Indescribable, this is how will I express my whole journey as a mapper and also as a member of Cwts++ program. At the very beginning, I tend to ask myself how did I get into this? Was I deserving? Was I able to prove that I need to be in this kind of program? Many questions going on around my head. But the real thing here is, I’ve enjoyed being in it. My journey made me realized that I should care about other people, about the environment, and especially about my neighborhood. This, helped me a lot to improve the place I’m living in. Actually, it’s not easy to map a place like my neighborhood because it’s quite wide. But thinking you’re on an adventure when mapping, it became more exciting. Thus, taking this opportunity to map helped me a lot and my neighborhood. I was able to add house numbers (though not all because the houses in our subdivision are not yet all occupied), street names, and especially houses’ information. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Mr. Erwin Olario, the one who made all of these possible, for giving me an opportunity to become a responsible and helping citizen.

Mapping my neighborhood was very fun and interesting for not only am I helping others but also myself for it is my neighborhood. It was very easy for I know my neighborhood very well so I didn’t have any difficulties whatsoever. As I was mapping my neighborhood through field paper, the only difficulty that I found was that some houses in my neighborhood have two house numbers and I do not know which one to use so just used my guts to choose which house number to choose. Capturing street level imagery was another thing that I used in mapping my neighborhood and it felt very awkward for sometimes there are people watching me take images through my phone but nonetheless it was a very memorable experience.

We are nearing the end of our CWTS++ class and I am thankful for all the knowledge and experience that I gained in this class for I now know a way to help people around the world by mapping. Even as a student, you can already help people that are in need by mapping so I am very thankful to this class. The days that I spent in class was all worth it for I learned new things in every class and to actually use that knowledge while mapping is just so satisfying so I would like to thank our teacher for teaching and introducing to us students the art of mapping so thank you sir. Thank you!!!

From the very start of our CWTS++, the edits that I have made along my neighborhood was adding houses that are not mapped yet. I also added house numbers, but some of them does not display theirs, so I was not able to put the house numbers of all the houses along my neighborhood that I have mapped. I also have noticed that there were no names on some streets so I named it since I am very familiar on the area that I am mapping. I also added points on buildings such as fast food, convenience store, stationery store, church and basketball court. Lastly, I added pathways and tagged a road that does not have an exit. The editor that I used is JOSM. On collecting the street imagery, I used mapillary to take some photos around my neighborhood to show the pathways that are accessible but not seen on the map. I used fieldpapers as tool to help me to map while I am walking along my neighborhood to write down the points, name of the points, houses, house numbers, and pathways.

CWTS++ is such a great experience. To be honest, I don’t have any idea that everyone can add data on the map. I thought it is a limited access and it’s only for experts. The great thing about osm is that it allows everyone to learn and to explore. I gives freedom for all of us. I can still remember the day when we were still applying on CWTS++, I wrote there that I want to learn something new. And there it is, I really learned a lot, not just on mapping but also to socialize with my classmates and other section. All I can say is that CWTS++ is worth to attend to. All the days that I attended were all well spent days.

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Ang na experience ko sa subject na cwts++ ay sobrang dami, first day ko pa lang dito nag enjoy nako, kasi nagkaroon ako ng new friends. Marami rin akong experience na tinatamad sa subject nato kasi puro edits, pero nung tumatagal naman nag eenjoy nako kasi ang sarap sa feeling na nakakatulong ka sa community at sa mga nasalanta ng bagyo sobrang saya talaga. Kay sir erwin naman nung una medyo natakot ako sa kanya kasi akala ko sobrang strict nya pero hindi pala kahet anong klaseng tao kaya nyang pakisamahan. Kahet na maingay kame makulit always smile lang sya. Alam namin na nagagalet na sya pero wala e hahahaha😂. Magaling sir magturo makikinig ka talaga sa kanya tyka sya yung prof na maraming tanong. Best experience ko yung nag report ako kasi wala talaga ako alam sa irereport ko hahaha. Pero si sir andyan para iguide ka buti nga na survive ko yun kaya ayun simula nun nag sipag ako hahaha. Sobrang thank you ko kasi naging part ako ng cwts++ sobrang dami kong natutunan. Thank you!

From the 13 meetings that we had, I learned to be productive to our society, to help people in need and also to do Mapping. We must help other people that need our help and simple actions or things even when we are at home we can make a simple task that can help thousands of people to contribute to our society, as a student. By the matter of time, we enhance our skill to this profession that got shared to us. We had lots of fun especially the fact that you’re helping somebody with your work. I mapped some parts or areas of Africa, Japan and some areas here in the Philippines that weren’t mapped before, and being alert on time of natural disaster on different countries and giving my time for it. We sometimes do 2 hours mapathon in our class, a discussion of our statuses, and the giving of tasks we need to map. Of course, there is a “kulitan”, joke time, sharing our experiences within a certain task but in the meantime, when we do our mapping we get serious on it. We even invite our fellow students, for us to share our knowledge of mapping to them and to teach them how we help other people by doing simple task. And my favorite part is Mapping my neighborhood. It’s so fun that this project can help me a lot to know every corner, changes in my neighborhood and to encode the data we gathered on our field paper including house numbers, establishments, apartments, etc… after the data we gathered we input it on OSM, we run updates. change things that needed changes, I figured that there’s a one establishment that has been misplaced by other mappers. In that case, I did my best to make a correction. I also add the new establishments. The last thing is to take pictures of every corner of our street of our neighborhood, known as “mappillary”. Here comes the end of semester, our last meeting of our instructor and I felt a little sad.

Come on vamanos, everybody let’s go. Come on let’s get do it, I know that we can do it. ^_^ that was I am thinking when I was mapping my neighbourhood because I always pushed myself to go out just to map may neighbourhood. My number oneenemy was my laziness, I can’t go out without my friends and I suddenly realized that what I am doing is for myself and other people finding places. Before I map my neighbourhood, I’m thinking if I will not go out because I thought that I memorized all the buildings,houses near our house. But Im wrong, it is much pleasure to know more about my neighbourhood. They are just my neighbourhood before, but when I mapped their houses, buildings, they are now like my friends. I used fieldpaper before just to map what experts didn’t map in my neighbourhood. I didn’t upload it but I manually mapped it because its more fun to mapped my neighbourhood. I used JOSM(Java openstreet map) app to easilly mapped my neighbourhood. After that, our professor tought us to used mappillary, an app who captured a way automatically or manually when you walk through or using bikes etc. It helps me to know more about my neighbourhood and captured ways to share what I am doing especially to help other people. Thanks to our professor, thanks to cwts++ program for helping me not just to see maps, but also to contribute. This program gave me a knowledgeable experienced and helps me to know more about my neighbourhoods 👌👌 if you want help near my house? Just let me know. We will ask vamanos 😅👌👌

So far my edits only have been mostly consists of mapping buildings and contributing to the hot tasking manager at bagyong Ompong. The tools that I’ve used is ID editor and JOSM, at first I was contented in using ID but then there was JOSM which is like photoshop and you can do a lot of stuff, it is much more accurate than using ID but it is a little bit challenging to use.

My thoughts about the CWTS++ program up to now is that it is a very good program to be in if you enjoy helping other people or even staring at the screen for hours. For me it is somewhat a good way to kill time at the house knowing that also I am helping people in some form of way.

After mapping a selected part of my neighborhood, I can say that it will mostly benefit people who are living there or plan to move there because my neighborhood mostly consists of empty houses and town houses. By mapping this area relatives from those families who want to visit can can easily view their house number.

Mapping around my neighborhood is a breeze because I know my neighborhood very well. The only problem I encountered was the people around me while I was mapping my neighborhood using my phone, mapping using field papers and mapping on the internet. I was anxious while mapping with mappillary because it uses my phone and it is very vulnerable to be stolen and it would be much easier if the app will cooperate with you(it always shows you no location -_-). When I was mapping using field papers it is one of the most difficult form of mapping because it is tough to be walking or cycling around because you’ll be drenched in sunlight; the weather is also unpredictable so it might rain and get your field papers soaking wet. Mapping on the desktop is not as hard if your desktop is as fast as a gaming pc, I was having such a hard time mapping on my laptop because it’s sluggish and had a hard time installing JOSM. Despite all of this I made it through, it was a fun experience and the thought of me helping someone for doing all of this work is great; you can be a hero in any way you want to. It also made me think on how this program might have changed me, it has lessen my shyness, it increased my confidence, heightened my social skills and helped me to become a better person.

In mapping my neighborhood I encounter street that I didn’t encounter yet. Mapping my neighborhood makes me comfortble because it changes me. My shyness reduced and I now want to go walking around while mapping my neighborhood. Mapping my neighborhood gave me knowledge that in any map application there are lack of information because there are some convenient store, banks, clinics and many more that are in the same building. I use what I learn in mapping so that they can see that in the same buildings that there are some useful stores in there. In mapping my neighborhood using mapiliary or image mapping I saw people looking at me for I don’t know their reason. So I as a mapper catch a good opportunity to take photos of my neighborhood when they are not around. All the things that I have learned in our mapping time was all used but there are that I can’t understand because there are building that I can’t see because of the clouds so I ignore them. There are houses that I didn’t recognize because there are houses/buildings that are under the trees. In our mapping session we tried to teach other people to map to pass what we have learnes. So it makes our mapping session more fun and more helpful thats all. Thank You. 😂😂

As you look on the edits I’ve made in my neighborhood, the most common edits are buildings, specifically houses, btw I used JOSM/Java OpenStreetMap in editing my neighborhood. When I’m editing my neighborhood, I didn’t realize that there are houses in some spaces that I wouldn’t expect that there could be one. In province (my province, Tarlac), most houses aren’t close at all, comparing it to most houses in manila that were very close to each other. I used the Mapillary to take pictures for the street imagery. When I’m taking picture for the street image, I realized that most of the house addresses that I’ve seen were not numerically arranged properly, what I mean is that the way that the houses were placed aren’t the same with the addresses if you’ll arrange them (you know whattam sayin’ haha). By doing this project, I have discovered some places that I’ve never seen in my neighborhood, and I am very thankful for the opportunity. *ps. you should bring a stick when taking pictures for street imagery, trust me it’ll be helpful to scare dogs haha.

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So about the edits that I have made this past few months is all for the people that got hit by disasters. But I also added features and buildings around my neighborhood, although it was hard for me since there is barely information about the houses here in my place. Also the imagery that is given to me by JOSM application is very old since some of the buildings in this present time isn’t showing. I was able to collect street level imagery starting around my street up to outside of my subdivision which is St. Joseph Drive. I used Mapillary to collect those street level images.

So, how’s my experience here in CWTS++ is very unique. Unique in a way that we’re or should I’m able to help other people in different parts of our country or from different country whenever there’s a disaster or catastrophe happened to a specific place. At first it doesn’t affect you much that yes you can help by mapping the place for them to see but you don’t realize how much help it would be to those rescuers that it will ease up their job. It changed me in a way that with small things you can help other people, and it just proves to me that even a small thing could make a big change not to yourself but to others unknowingly. So, I would say to aspiring mappers that they should try it to.

  Mapping like Openstreetmaps, and josm have helped so many peoples lives. Mapping is a great opportunity to do task like this is because your making your own hobby. This kind of experience that no one can understand because people taught that mapping is boring. Sharing my own experience before, during, and after. Before I thought mapping is boring, because Earth is a large map where it takes so many years before you finish mapping. But I thought that so, but there are so many mappers around the world. When I knew that we will use computers in mapping, that gives me interest on it. During mapping I realize mapping is exciting, adding information, making your own path/ways, adding houses, competing to other classmates, adding some features, editing mistakes from others, etc. Meanwhile I sense something, a thing that made me uncomfortable, a lack of doing mapping again. After mapping I feel more boring I've missed it already. I had so many mistakes that I can't count but I assured you that all of my mistakes is all of my learnings. You learn, if you fail. There is no person doesn't make mistakes, because nobodies perfect. It's a fun experience on mapping. Helping other mappers will made their task lesser and fewer. Joining in CWTS organization is great experience, because your participating to each other. A gratitude and honor for all I've done since I came up on this organization. Not by doing a task only but by having fun and experience. Experience is the best teacher of all things.

Continuing from one of my previous post I have added more gates for Pier K/L and Pier Q.

After changeset

Before this changeset is submitted, the map of klia2 only has a full set of Pier P gate numbers (added by myself) and a lonely Gate Q10. I reused the old Q10 node in these changesets so there are fewer changes to the map database.

Additionally, as in Changeset 63791506, I decided to join the Airport Gate “nodes” to the entire klia2 building. This makes node placement easier as I am no longer need to estimate the equal distance between the airport’s edge to those nodes.

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That’s a lot of changesets!

Back then, when my relatives come back from Bandung, Indonesia to Jakarta, I was told by them that they were in a rest area on the 97 kilometer mark of the Purbaleunyi toll road. I tried to search on OpenStreetMap and there were no results.

Apparently, that rest area were not added to OSM yet. So, I started to add that place on Changeset #61579993.

Oh, no! Satellite images show that there are roads and bridges nearby, yet there were no nearby roads listed to the OSM database. So, I added a few roads, in Changesets #61580342, #61761820, #61761878, and #61761940; then #62783689 and #62783948 (after adding some rivers).

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I have recently submitted a changeset to add gate numbers in klia2. Although this seems easy, this terminal have a unique odd-even gate number assignments, which is unlike the Terminal 1.

Displayed map of klia2, before changeset

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Interesting op-ed on the role of street names in promoting democracy in the ‘‘New York Times’’:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/opinion/sunday/north-dakota-addresses-voting-id.html

It also shed some light on how house numbering came into use in historical times.

This week I flew through Istanbul for the third and fourth times in a month, this time en route to Doha from Ashgabat. Since Fly Dubai no longer serves Doha, it takes 24 hours for me to get to Doha via Istanbul on Turkish Air, versus four to five hours via Dubai in the good old days, due to the lengthy layover in Istanbul. The good news is I love Istanbul, having lived there 30 years ago, and use the layovers to visit old haunts and old friends..

I was surprised to find somebody had mapped the American Consulate General in Istanbul as a office=commercial, and set about correcting that. I then discovered that every other consulate in Istanbul was mistagged amenity=embassy. Embassies are in capitals, are defined by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and are headed by an ambassador or chargé d’affaires. Consulates are a different animal, as defined by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and are headed by a consul (if a consulate) or a consul general (if a consulate general, which is just a bigger consulate). .I have gone through Istanbul with my electronic red pen, correcting this mistagging plus adding multilngual names (for some reason the Chinese consulate general was identified solely in Ukrainian).

I turns out the wiki entry for the diplomatic=consulate tag contains erroneous information and people are systematically mistagging consulates. I need to take this up with the Data Working Group. Consulates are not embassies, and we need to strive for accuracy in our map.

As you can see in this area (osm.org/edit#map=17/33.64045/-112.09096), it appears that every possible feature that can be rendered onto the map has been placed on it… houses, driveways, swimming pools, speed bumps, etc. You cannot barely see anything other than a mass of white dots representing the end of the driveways as they terminate at the houses they belong to (you can’t even see the outline of the houses through all of this unless you zoom in).

Maybe I am wrong, but it just seems like this is WAY TOO MUCH being shown, and it takes away from the true purpose of having a map for people to see the world around them.

Does anyone feel the same way I do about this?