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TIL: fosm is still a thing

Update, 2020-09-13: fosm.org seems no longer to exist:

Oh my: fosm.org still exists —

fosm.org: Like OpenStreetMap, but more out of date

fosm shouldn’t really be a thing still. It only exists because some people didn’t like the terms of the licence change. Guided by the principles of maximum free software drama, they forked OSM (it was CC-BY-SA at the time) and created fosm.

Thing is, the licence change was in 2012. Most of the fosm data in my neighbourhood looks untouched since then. It’s a fork that’s, um, forked. I remember meeting someone who was so convinced that OSM was going to fail with the new licence, they were saying stuff like “fosm’s gonna drown you guys!”

In the words of Drive-by abuser: 🛵📢 fosm, yeah? Why not, though, eh? It’s your life, innit?

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Lovely Buildings

from StatCan’s Open Database of Buildings

Looks like hell has frozen over — there’s now an Ontario open buildings layer that’s compatible with the OSM licence: The Open Database of Buildings. Thanks go to StatCan for aggregating all the data sets into one huge database.

A small sample is here: scruss/Neighbourhood_Buildings.geojson

A certain sarcastic file format will be pleased to know that it’s all packaged as one gigantic shapefile.

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My map from “Experimental Cartography: Mapping Knowledge and Perceptions of Our Worlds”

Family Dynamic Balance – Stewart Russell, 2018-09-19

Map Subtitle

How and where and when a Scottish guy whose family has lived near Glasgow forever found love far away and now moves slowly back & forward along Eglinton Avenue East.
The Gulf Stream? It’s the warm waters of the Mississippi-Missouri warming the west coast of Scotland …

Not shown/drawn due to lack of time: the flotilla of water biscuits transporting gullible folks up the River Clyde …

Event Description

In a world of filter bubbles and fake news the importance of understanding how we know what we know and where our information/knowledge comes from is greater than ever. We can use mapping to help us understand these invisible structures that control parts of lives and reveal the ways our perceptions are shaped.

In this hands-on mapping workshop we will create maps of personal knowledge (e.g. personal itineraries, common perceptions, fears, etc.). We will ask: how do I map my perception of the world (e.g. through news media or walking)? Participants will apprehend “their state of our knowledge of the world” on a particular subject as well as create representations which bridge the real and the imaginary.

Philippe Rekacewicz is a cartographer and information designer. After completing his training as a geographer at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, he worked from 1988 to 2014 as a permanent staff for the monthly journal Le Monde Diplomatique. He concurrently directed, from 1996 to 2008, the Norwegian cartographic unity of the United Nations Programme for Environment (UNEP), the GRID-Arendal. A specialist in Geopolitics and International Relations, he addresses especially topics linked to migrations, refugees and populations’ forced displacements, as well as frontiers. He works at present on several socio-cartographic projects (public and private spaces, perception and representation of frontiers) and explores the links between cartography, art and politics, like the art’s contributions on maps’ production and the political uses of maps as objects ofpropaganda and manipulation. He also leads a research on the “new cartographic writings” and the emergency of radical, critical and experimental cartographies. Since 2006, he attends project of artistic mappings and political art in several European countries. He is associate researcher at the departement of Anthropology of the University of Helsinki (programme Crosslocation – Trade, Transit and Transport). He is the current editor of the research blog on mapping and visualizing Visionscarto http://visionscarto.net/

Experimental Cartography: Mapping Knowledge and Perceptions of Our Worlds was hosted by the public visualization lab at OCAD U in the evening of 2018-09-19.

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GIS

Garmin autorouting: hilarity ensues

Garmin preferred route via I 69 slip-road at I 94 junction

Well, that was fun … because the slip-road at the I 69/I 94 junction in central Michigan is a slightly shorter route than continuing on the I 69, The Algorithm (which cannot be Questioned) routed me off the I 69 then back on again.

These self-driving cars, I dunno … least useful innovation ever.

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GIS

Crossing Warden Ave as a pedestrian

© OpenStreetMap contributors

Took me nine minutes to legally cross Warden Avenue. I had to walk roughly 400 m to get to a crossing, then 400 m back down the street. Straight-line distance between the bus stop and my destination is about 40 m.

Would drivers put up with this?

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BBC gets all azimuthal equidistant, 1936


Source: National Library of Australia — “With the greetings of the BBC. Christmas 1936” Promotional christmas card with schematic world map produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

(indirectly via Rupert Goodwins.)

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GIS

MapSCII – the whole world in your console!

MapSCII – my neighbourhood in a terminal

Just telnet mapscii.me, or watch the demo.

(via mefi)

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3D Printing Buildings & Terrain

«insert weak joke about a small, transparent city hall here»

Pocket Eildon Hill (rustic edition) for homesick Borderers

Based on Selasi Dorkenoo and Claus Rinner’s presentation at Toronto #Maptime – 3D Printing Demo. More later.

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too damn many open data licences

Oh Canada …

  1. Open Government Licence – Ontario
  2. City of Guelph Open Government Licence
  3. Open Government Licence – Vancouver
  4. Open Government Licence – County of Grande Prairie
  5. Open Government Licence – Alberta
  6. Open Government Licence for City of Nanaimo
  7. Open Government Licence – Strathcona County
  8. Open Data Licence for Town of Banff
  9. Open Government Licence for District of Squamish
  10. Open Government Licence — Town of Oakville
  11. Open Government Licence – Kamloops
  12. Open Government License for the City of Surrey
  13. Open Government Licence – Toronto
  14. OPEN GOVERNMENT LICENCE – TORONTO PUBLIC LIBRARYand yes, they’re not covered by the City’s licence
  15. Open Government License for Government of British Columbia
  16. City of Edmonton Open Data Terms of Usea truly odd one that seems to have little in common with any of the others
  17. Region of Waterloo – Open Data Licence
  18. Open Government Licence for the City of Regina
  19. Open Government Licence – The Corporation of the City of Kitchener
  20. York Region’s Open Data Licencea catchy little URL at only 427 characters short
  21. Open Data Licence for The Regional Municipality of Peel
  22. Open Government Licence – Canada
  23. Open Government Licence – City of Ottawa

— and they’re all slightly different, even in how they spell the word “Licence”  …

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map markers: don’t have to stick to the defaults

Some of the languages of Irian Jaya

Map background: Natural Earth (public domain)
Language point data: Glottolog (licence: Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0)
Map markers: font: Overpass (licence: SIL OFL/LGPL), character: 💬 — U+1F4AC SPEECH BALLOON.
Label font: U001Con Italic (foundry: URW++, licence: AFPL)