… turn it over, put a fork in it, it's done. No, not quite, but I have left some bits in much better shape. Not the bits I expected to do, but that's weather for you.

It's now more than two weeks since we returned from our ski trip in Canterbury, a trip where I learned to love and eke my primitive eTrex. That sounds a little wrong but it's actually all good. I collected pages and pages of scribbled notes, as many tracks as I could squeeze in, more waypoints than I saw sheep (not really), and most importantly, fantastic ideas, experiences, and techniques.

The weather meant that we visited places I didn't expect, and didn't visit places I did expect, so all my prepared printouts were rendered useless. I was forced to educatedly guess what would have had good coverage and what would have had usable aerial photography (back on the interweb). More edumacation would be a fine thing. We only skied one resort, Mount Hutt, where we'd hoped to get to three. Only three days of skiing (including an unplanned Saturday), but nice powder on those days. I didn't expect to take a cross-country train journey – in fact, the plan was hatched and decision made while the train was still at Springfield station. No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition. I may document my tractivity in more detail on the wiki some day. This diary entry mustn't digress into a travelogue.

I've really hit the edits most nights since we returned to complete what I had to. As light relief, I've finally worked through a couple of my backlog of Oz-trailian bushwalk traces, too. I've pondered bus stops and bus routes. All good stuff. I've had Potlatch running on a LiveCD on a spare laptop for a while now to do my editing. I think it's the last major tranche of work I will do with a live editing tool, unless the network round-trip can magickly speed up.

Here are my random observations. Many will be obvious to those with a blood supply to their head:

• If you take the time to offload your tracks before the holiday, also remember to clear the tracklog before you start holiday tracking. Wasted 20% right there. Not painting myself in a very good light so far. :~(


• One really needs to get a good fix on satellites before tracking. It's not OK to switch on at the top of a ski lift, tighten one's boots, and cruise down.


• You can get a satellite fix first, then turn logging on if you're concerned about filling up your tracklog. This is better than leaving tracking on and using the power button. Ahem…


• To save on tracklog, waypoints alone can be sufficient if you think the road can be easily traced. It is even feasible to ask your wife successfully to mark major features while you drive, but don't push it with the granularity (hamlets are a reasonable level).


• Riding shotgun is good for side road naming and pointing.


• It's good to have a plan, but then again, the best laid plans…


• New Zealand has lots and lots and lots of one-way bridges, not really one-way, but one at a time, prompting me to ask how that should be tagged.


• According to road signs, there are no apostrophes in roadnames in New Zealand (e.g. McFarlanes Road, Gundrys Road, Moodies Road, even Foxs Road). Discuss.


• it can be handy to mark:
  
  
  
  • passing lanes
  
  
  • bridges (beginning and end on long ones and priority direction on one-ways)
  
  
  • stock effluent disposal points Yes, please explain.
  
  
  • picnic areas
  
  
  • train stations
  
  
  • tunnel beginnings and ends (though if tracking, this can be obvious)
  
  
  
  


• Free software zealots can run Potlatch on a LiveCD. RMS won't be that mad


• I think I've outgrown Potlatch. There are many facets to that point, but many of my problems doing large amounts of edits are due to the live editing model and the server load – layers simply don't load fast enough. It's not so much because of the tool itself, which has both problems and advantages, and is brilliant for a mainly one-man development. (Richard is also admirably resilient to the criticism his tool receives.) One day maybe I'll write up all of the usability problems I've noticed.


• It's really hard to work with the low-res imagery, which is why any near-accurate mapping is probably better than none as a foundation.


• Piste mapping is very hard, as is orientation and navigation, when the signage is poor. That's something only the skifield management can address.


• Mapnik's rendering of pistes seems to be confined to lifts at present.


• All of the renderings I've seen of pistes which are areas (polygons) rather than ways (arcs) kinda suck.


• You would need to ski/snowboard all the way down each edge of a piste to really get a good trace of its extent, unless you had outstanding aerial photography. I guess if you turned from edge to edge you might get something close. That all assumes you know its extent.


• I'd really like a rendering suitable for printing out areas, so it's unambiguous what's been named/labelled/tagged. At present I haven't seen a rendering that has at least every streetname in it without going to very large zoom levels, which means more printouts and joins.

I can't wait for my next overseas mapping expedition – that's the one where I go victoriously to Grenada. ;~)