Apple's Developer Site has Crashed

With the news that Apple has released the SDK for the iPhone, their developer site is currently unavailable. It seems to be have exceeded Apple's expectations in terms of demand.

I'm currently wondering if there will be access to the Bluetooth in the SDK so that I can connect a bluetooth GPS and produce some nice mapping application for OpenStreetMap. With unlimited data, a fairly large (for a mobile device) touch display, it may well be an idea device to do the mapping in the field.

Hopefully I'll earn a bit more soon, so that I can afford the mobile contract.

Sorting Tables in a MediaWiki

I've noticed that a number of tables in the Wikipedia are sortable. Further research found that it is implemented through client side javascript, when a table has the class="sortable". It is available in MediaWiki 1.9 or later.

See the MediaWiki help on sortable tables.

I have found adding the sorting to the OpenOffice.org Mac OS X Porting Roadmap really useful as you can now sort the table and easily see what is a high priority or already fixed. I wouldn't recommend it for full bug tracking. 

The next feature I'd like to see is row level editing of tables in the wiki, as I hate having to try and find the one or two rows in the table that I want to change.

If you would like to help the port by implementing one of the items on the road map, why not contact the MacPort team? Drop a mail to the mailing list mac@porting.openoffice.org (first subscribe by sending a mail to mac-subscribe@porting.openoffice.org. Or say drop by on IRC server irc.freenode.net on the channel #ooo_macport.

OSM cycle map of Shandwick Place, Edinburgh diversion

For the next five months Shandwick Place in the west of the centre of Edinburgh is closed for work to move the utilities for when the trams are going to be introduced in a few years time.

The council, TIE and Lothian Buses were quick enough to produce alternative routes for cars and buses, however their alternative route wasn't suitable for cyclists.

On Friday they provided some written instructions without any maps, which they had done for the car drivers and bus routes.

See below for a map with the council's route drawn on top of Andy Allan's rendering of the OpenStreetMap cycle data.

Ultra high detail mapping

Someone pointed out what some of the German mappers have been doing in Berlin. The buildings have outline, and the football pitch has the markings on it too.

High detail in Berlin map

OpenStreetMap tagged photos on Flickr

If you have any photos tagged openstreetmap on Flickr, they will now show up on the right hand side of planet-osm. There is currently 2,620 photos tagged with openstreetmap on Flickr.

Cycling: Edinburgh to Berwick and Back

Further to my previous post about my bike. I had problems getting a proper chainring from half the bike shops in Edinburgh, so instead I got a second hand bike that was similar to my old one. 

Just over a year ago, I cycled from Edinburgh to Berwick-Upon-Tweed. Since then I have been trying to do it in both directions. However the past occasions that I tried to do it something came up. On Saturday I left home for a rather long cycle. Before I left I loaded TrekBuddy with a map of South East Scotland so that I had some idea of where I was.

The overall cycle was tough. First I headed out East from Edinburgh through Musselburgh on to the A199, out to Dunbar. Parts of the A199 have some nice cycle lanes. As the road is fairly flat and straight you can easily get the speed up to do a nice sprint. This was the easy part of the route, as I have done it before.

 

At Dunbar I started to head south towards Berwick-Upon-Tweed. Parts of this part of the A1 can be scary, however it the only way south close to the coast that I know of. In the middle of the Borders, I decided to head through Pease Bay again. It is a steep road down to the bay, where the caravan park is, however it is even steeper on the other side heading out of the bay.

 

As I had the map in TrekBuddy, I was able to find the A1107, which joins the A1 with Eyemouth in a loop. This helped me to stay off the A1 for a lot longer than I did the last time. It was a nice road into Eyemouth, with some great views of the North Sea. From Eyemouth I headed along the "Berwickshire Coastal Route", which meant that I was on the A1 for even less, and I'd have even more data to be able to add to OpenStreetMap.org.

At the border between Scotland and England, I took a snack and photo break.

From the Border, it is only a few miles more into Berwick, where I joined the National Cycle Network Route 1 to head back to Edinburgh.

The National Cycle Network takes you on the quietest roads possible. This will usually mean that they are quite hilly, longer and going into the middle of nowhere.  There were some points where you could just see fields or trees, but no lights apart from my own bike or the occasional car. As you are heading west along the National Cycle Network, it does zig zag between Scotland and England a few times. At one point there is a bridge that was built in 1820, and still in use today.

In Norham there was a sign that was rather confusing, as it had the wrong National Cycle Network Route number. Just as well I used the name of the city I wanted to head towards, rather than the route number.

Just before Galashiels, I stopped to check the GPS and found that the phone no longer seen it. Unfortunately the battery in the bluetooth GPS that I'm currently using only lasts for about 12 hours according to the manufacturer. It lasted about half an hour longer, than the manufacturer's stated operating time, so should I be happy that I couldn't get the last bit of the trip? The cold weather didn't help either, as batteries tend to have a shorter life when they are cold. 

From there on, there was no point in me taking any more pictures as I wouldn't be able to Geotag them. Also it was dark so it was difficult to take any decent pictures. Finally stopping to take pictures does slow my average speed down considerably, and I was wanting to get home rather than be on the bike for a whole 24 hours.

From Galashiels I just hit the A7 north to Edinburgh. I did notice on the way that the signs appeared to change from green to white like a yo-yo. Is it a trunk road or a primary road?

Total Distance was about 150 miles in 17 and three quarter hours. Next up on the longer distance cycling is to head round the Forth again.

Now I just need to get the tracks from yesterday added to OSM (amongst the numerous other things I need to do).

Photos on Flickr

Map of the cycle

Cycling: Bike off the road again

Seems that when I did my last bike repair a month ago, I didn't tighten the bolts that hold the cogs on properly. So the chain ring has managed to fatigue and break quite spectacularly. Luckily I was just setting of from some lights within walking distance from home, so it wasn't too bad.

Unfortunately to get a new one specifically for internal gears, which use a stronger, wider chain, is seen to be a specialist part by the bike shops I've been to so far in Edinburgh. This means that you need some thicker cogs. This means that it takes about a week to get specially ordered in, and means pushing my bike into the city centre to make sure I get the right bit ordered.

Yay I can now use Apple Spell check in Safari when writing blog posts, and it works.

Cycling:Saturday CTC cycle 2008-01-19

Today I took part on the CTC Saturday cycle for the first time. Total distance including getting to and from the start and finish was 51 miles.

As I raced to the meeting point of the Commonwealth Pool, I found the first part of the ride slow. Later on, especially with the head wind I found the pace of the group to be about right. I'm not able to sustain a high speed over a long enough distance to be able to move up to the next level of the road club.

View the full route that I took.

Cycling: Edinburgh 20 miler

Yesterday I took part in the first Edinburgh 20 miler ride of 2008. It was an easy, slow paced, group ride of 12 people around the west of Edinburgh. In total for the day, including to and from the start/finish I cycled about 26 miles.

I found parts of the route interesting because I hadn't come across them before. I was also testing out my new GPS linked to my phone, using the TrekBuddy software. It seemed mostly reliable, though there was a couple of points where the phone locked up, or there was sporadic data. The sporadic data was easily filtered by gpsbabel. It was also nice to be able to have cached OSM data on my phone, so that I could see where there was changes required to the data.

Route of the 20 miler.

Cycle Parking this way

Cycle Parking this way
Originally uploaded by smsm1

I noticed this sign at the Gyle Centre recently after they had move the cycle parking to another location. I wish there was more of these signs at supermarkets, as the bike parking is often hidden away so that you cannot find it. The same should apply to large offices, especially ones that don't like you chaining the bike to the railings at their front door, and instead you have to park your bike somewhere else that often isn't obvious.