Author Archives: Steve Coast

gazeteer

Mikel notes that geonames.org have combined a bunch of free data to make an aggregated geocoder for cities and postcodes. I’m not confident their UK postcode data is free, but it’s a fantastic idea and one worth charging for.

freethepostcode updates

Lots of people seem to want updates to freethepostcode like different countries supported, different coordinate systems. I’ve created a pledge which reads

“I will upgrade freethepostcode.org to allow postcodes from other countries, allow other coordinate systems (like National Grid) and write a europe-wide geocoder based on this Free data but only if 15 other people will enter 40 postcodes over the next year OR do the translations OR give 10 pounds.”

— Steve Coast, agitator

This is basically to ensure I’m not wasting my time doing the work.

The melting computer

Most of OSM’s computers are hosted at UCL, including dev the devloper machine. The other night Mikel noticed that dev was down. I called to make sure nobody had touched it and then called network operations to see if it was blocked for some reason. Neither was the case.

I asked someone to power cycle it but they said it was hot to the touch and smelt of burning plastic. I told them to leave it unplugged.

Went to the machine today, took the case off and found that the PSU fan had died. Took the PSU to various electronics shops but it turned out to be some strange mini atx PSU and nobody stocked them. So had to buy new case, PSU and a backing fan.

Then transplanted the machine from the old to new case (which took a while) and now the dev machine is back, alive and well.

Isle of Wight workshop 

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OSM_Workshop

What:
Isle of Wight mapping workshop and general get together for
OpenStreetMap.org fans where we plan to map the entire Isle using GPS on
cars, cycling and by foot. This is our first official meetup and will
result in a released map of the Isle of Wight.

When:
Friday 5th to Sunday 7th May. Cottage probably booked 30th April -> 7th
May and all welcome at any point.

Where:
Isle of Wight, off the south English coast:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=50.688627413475814&lon=-1.376037&zoom=11

Who:
You? I need 50 GBP non-refundable deposit per person for cottage by
the 27th Feb ideally. Once booked we can add people an upgrade the
cottage size. You can attend for free, of course, but without a cottage
we have no base for things like computers so please stay with us :-)

Final cost for accomodation likely to be between 60-100 GBP
depending on sponsorship and numbers. Paypal steve at asklater.com with 4%
added for paypal charges or email for bank or cheque details.
People welcome to crash on the floor if space available.

Sponsorship:
I'm going to people asking for sponsorship of car rental, accomodation,
food, GPS units etc. If you can provide sponsorship or know someone who
can then get in touch.

Details, details:
Please update the wiki with travel info, offer lifts, equipment you'll
be bringing, etc.

OSM decentralisation

OSM has traditionaly run nearly everything off on one box. The wiki, mailing lists, source repository… everything. These little bits have now been moved to a VM machine donated by bytemark. Thus the wiki is now at wiki.openstreetmap.org, subversion source is at svn.openstreetmap.org, mailing lists are at lists.openstreetmap.org and the bug database trac is at trac.openstreetmap.org.

All this takes load off of the main machine and allows for easy migration in the future.