A geoglyph of a person 100m x 125m wearing a robe appears to be running from east to west. The figure is etched on moderately sloped land within an area of many other geoglyphs immediate area.

14°47′56″S, 74°57′W -14.7988242, -74.9501765 Nazca, Province of Nasca, Ica, 11401, Peru

Traditional Robes of the area included wool from alpacas and dyed in a multiple of colors. Worn loosely over the body, they would also include having caps worn as well. (https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQLB6MzFmJfkdpVL6-7D7WBGq47YZbGN_HEa4mJ06vKwRGAKIR0RHKRznQb5I-Gss4JZJw&usqp=CAU)

A 40m x 40m outer shaped square with round corners and an inner U shaped geoglyph etched on the side and over the top of a small hill. The shape has a 600m manmade shape intersecting with a nearby 600M x 5M Geoglyph triangular shape.

14°48′23″S, 74°56′54″W -14.8063409, -74.9483928 Nazca, Province of Nasca, Ica, 11401, Peru

(Maxar Premium Imagery)

A 20m x 25m geoglyph appears to indicate an abstract shaped head oriented north to south. Both eyes, nose and mouth can be seen within its face. This figure may also indicate a body with two arms splayed open. The figure seems to be part of a larger cluster of geoglyphs.

14°52′12″S, 74°54′32″W -14.8699777, -74.9088284 Vista Alegre, Province of Nasca, Ica, Peru

This seemingly odd looking anthropomorphic figures of a strange human-like head and body that uses the shape of terrain to make out its shape in a 3d fashion. The clever depiction of facial features possibly represent a shaman, spirit or mythical figure.

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5th April 2021

As I tour around Australia I both capture street images for Mapillary, plus do online OSM editing. I don’t have a fixed address, so all my work is done mobile.

Mobile Internet access is quite expensive here, so the daily take of between 8 and 20 Gbytes is saved to a portable USB drive and another mapper kindly uploads 500-1500 GBytes for me at a time. This of course can delay online imagery by 3-4 months as I have to mail or take the drive to the upload location.

The same imagery (downrated to 1FPS) I take on a daily basis is locally geo-encoded and viewed at perhaps 10FPS - 8,000-15,000 per day. Those of interest (100-200) I save to a FIFO directory and periodically run a gpscorrelate job to dump lat/lon to a text file. This text file is then used to cut/paste into the OSM ID editor search/location fiel. Each completed image is moved to a “done” directory and the co-ordinate cut from the text file makes it easy to know which is next.

I correlate the overhead Bing/DCS/Mapbox etc view with ground level ones to make map changes.

I tried launching OSM/ID from Viking or the image directly but it always created a new browser instance.

The better OSM is mapped and the more detailed information is added, the more enjoyable is the user experience. Thus, I am determined to enhance the user experience of OSM users through mapping.

A 30m x 30m geoglyph of a profile view of a head with face etchings that faces west in an area nearby a different geoglyph. It is possible both drawings are related. The etching is on moderately sloped land.

14°52′31″S, 74°54′59″W -14.8751800, -74.9164720 Vista Alegre, Province of Nasca, Ica, Peru

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A geoglyph of 70m x 50m snake, oriented west to east on moderately sloped terrain. The snake, coiled on a tree branch, was drawn with its tongue displayed. The snake appears to drawn near another neighboring geoglyph of a person’s head, and while it is unclear what is the relationship between a person’s head and the snake, it could be part of a story.

14°52′30″S, 74°54′59″W -14.8749719, -74.9164034 Vista Alegre, Province of Nasca, Ica, Peru

A 30m x 30m geoglyph shows a person’s head in profile, facing northwest lashing their tongue. The profile shows one eye, one nose, ear, hair, head and one tongue sticking out of an open mouth. The geoglyph was etched on some moderately sloped land. It is unclear what the tongue of the geoglyph represents. This geoglyph is located near a cluster of other geoglyphs.

14°52′27″S, 74°55′9″W -14.8742513, -74.9192654 Vista Alegre, Province of Nasca, Ica, Peru

An 80m x 80m geoglyph of a person oriented northeast to southwest wearing a large headdress (horns) appears to possibly be either talking or eating. The drawing shows the person in profile on moderately sloped ground with one eye, profile nose and mouth. There is some kind of shape near its mouth but it is unclear what it.

14°52′24″S, 74°55′1″W -14.8733245, -74.9170801 Vista Alegre, Province of Nasca, Ica, Peru

A geoglyph of a person with long horns 25m x 50m looks to the southeast while oriented north to south. Both eyes, a nose and mouth are distinguishable along with a head and both horns. There is also some indication what appears to be shoulders and a neckline The geoglyph is situated near other geoglyphs. It is unclear what this geoglyph drawing is trying to indicate.

14°52′27″S, 74°54′59″W -14.8742576, -74.9164740 Vista Alegre, Province of Nasca, Ica, Peru

On 2nd April 2021, 70628 cross-country / nordic ski ways were members of one of 5849 route relations.

Among them, for 27423 ways, there is a piste:difficulty tag on the relation. I guess that the mapper estimated that the complete trail were ‘novice’, ‘easy’ or whatever.

But OSM is made by humans. We make mistakes. And we are very creatives. So, inevitably, there is 5625 ways where the difficulty of the way is not the same as the difficulty of the route, here are those differences:

Route difficulty	Way difficulty	Number of ways
novice	easy	70
novice	intermediate	15
easy	novice	195
easy	intermediate	463
easy	advanced	12
intermediate	novice	198
intermediate	easy	2607
intermediate	advanced	60
intermediate	expert	7
advanced	novice	53
advanced	easy	984
advanced	intermediate	766
advanced	expert	3
expert	easy	47
expert	intermediate	64
expert	advanced	2
extreme	easy	8
extreme	intermediate	2
extreme	advanced	8

What about those 12 easy trails with ‘advanced’ parts, which are, according to the documentation ‘Steep sections […], with narrow steep passages or sharp turns in steep passages, often icy pistes.’ Somebody is up for a bad surprise.

… See full entry

A 50m x 100m Geoglyph appears to be of a figure wearing a poncho heading in a westerly direction. The geoglyph shows the poncho, a face with two eyes, nose and mouth, hair with some kind of head covering. It is unclear why this drawing was made or its relationship to other nearby geoglyphs.

14°52′28″S, 74°55′6″W -14.8745749, -74.9182174 Vista Alegre, Province of Nasca, Ica, Peru

I made https://mapsaregreat.com/osm_to_svg_in_browser/ that can be used to generate vector maps in SVG format.

Generated maps can be downloaded. This allows much easier reuse of OSM data in some cases. For example where someone needs OSM geometries of relatively small area, but existing tools are too complex for them[0]

It will likely work well for tiny and small areas, it will definitely fail for very large areas.

It is very experimental, feedback is welcomed!

https://github.com/matkoniecz/lunar_assembler/issues has list of known issues and is best place to report existing issues, but feel free to simply leave comments also here.

I am also working on making easier to make own map styles. It is already relatively easy, but documentation is missing.

[0] For many people Overpass Turbo, databases, filtering OSM data will be far too complex.

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… See full entry

Mapping Mastrick.

I currently have an ambitious plan to map or improve the majority of Mastrick (and other areas that I know). I’ll be relying on a mix of Bing Aerial Imagery, Local Knowledge and a bit of Surveying. The tools I’ll be using are JOSM, id and StreetComplete.

Update: Finished adding buildings, roads and some other additions and alterations to Mastrick.

Well, what a start to the year it’s been.

It’s taken a little while to get this post together, as I think myself and the rest of hot_tech needed a bit of time to recover after kicking of this year in 6th gear with two back to back RaDs.

Some of you may remember these daily posts introducing everyone to the concept of hot_tech Rapid Assessment Design Prints (aka RaDs). Back then, in writing, it all seemed so clear and clean. Now writing this, I remember just how muddy and messy this process is in action. A process of continuous lessons and learning.

Lesson 1: Sprint by name, marathon by nature. It may be called a sprint, but it requires the dedication, resilience and effort of a marathon.

Round 1

Our RaDs started with the intention of better understanding of who hot_tech served and how. Our BIG QUESTION - “What makes our groups stick, tick and thrive?”. We connected and explored with groups such as members of OSM Francophone, UN Mappers, Slum Dwellers International and a host of other super interesting collectives. We learned so much that to capture it all here would result in a post that is either too long, or under representative. As such, a few key learnings I wanted to share and the rest can be content for future posts.

… See full entry

A 50m x 25m geoglyph of what appears to look like a pointing arrow. is oriented northwest to southeast points at a trail heading in the same direction. It is impossible to determine exactly what the arrow is pointing at but there is a large irregular shaped geoglyph nearby. The pointed arrow direction aims along trail for more than 500m.

14°34′39″S, 75°9′48″W -14.5775299, -75.1634527 Llipata, Province of Palpa, Ica, Peru

A 20m wide x 500m long oriented northeast to southwest is a trapezoid geoglyph which appears to also have multiple 1m diameter concave holes or convex dome similar sized varying shapes appear to be in a loosely fit grid formation towards its narrowing tip. It is difficult to tell exactly the purpose of the circular shapes but they cover about 1/3 of the entire trapezoid and there are over 50 of them. The remainder of the trapezoid has other unsorted shapes that the aerial images do not detail making it difficult to trace. The trapezoid is on relatively flat land and lay 400m south of a greater cluster of trapezoid shapes and geoglyph lines. The base of the trapezoid has an interesting smaller trapezoid 25m wide x 75m long that is not clear why that purpose.

14°35′9″S, 75°10′38″W -14.5859621, -75.1771800 Llipata, Province of Palpa, Ica, Peru

A 200m x 20m wide trapezoid shaped geoglyph with what appears as large graffiti initials have a marked AYF / 10 inside of it. The entire shape is on flat land and roughly etched. . The initials are set upside down with the top of the letters facing nearly southwest. The AYF initials also have periods behind them. It is unclear what the initials stand for. There is also the number 10 indicated below the AYF.

Maybe one might speculate that the initials might stand for Alien Landing Strip.

14°36′43″S, 75°10′30″W -14.6118590, -75.1750500 Llipata, Province of Palpa, Ica, Peru

A large 25m x 25 of a counter directional spiral near other lines are indicated on relatively flat land. There is no indication that these two lines might or might not be part of a larger geoglyph.

14°34′37″S, 75°9′19″W -14.5769534, -75.1552543 Llipata, Province of Palpa, Ica, Peru

The tag #osmIRL_buildings is a kind of handy brand name our community has developed for our mapping campaign to map all of Ireland’s buildings. The campaign started with a brief test at a single mapathon in Galway in September 2019, and kicked off in earnest in Kilkenny at the end of November the same year. I say “in earnest” because this is when tasks were opened and the tasking manager started to be used every day.

The campaign has a number of effects which merit discussion beyond just the obvious upturn in mapping. But let’s mention that upturn first. The upturn started at the same time as the task manager being opened at the end of 2019. The number of buildings went from 810k to 1.5million in those 15 months, which means 47 thousand buildings were added each month.

picnic images

… See full entry