What I’ve been up to

I have not blogged much for a long time. I’ve fallen into that all-too-common programmers’ foible of spending too much time on building one’s website and not ever getting to the point of adding content. A line has to be drawn at some point, however—and anyway, it’s not that I haven’t been contributing content anywhere…

I’m getting more into OpenStreetMap, still uploading GPS traces from work vehicles (~250 000 points over the last six months, from memory), and tracing from aerial imagery whenever such work takes my fancy. We went to Bencubbin last week, and I spent a few happy hours wandering the streets and bush, following tracks and fences and plotting it all on my phone (more on which, later). I also finally decided to get a decent GPS: yesterday I ordered a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx.

My little projects on Wikisource are, tiny-bit by tiny-bit, coming along. I don’t really know why I’m transcribing some old US Navy document, but I guess it just proves that the pedantry of the geek knows no bounds—I just want to add a couple of references about the Arts Centre’s history to Wikipedia, and now I find myself adding the whole source document.

A less well-defined web geek thing is possibly taking shape, under a working title of FreoWiki. There’s a meeting about what this will be this Wednesday at Little Creatures (6PM, in the shop bit with the armchairs) if anyone’s interested.

(Oh, and I’ve done a miniscule amount of work on the MediaWiki TwentyTen theme; hardly worth mentioning, really, considering the more interesting bits of that that are yet to be done.)



Now, I didn’t actually want to launch back into blogging with such a dull precis of what I’m excited about online.

I’d rather tell the world about that tall red pot over near the door of this cafe, and its struggling little planty inhabitant. It’s the only vegetation in the whole room—a pretty grim room, I’m sure, by some people’s standards. I rather like it. There’s four tables, nine chairs, the red pot, a little fridge with water bottles, and a newspaper dumping ground. White tiles; skirting boards that are not skirting boards but those quarter-round concave aluminium edges used in commercial kitchens; a door; and a window. More things, too, but because this is just me saying what I’d rather talk about this morning, and not me actually saying it, I won’t go into them.

Another morning, perhaps, and another cafe.