I have my GPS strung round my neck (signal doesn't seem to mind), and then a camera in my hand for 'photo mapping' type notes.
If it is cold you could put the GPS on your head then a hat on top, but maybe its never cold enough jogging.

Looks cool.
How have you made the grey areas (showing built up areas I think)?

Are all tunnels dotted red lines? This is confusing to know what type of railway line it is. For example underground/metro lines (not sure what they're tagged as) are orange, when they go underground it would make sense to be dotted orange.

A 'permalink' would be good on the map. So I can get a link of the area I'm currently zoomed in on. You can do it in Openlayers so it must be a case of just adding the right line of code.

osm.wiki/Catalog_of_Errors

Why-not help develop an existing program like JOSM?
It has a lot of the basic features you list and is well tested. But it could benefit from other things you list, like the output.

Ah you are joining other mapping addicts that move house when they've run out of roads to map!
If your garmin doesn't show you the OSM map then it can still be good to take tracks. You can then compare your tracks (if you know the GPS signal was good) to the road position which may have been from the TIGER import or Yahoo imagery.

I know of people that are mapping the location of bins because I've done all the roads & footpaths. Well, maybe someone will make use of the bin data.

NPE maps have been available as a JOSM WMS. The JOSM WMS doesn't work with Firefox 3 and stopped me using it. Apparently you can install Firefox 2 at the same time, and then do some trickery so only JOSM uses FF2.

Footpaths are important to do and often overlooked when only mapping. I've been doing the same of going for walks with family, it's just annoying when we have to stick to the few paths already mapped, sometimes making a whole trip with nothing to trace.

I'm looking forward to the Connect2 making a cycle route over Belmont Viaduct into Durham. It shouldn't be long before I've mapped that far out of the city and find the impressive looking viaduct.

Nice to see someone mapping so well on the other side of Newcastle.

As I started to read your post I thought I remembered Egypt being quite strict on GPS time things.

I tried to do some yahoo tracing for a bit, just as every little helps. Unfortunately the backgrounds on potlatch never seem to load for me (loading takes forever), and JOSM WMS is broken with Firefox 3. If the high-res coverage is good then that sorts the problem of avoiding GPS usage.

> There are businesses on the street but nobody working there knew what the street was called!
That seems surprising. Are these businesses ones you could note the name of then look up on the web branch addresses?
Although looking at the map, could it not be a continuation of Pancras Lane?

Or maybe there is some big secret about those roads, like an underground government community of aliens that they don't want the general public to know about!
I wonder if the data has 'infected' any other uses, like population/census information.

Free to view/use doesn't mean free to copy. Unless your government has a law that anything it creates is public domain data. Most places copyright is an automatically granted right, you don't even have to state that your work is copyright.

Wow, I was surprised that Newcastle was looking so good.
That's because it's not the Jesmond suburb of Newcastle, North England, U.K.
osm.org/?lat=54.9911&lon=-1.6068&zoom=14&layers=B000FTF

Ping back:
http://www.livingwithdragons.com/2008/12/zoom-zoom-zoom

Osmarender also displays anything sooner:
osm.org/?lat=39.5407&lon=-119.2418&zoom=14&layers=0B00FTF

I've mapped some horse racetracks with leisure=track, sport=horse_racing. Making something similar for cars would make sense.
http://www.livingwithdragons.com/2008/08/horse-racecourses

Sounds terrible, but glad your not getting put off. There are places I decide to walk past when mappping and leave the roads for when I can come back on a bicycle. I feel much safer not risking it and being able to quickly cycle away from trouble. Not to say I don't get kids talking to me on my bike.

I don't think laptops/netbooks come with built in GPS receivers, but you could get one with bluetooth and use a bluetooth 'GPS mouse'. They don't have a screen, you just turn them on and the location they get is sent over bluetooth to the computer which then does the displaying/recording. I used to use one with a program on my phone instead of carrying round a laptop. It's nice and cheap too, about £20 on ebay (just search for 'bluetooth gps').
Nowadays I use a standalone garmin GPSr which shows me loads of information and saves to a miniSD card, I have an SD slot in my netbook to upload the data when I get home (or to anywhere I can sit down).

Trackback: http://www.livingwithdragons.com/2008/12/snow-in-durham

Here's a link about mapping partys...
osm.wiki/Mapping_Weekend_Howto

Also I remembered another plan to get people to come and map the place out (don't know if this has been done much):
osm.wiki/Weekend_mapping_projects

Organise a mapping party!
It's normally a weekend or a day where existing mappers meet up (some will travel a little way), divide the area up into sections, each map a section, then come back to socialise together. With a bit of publicity you can invite new people along to learn how to map for the first time.
With an organisation like yours behind the event you could help providing a venue, and providing sandwiches for lunch, then you might be able to get someone from the ie mailing list to organise it for you. The OpenStreetMap Foundation even has a number of GPS receivers that can be borrowed by new commers.

Yep, it can be really annoying.
It's taken me about 2 years of mapping, but I now have the habit of checking signal strength regularly. This is more frequent when it looks like it will be bad, and then I can stand still/walk slower, or just accept that it's bad for geographic reasons and I won't get better(that avoids me going out again and getting similarily bad traces).

Map the restriction in a sensible way (e.g. access=oxford_students) and then it is up to you to (find a coder to)create a map using the OSM data showing.hiding what tags you want.
Most of the maps (mapnik, osmarender, cycle map, etc) will mark roads with a red hash if they have any value for the 'access' tag. It would make sense for any router to ignore any roads with the access tag, unless it accepts a specific value for it (e.g. access=emergency when in emergency vehicle mode).

I'm working towards creating a university-focused map render. I haven't mapped anything as being access to students only, but expect this to become clear when the boundary around colleges is shown up.
You might want to take a look at osm.wiki/Durham#New_tagging_system