Hi everyone. Though I've communicated with a few of you on this mailing list directly, I thought I'd take a few moments to introduce myself to everyone else as a sort of newcomer to OSM.
I say a "sort of" newcomer, since I first discovered OSM a year or two ago, and fiddled around with adding a few amenities here and there, but never really became more significantly involved until recently. Here's a bit of background... I'm not a professional cartographer, GIS expert, or anything like that... but I have been an mapping enthusiast for pretty much forever. As an astronomer (amateur mostly now, but having worn the "professional" hat for a few years), I was frustrated at the time by the lack of accuracy in astronomical simulation software, so took on the project of writing commercial software that, among other things, mapped more than 20 million celestial objects considering all kinds of subtle effects to their apparent positions. After the experience of doing that, I was hooked on mapping in general, and the science of figuring out where things are. I've since come somewhat back to Earth and have been involved with GPS since the years where Selective Availability was an issue to contend with (which dates myself :-), both on the hardware side (some of you have recognized me from being the Canadian distributor for Garmin-compatible plugs), as well as the software side (I've written software for carrier phase, cm-level positioning for single frequency OEM GPS boards). At least on the Earth, things stay relatively still :-) I then spent several years on non-mapping projects, which still take up the majority of my time, but have recently been able to sideline back into the arena with iPhone/iPad/iPod mapping software I'm currently developing, using OSM data - a cacheable, topographical map of the Earth. The project has involved setting up our own slippy map server merging OSM data with high resolution contour vector information and hillshaded raster data, and of course significantly tweaking the stylesheet for map rendering to remain visible and "appealing" over the additional elevation information. We're in the testing phases now, so it's not quite ready for release yet - I anticipate a month or two. The intent is to have this first foray into the iPhone/iPad/iPod world to serve as a jumping off point for other location-based ideas we have. And of course, getting more involved with OSM data for the project I'm working on has made me become much more active on doing my small part to continue to improve the resource. Pretty much any time I travel anywhere, a GPS track log follows me (sometimes on several devices), and I'm not the sort of person to let that information go to waste, so I'm often tweaking bits and pieces of OSM data in my neck of the world from that. I've also gotten more involved recently in the merging of Canvec data around Alberta into OSM, and will likely continue to do so in places I'm familiar with (Alberta and BC mostly). I'm using JOSM, and am always interested in hearing tips others have learned in terms of streamlining the process of adding information while at the same time being faithful to the data already available in OSM which is often (though not always) of better quality or utility than Canvec on its own. In any case, that's my story in a nutshell. I've been lurking here on the sidelines of OSM for long enough, so thought that now would be as good a time as any to say "hi"! Dan -- Syzygy Research & Technology Box 83, Legal, AB T0G 1L0 Canada Phone: 780-961-2213 _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
