MacMasters Beach

The school holidays are upon us, and so we took up the invitation from some friends to join them at MacMasters Beach on the NSW Central Coast. It's a great spot. Here's a photo from a day when we walked through Bouddi National Park to get down to Little Beach.

The Gruen Transfer

OK, so it's been a while since my last post. Sorry!

Anyway, The Gruen Transfer (Wednesday nights on ABC1) has taken a little while to grow on me, but last week's was a ripper. They have a segment called "The Pitch" where 2 ad agencies compete to produce a TV commercial to sell the unsellable.

Last week's challenge was selling an invasion of New Zealand. I think the winner was 303's "100% There for the taking". I've got nothing against New Zealand, but this was pretty funny I think. Take a look.

Tasmania

I had a chance to spend a few days in Tasmania with my family recently. Of course my GPS went along to check for any previously un-mapped roads in Open Street Map.

We stayed in Woodbridge, and visited Bruny Island (pictured) and Franklin.

Woodbridge is such a beautiful village. The sunrises and sunsets were breathtaking.

Sort Of Dunno Nothin'

We saw this on TV the other night. Very good. Sort Of Dunno Nothin' by Peter Denahy.

Jindabyne

The town in NSW, rather than the movie. We went there recently to make an attempt at Koscuiszko.

The weather turned against us on top of the "mountain", so we didn't end up doing the walk, but it was interesting to see Jindabyne again.

I used to live in the area some time ago, and it has changed a lot since then (20 years ago?). I'm not sure the town is physically much bigger, but it seems "culturally" bigger (if that makes sense).

On the OSM side, Jindabyne is already pretty well mapped. I did add a couple of streets, and did a bit of East Jindabyne. I have a track for the foot/cycle path around the lake which I hope to put in OSM in the next week or so.

Sydney Cycle Map

OK it's been a while since my last post. Sorry. But what a post...

The gravitystorm web site announced that they have street level coverage of cycle routes in Sydney. This web site uses the cycle relevant tags in Open Street Map to render a cycling map. Great work!

This is the direct link to the Sydney map.

Streets With No Name

Something I guess I have taken for granted up until now is that streets in Australia have names. I mean, of course they have names, don't they? How do you tell someone the address if the street doesn't have a name?

While doing some mapping on Open Street Map I have found that there are a few streets (mainly laneways) in my local area that don't seem to have any name at all. e.g. Laneways between Nowranie Street and Carrington Street and a short street at the western end of Weston Street (although I suspect this street is also known as Weston Street).

Mapping has brought up some other interesting questions, like what is the real name of a street? Is it what the street sign says? Is it what existing maps say? Is it what people who live in the street call it? Sometimes all disagree.

New York

Last week took me to New York for work. I knew it was going to be cold, but I don't think I expected that it would be cold enough for the ponds in Central Park to be frozen.

GPS replaced now. Let the mapping continue!