Currently the »Horizont OUTDOOR« fair takes place at Messe Karlsruhe:
I’ll be at the OSM booth (which is 4.216, dm-arena, near the GPS-Village) tomorrow. Garmin maps on 2GB Micro-SD memory cards are available for sale at 10€ each (which basically is the cost of the hardware).
I hope I can share some photos tomorrow.
Frozen Tarn
Every now and then, a mapping trip is not as successful as intended. And so was today’s. Here’s some C code describing my feelings :) :
Some code
Hiking Trail in the Bienwald
As Daisy had even reached the Upper Rhine Plain, we had some snow for a couple of days. I used the occasion for three nice hiking trips in the Bienwald, mapping grade 4 and 5 tracks, hiking paths and, last but not least, the stream Heilbach and some drains alimenting it:
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In addition to some prior mapping of black forest ski runs, I’ve been on-site again last sunday. Meanwhile, Langläufer contacted me due to my mapping activities. I’ve now tagged the route relations according to the tags he currently renders. Here’s the result as seen on his map:
Cross-country ski runs near Herrenwies
The map is similar like Openpistemap or the Hiking and horseback riding map created by Nop. Some collaboration or mashups would be great.
Ottertal Fungi
Due to the annual Xmas family meeting I had the occasion to do some further mapping of the lovely Ottertal. Unfortunately my camera failed after I had taken four pictures, but that’s better than nothing :) .
Snow of the black forest near Herrenwies
The winter arrived in europe, and even in Karlsruhe with its mild clime some snowflakes and temperatures less than -10°C have been detected sporadically. Surprisingly there’s not much snow at the nearby black forest yet (only about 20cm respectively 8″), but it seems to be enough for winter sport activities.
Brown and brown
Though it was a cloudy (and rainy) day, I needed some compensation for the many extra office hours of the last week. During the winter months, I try to map hiking paths and rivers in the Bienwald, which I cannot map by bike during summer:
Some Lichen
No posting for more than one week? Isn’t there anything interesting to write about? There is, but the release of interiorcad keeps me busy.
Due to the lack of daylight in my spare time, I decided for a short hiking trip last sunday, though it was a rather rainy day. I had good luck: The rain stopped as I reached on-site and it began raining again just as I reached the car after the trip.
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Fungi of the Ottertal - 1
Yesterday we celebrated the 60th birthday of my mother at the village where I grew up. A nice occasion to meet family members and other people I haven’t seen for a very long time.
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Puffball
Though it was cloudy at noon, it was a good decision to do some outdoor mapping. I grabbed some hiking trails around Langenberg. Here’s today’s tour:
White Puffball
Under best late summer weather conditions I’ve again visited the black forest to map some ways and paths between Seibelseckle and Hinterlangenbach. That’s today’s route:
A Hoverfly watching me and the bugs
Today I was tricked by my own lazyness. I have two batteries for the N810. Each of them usually lasts for up to 4 hours while being mapping. I am used to charge them immediately when I return from a mapping tour. Seems I messed it up after the last tour. As the first one was drained, I put the second one into the device – and it immediately complained that the battery was low!
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It’s just good luck to live in Karlsruhe, as it is just about 80km/40min by car to get to some typical locations (like the infamous Mummelsee :) .
Day by day, more black forest tracks are being mapped by OSM addicts, but there are still a lot of gaps to fill and refinements are always possible. This weekend I have chosen the area between Seibelseckle and Hinterlangenbach.
Yesterday it began raining while being in the woods. The forecast and some webcam pics fooled me, so there was not much “outcome” concerning geo data. Today, however, it was a wonderful sunny late summer day, even allowing for some nice pictures. Here’s the area:
The track of the recently purchased WBT-201 bluetooth GPS receiver and logger IMO is again not as accurate as it could (respectively should) be. Unfortunately, I left my GPSMap at home, otherwiese I could compare the tracks. I am at least disappointed with its bluetooth reliability. Maemo Mapper often reports that it is looking for a GPS fix. The current position often is far away from the already existing objects, and if you go a way twice, the two tracks often are far apart.
But I’ll better put the typical krautish :) whining aside. So here’s the final drumroll, announcing some of the usual pics.
I really like moss closeups. It just looks a bit unnatural while it is the opposite:
Moss closeup
Even more, though not shot properly:
Moss closeup 2
I’m not the biggest fan of spiders, but I am not a chicken as many other people. I grew up in a rural area, thus being used to all kind of animals:
Spider in Moss
And finally a nice one. I managed to take a closeup of a grasshopper. Unfortunately, I could not remove the grass in front of the lens, as the grasshopper would have escaped:
Grasshopper
The above pictures are not public domain. The copyright is still owned by me, and copying is hereby not allowed except you got my written consent.
Pic of the Wildsee as seen from the hill above it
On my last holiday I mapped some missing trails and paths in the Black Forest, between Seibelseckle and Ruhestein:
Three times I have been asked by other tourists how to get to destination X. Three times I could answer the questions using openstreetmaps on the Nokia N810, and three times I gave away the german language flyers.
I’m still disappointed by the tracks that the WBT-201 records. The accuracy is horrible, and the bluetooth connection goes down frequently, though the devices are just a couple of millimeters apart.
Besides that, I took some pictures.
Here’s some dead wood, which was perforated by some “furniture beetles”:
Totholz
At the “Wildsee” (see the topmost image) I found those fungi:
Pilze am Wildsee
Here’s some shot of a woodland strawberry:
Walderdbeere
Besides fungi, I find lichen very interesting. Found on trees, those usually indicate a very good quality of the air:
Flechten
And finally, here’s the absolute highlight of the today’s tour – a viper:
Kreuzotter
The pictures of this posting are not public domain. If you are interested to reuse them, please drop me a line.
Michelskopfsee
I’m just back from a small holiday trip. I had the occasion to try out a some mountain bikes for the very first time in my life. The bikes have been very good, so climbing some hills was just plain fun.
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Sorry to my international readers, this post is in german language. It is about the user friendlyness of the local public transport provider, KVV.
Gestern Abend stand ich nach einer Radtour mit meinem Rad an einer KVV-Haltestelle und wollte mit der S-Bahn zurück nach Karlsruhe fahren. Zwar gab es am Bahnsteig keinen Fahrkartenautomaten, aber einerseits finden sich üblicherweise in den Bahnen welche, und die Zugführer verkaufen notfalls ebenfalls Karten.
Leider war der Automat in der Bahn außer Betrieb und der Zugführer hatte auch keine Fahrkarten mehr. Er beschied mir daher kurzerhand, dass ich vom KVV eingeladen sei und nichts zu zahlen bräuchte. Ich hätte eher erwartet, dass er mich wieder aussteigen lässt. Der KVV aber nahm das fehlende Ticketangebot auf seine eigene Kappe. Das ist zumindest bemerkenswert.
Zuerst war ich verblüfft ob der Großzügigkeit. Unter dem Strich aber denke ich, dass der KVV so das bessere Geschäft macht. Gewiss, ihm entgeht die Einnahme einer Einzelfahrt. Aber künftig weiß ich als Kunde, dass der KVV mich notfalls auch dann transportiert, wenn es mir nicht gelingen sollte, ein Ticket aufzutreiben.
Hätte ich die Bahn wieder verlassen müssen, wäre ich wohl oder übel mit dem Rad zurück nach Baden gefahren. Künftig hätte ich den KVV dann gar nicht mehr in Betracht gezogen. So aber werde ich auch das nächste Mal gerne den KVV in Anspruch nehmen.
Fazit: Gestern Abend haben alle Beteiligten gewonnen (und ich meine damit nicht, dass ich umsonst fahren durfte).
On a wonderful sunny and warm late summer day (it still is about 22°C in the middle of the night) I did a 106km mapping tour by bike:
Black Forest Hiking Trail
Under perfect late-summer weather conditions it was a joy to track some hiking trails of the black forest. The API has been down for maintenance this weekend, so I could not use osm2go for live editing. Instead I used some home-grown software to record (annotated) waypoints while being out. The API meanwhile is up and running again, so bringing the stuff into the database was done in a couple of minutes back home.
Today we have been hiking in the woods of Rhineland-Palatinate. The weather was just right for this purpose – a warm and sunny afternoon in shady and cool forests.
We have chosen the forest near Bruchweiler-Bärenbach, where a lot of trails are still missing:
The recent version of osm2go has no explicit save function anymore. Instead, it only saves your edits at application’s quit. This is a bit dangerous. If you are mapping during a three hour hiking tour, it can happen that osm2go crashes or the system shuts down due to a drained battery. In both cases, it is likely that you will lose your edits.
I guess there will be some autosave feature soon, so this issue will be obsolete soon. All in all it’s a good thing to get rid of the explicit save feature and do it “transparantly” in the background. It was always a pain to fiddle in the menus to get some stuff saved.
Two days ago I did some mapping in the Bienwald again, from Neuburg up to Schaidt:
I used the recently purchased Wintec logger. The tracklogs of the Wintec seem to be not as accurate as the ones I got from my previous GPSr. Furthermore the Nokia N810 loses the bluetooth connection to the logger every now and then, without any obvious reason. In the worst case, you need to reboot the tablet to reestablish a connection.
Anyway, if you can cope with the aforementioned issues, you will get a good mapping combo, especially if you use osm2go for mapping.
