Hi! I’m a teenager from Northern Kentucky, where I’ve been for my whole life so far. I really love making maps of basically all varieties, from locations of tornado sirens, to original routes for roads, to places where traffic lights still run on incandescent bulbs!

I live around Burlington/Hebron in Boone County. The area around here is very nice and VERY dense with history! I’ve done a lot so far on OpenHistoricalMap around Cincinnati (along with fellow OSM member Minh Nguyen) where, for example, I’ve mapped out the different layouts of CVG, the different paths Kentucky 20 and 237 took, neighborhoods that were built then leveled, and so on.

Here, on OpenStreetMap, I mostly edit around Cincinnati, specifically my home area but sometimes around the general metro. My original focus in my first months on the map was revising railroads, but now my main focus is more based on adding detail to existing areas - land use is a big one.

I’ve never been too experienced with adding information (e.g. businesses) to the map. I guess you could say I more like making the map look nice, with natural features and things like that. Typically, my goal is to cover almost 100% of the areas that I densely edit with features to cover the default white; in other words, to make the map feel alive. Something similar to this which I admire is how OSM user CaseGrillot has covered basically all of the Campbell/Pendleton County border area with natural/land use features (bravo, it looks wonderful!!). I want to continue that kind of mapping around my own area.

Which brings me to my next point: I’d say it’s important to note that features that I add to the map usually contain a rather abominable amount of nodes… I’ve got to say, I really dislike seeing “boxy” things on the map if that makes sense. When I’m mapping, let’s say, a road, I instinctively make it as neat as possible to ensure it looks smooth on the product map. I do apologize if this gets in the way of people looking to edit data I place..

I have yet to introduce my friends to OpenStreetMap, except for one. I might try to bring more of my friends into this hobby eventually, since I think it would be really fun for me and some of my long-time friends to be just mapping away together on a voice call.

Something that I dream OpenStreetMap had (and that I haven’t been able to find) was more or less a “blank template map.” I would love to map out different areas in my very own mapping style that doesn’t have to follow a big set of guidelines. I admit, I am sorta pushing it already, by using barrier=wall to represent features that aren’t necessarily walls (like the sides of bridges or distinct lines on a roof), so by all means, do correct these if they interfere with anything.

Now, a bit more about who I am. I’m an avid enthusiast of the weirdest things: traffic lights, tornado sirens, trains and their signals, and fire alarms, to name a few big ones. The actual list of things that fascinate me would be ridiculously long. I have a collection of about thirty fire alarm/smoke alarm devices, fifteen road signs, seventy or so glass insulators (intact, that is, but I also have quite many fragments of other ones), and two signals: an authentic Eagle traffic signal from Indianapolis which never got installed, and an old Crouse Hinds beacon we found at an antique store.

Here are some other places you can find me, as well as some of my projects.

Please message me if you have anything to say!

tako