but at the same time I don’t want to waste any time shaving too thoroughly. I repeatedly feel my chin to see if I’ve smoothed it off sufficiently in all areas. …and the whole process takes a minute or two.

Now the funny thing is… other mornings I don’t think about shaving at all. I just do it. Maybe because I’m too zonked out to think, or maybe because I’m not in hurry. Either way, I always manage to shave much more quickly, when I don’t think about how to do it quickly.

I’ve proved this to myself over and over again, and it annoys the hell out of me.

Just now I was all psyched up to finish work early and go catch at train to the airport. I go to printout my flight details, and there it is in black n white. “25th Feb”. Could have sworn I asked for a flight booking on the 18th.

So I won’t be back in England till next week. I will have to ring my Brazilian lady friend and cancel our plans. I will have to email Tom and Mallinson and Peter and cancel the Saturday night pub plan. And I will have to go get drunk in Zurich instead.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

This weekend it seemed there was a shocking lack of Saturday night enthusiasm. Since I’d been away for a few months London had closed down into a depressed ’staying in on Saturday night’ state. The streets were empty. Tumbleweed blew across Leicester square. Big Ben’s bell chimed, but no-one was there to hear it. Realising I had left the city to fester for too long, I knew what I had to do…

I stepped out of my house and took a breath of cold London winter air. As I did so, the pissed tramp living in the park across the street started screaming with delight. “Harry! Harry’s going out tonight!”. Someone else whipped out a mobile and started calling people frantically. People saw me as I walked to the tube station, and as I reached it, the streets were packed with party people dressed for a Saturday night out. By the time I reached Picaddilly Circus, the Christmas lights had been turned back on, and every bar and pub was full with happy party goers; music and people spilling out into the street. The city’s fire had been re-kindled.

I resolved never to deprive the people of London of my presence for such a long time again. Especially that nice brazilian woman I met on the dancefloor.

I am watching the zero air temperature height line. Will it drop below the height of the Flumserberg ski lifts, by the time Clare and Beezly come to visit in a few weeks?