My blog :: Munich free mapping initiative

Right then,

I can announce the existence of a blog I have been keeping recently. I am not sure though who in TT exactly would be interested in it as it is somewhat technical. I have told the digital mapping people about it but thought it was highttiome to share it with the TT people.

Basically it is all to do with using free map data and software to make maps of Bavaria. Kind of a hobby I do in the short free time that I have.

Check it out at Where the Hell is it?

Great! Join the list of other Munich Blogs. Both German and English.

Thanks Showem! I just did that!

Look for the other Toytowner blogs and see what interesting things other people get up to.

Cool Blog! Thanks, jeremy

Where the hell!

My blog is mentioned on a website called Mapping Hacks!

Not much movement on it at the moment as I am deep in childcare! Next month I shall make more of the SRTM problems I discuss at the moment.

But keep a tab if you want at Where the Hell.?

for future reference -- yes this has to do with Munich, jeremy's site is aka the "Munich Free Mapping Initiative".

It is still early days yet as my time is limited. There are free datasets from satellite imagery, vector maps and also height data from the space shuttle. In the future I'd like to use people's Garmin GPX tracks donated perhaps from mountain bike trips or road racing or whatever. They could even attach their own bike trip as a blog page - this is where we are headed.

My own GPS is a not working ancoent Magellan.

are you running Grass on Windows jeremy? It seems you need to do some sort of workaround to get it working on Windows

edit: ok I just read on the blog that you use Cygwin - sounds fiddly but seems like it works

Nope you can download GRASS on Windows directly and it works. Biggest pain is that the unzipo doesnt seem to work when I triewd to get my SRTM data into GRASS.

You can also download Mapserver and play with that.

might give it a crack at some point although my patience with such stuff if it doesn't go smoothly is famously short

I have to adopt a different strategy for problem solving to when I am working on GIS problems. Because of limited time I have to use what I call the "push button science" approach where I get fast solutions to problems. When I work I usually have to sleep on them overnight and get the idea next morning. No time for that anymore...

My blog now contains a freely downloaded (and processed in free software) satellite image of Bavaria and further south.

You can see it at: Where the hell is it?

If you have followed my blog at Where the hell...? you can see the latest results I have posted using this amazing free data set using a free mapping system called GRASS.

You can see Starnbergersee, Ammersee and Tegernsee on this map.

The data came courtesy of the Global Land Cover Facility

congrats on getting it all loaded in and geocoordinated. Good experience.

Update:

Yesterday I changed the image to give a true colour image of Bavaria. Check out the blog. Next job is the elevation.

Been having fun with a tool whcih does 3d ray tracing. Check our prelim results at my Where the hell blog. Double click to zoom

here you go, hope it helps

north: +48 25 22.46448
west: +9 33 2.75724
east: +12 33 26.03808
south: +46 28 38.32032

Hey thanks BR. I can schaff without them now.

Am playing next with Generic Mapping Tools from Hawaii. Having fun here!

sounds cool

Latest update on my blog is that I am setting up a mailing list for anyone interested in my project, and the others wiho use the same datasets to share experiences.

Join it!

Wherethehell...?

So what is the name of the yahoogroup, in case we want to join it?
--Aelfwynn