OpenOrienteeringMap v2.Beta

Posted by on 24 March 2013 13 comments

oom2_gui

About a year ago, I mentioned that I would be spending a bit of time rewriting OpenOrienteeringMap (OOM). The web application, which people use to create printable simple “street orienteering” (or Street-O) maps for use in low-key events such as the SLOW Street-O series events, has been around for a bit, and was not the most intuitive or prettiest application to use.

More seriously, the map creation process had little in the way of safety checking, meaning that mistakes could be made – one recent Street-O event I went to had two control points with the same number, and another one had misaligned the control “clue sheet”, so that the clues corresponded to the wrong control – resulting in much confusion out on the course. There was also a popular complaint from course planners – namely that they couldn’t go back and change their map – if they made one slight misplacement or misnumbering, they would have to start all over again from the beginning. A less frequent but still valid complaint was that it was easy for control numbers to overlap (or be near) other control circles, causing confusion. There was a non-trivial workaround for this last point. The new version, which I’m releasing today as a beta (while it awaits final signoff) addresses all these issues and has a few more features.

If you want to jump right in, then have a play now at http://oomap.co.uk/ – or read on for more details of what’s new.

oom2_newcontrol

A list of the main new and updated things:

  • Much more intuitive to use.
  • Set a direction for the control number.
  • Set a point score and control description, for use with the new clue sheet.
  • Edit and delete controls after they are created.
  • You can now move the map incrementally (drag the blue move marker.)
  • Validator to make sure duplicate numbers are not entered!
  • You now get given a code when saving a map. Copy this code somewhere, and use it to reload your map in the future.
  • New clue sheet which can be edited and printed – useful in conjunction with the map, for an event.
  • New design for the PDF maps – with British Orienteering branding.
  • The standard Street-O map now shows parks (yellow) and forests (light green). If you don’t like them, use Street-O basic, which leaves them out, as well as railways.
  • Daily updates to the background map.

oom2_save

A note on schedules for updates to the background map, which is created from a local database based on the data in the OpenStreetMap database:

  • The local database is now updated from OpenStreetMap every day between 6am and 8am. During this time, OpenOrienteeringMap is not available for use – the maps on the website will appear partially or completely blank and PDF generation will not work.
  • The map data is based on what is in OpenStreetMap up to and including 7pm the previous day.
  • This means that edits to the background map in OpenStreetMap should take between 13 and 37 hours to appear in OpenOrienteeringMap.
  • The image “tiles” of the map that you see on the OOM website are created on-the-fly from the local database and cached for quicker future viewing – the cache is emptied daily at the same time as the map data is updated.
  • The PDF map is always created on-the-fly from the data, and not cached.
  • The process is subject to occasional delays and may stop altogether for a while if upstream processes/timescales change.
  • I’m using Geofabrik’s download service – thanks guys!

    • oom2_cluesheet

    Unfortunately this new version (and the old one) will only be available for the UK (& Ireland) at the moment. Partly this is because the new site is very UK-centric – it searches for UK postcodes, takes advantage of freely available contour line vectors for Great Britain, and is branded as a British Orienteering product. But the main reason is that the OpenStreetMap dataset for the whole world is huge, it’s unwieldy and almost unmanageable – not to mention requiring many hundreds of gigabytes of expensive server disk space, and a lot of RAM. The UK/Ireland cut, on the other hand, is much more straightforward to handle.

    oom2_pdf

    You can download this example PDF, which is of Grahame Park in north-west London, here.

    Get started making your own Street-O map, at http://oomap.co.uk/. Your comments are, as ever, welcomed below.

    [Update - fixed the following bugs: Western Ireland not being rendered, clue sheet labels in the wrong order, not being able to edit a control until at least one is added (problem when loading in a previously saved map), permalinks not using WGS84 lat/lon.]

Olympic Park Mini-Update

Posted by on 15 March 2013 No comments

opu_march2013

I recently headed down the Lea Valley for a short visit to Stratford City (thanks to their Sundays-until-6pm policy when most other large retail areas close at 5pm) and spotted a few changes, + a couple I saw from another recent cycle down the Lee Navigation towpath and one extra one I spotted from reading a newspaper article just now:

  • Bicycles (but not pedestrians – no pavements) can finally use the Northern Retail Lifeline. Or, at least, I got through on my bike. It might have been because the people at the security box that had always blocked me previously had gone home at that time on a Sunday evening though. The Northern Retail Lifeline is the wiggly link road going from the A12 to Stratford City. This is its official name – it appears on a roadsign at its northern end. Its windy course through the Olympic Park means you get a nice close-up view of a lot of the post-Olympic redevelopment.
  • Apparently Waterden Way, a more direct access from the north than the Northern Retail Lifeline, will open in May and will include fully segregated bike lanes. Hopefully these will be better than the laughable pavement/cobbled bike lanes surrounding Stratford City as it stands. That is, at road level, straight, and with a step up/down barrier to the traffic. We shall see.
  • The Velodrome is looking really good as ever.
  • The area where the Riverbank Arena was (for hockey) is extremly churned up, looking almost apocalyptic.
  • The shell of the Basketball Arena remains, but is disappearing quite quickly. Same at the Waterpolo Arena.
  • Most of the seating wings for the Aquatic Centre remain.
  • The Village Operational Support Area in Leyton has completely disappeared, fence and all.
  • Most of the rest of the security fence around the Olympic Park remains, including the electric fencing, CCTV and microwave detectors. I understood why it was that extreme before/during the Olympics, and appreciate that the (de)construction needs a decent barrier, but the continuing overbearing nature of it is pretty horrible. They could have least removed the top (electric) bit by now.
  • The Media Catering Village has also disappeared. I know this doesn’t sound that exciting, but it was a pretty substantial three-story building that I spent up to an hour in during every Gamesmaker shift. Incidentally, like many London 2012 things, it was massively over-specced, I never saw the Gamesmaker area more than 30% full and the press dining areas were never more than 10% full. The MacDonalds underneath was packed though.
  • The two new pedestrian bridges across the Lee Canal are still looking very unconnected.
  • Temple Mills Lane is still looking extremely firmly closed, the gate at the eastern end at least shows no sign of opening anytime soon. I had previous thought it might open this spring.
  • I spotted my first signpost pointing to the “Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park”. It was a cyclists’ signpost and was in Highbury (!).
  • Stratford City is very busy at 5:45pm on a Sunday evening.

A few other related bits and pieces:

  • I didn’t get in the ballot for Ride London 100, which will start in the Olympic Park this summer.
  • Here’s a site dedicated to reporting what happens in the Olympic Park now. Good stuff.
  • Hackney Council want to hold large scale events on Hackney Marshes every summer, following the Hackney Weekend event last June. Personally I can’t think of anything worse. Pretty much the whole marsh was sealed off for a month before, and a couple of weeks after, meaning that my local parkrun event had to be cancelled during that time. I would be more supportive if the setup/takedown process was done in a week or so, but six weeks is just ridiculous. There’s a perfectly good venue being created, less than a mile to the south-east of Hackney Marshes…

Basemap (c) OpenStreetMap contributors.

The Information Continuum

Posted by on 14 March 2013 2 comments

So Google Reader is closing this summer. That’s a shame. It’s been my RSS feed reader for many years. I’m currently subscribed to 163 feeds, split across London, Tech, Mac, GIS, InfoVis, financial, orienteering and general. For a while I had a specially crafted Twitter search that fed tweets into Google Reader, but I eventually realised (when this overwhelmed the reader with the volume of tweets coming in) that mixing Twitter and feed reading is not a good idea. They serve slightly different purposes.

One of the feeds I follow has suggested that, if I don’t switch feed reader, then there are other ways to keep updated – weekly email newsletters, Facebook update and Twitter updates. The thing is, none of these get quite the same level of attention: There is a continuum of information that RSS fits into.

Google Reader sits squarely between these other ways I could absorb information, but each has their own problems:

* Email – I normally get about 20-100 a day. These normally get read within a few hours of being sent, and will generally then sit in my inbox until I’ve around to filing them and replying to them – this might be a couple of months in extreme cases. The problem is that as a personal copy of each email has been delivered to you, and takes up (account) space. I feel compelled to just not let it sit there in the inbox forever.

* Google Reader – generally about 20-50 a day. I don’t feel the need to read everything, but I’ll read most recent stories if bored. Probably about 50% get read. if I particularly like a story, I’ll star it – I maybe do this on 1% of stories. But otherwise they just scroll of to the bottom.

* Facebook Updates – Facebook keeps changing the rules and algos, so it’s quite possible that, unless you pay for advertising and prominent placement, your story which you push to a Page that I subscribe to, won’t actually get seen, unless I proactively go to the Page or view my Pages tab which is obscure. It’s not a reliable free way to see content.

* Tweets – I follow around 600 people and so probably get about 2000 a day, i.e. 1-2 a minute – much higher during the afternoon than the morning or night. There’s no way I’ll see everything.

Here’s the best way to the worst way that I will see/know/act on something – the continuum of information.

  • Face to face – obviously. Unless I’m trying to concentrate on simething else!
  • Postal mail – it sits on my desk at home filling up space until I do something about it
  • Phoning me – I can’t miss it but I might forget about it
  • Tweeting me – unless I’ve done something very popular, these will generally get seen
  • Mobile texts – require me to either action then, or forget but re-remember
  • Facebook IM
  • Work Email – will read and forget, then eventually file/reply
  • Personal Email – will read and forget, then eventually file/reply
  • Facebook Mail
  • DMing me on Twitter – Twitter/clients are starting make this harder to see/remember
  • FlickrMail
  • RSS (Google Reader) – Fills an important space – I curated my view, so it is the most likely way I’ll read things that are not specifically directed to me.
  • Facebook Groups – The most read non-personal content on Facebook, thanks partly to email/text notifications
  • Facebook Newsfeed – I check it a lot less than Twitter but it’s also less noisy
  • Twitter Timeline – too many tweets come in and scroll off too quickly
  • Comment on my blog – thanks to a non-functioning mailserver.
  • Facebook Pages – stories here tend to not get viewed unless paid-placement
  • Websites – I actually have to visit them. This doesn’t stop me viewing a few key websites (BBC News, Diamond Geezer, Nopesport, Reddit London are my top four) almost every day.

Rename a Tube Station!

Posted by on 5 March 2013 2 comments

If you could rename a London tube (or DLR/Overground) station, what would you rename it to and why?

I would rename the following:

5641085817_6f9c5c1460_n

  • Aldgate East to Brick Lane
    Why? To promote a famous street and important tourist attraction for Tower Hamlets, and to distinguish it better from the nearby “Aldgate” station. (link)
  • Stratford International to East Village
    Why? International trains aren’t going to be stopping at Stratford International any time soon, so why not name it after what is surrounding it – East Village (formerly the Athletes’ Village) or Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park – although the latter is a bit long. Alternatively Stratford Olympia?
  • Paddington (H&C/Circle) to Paddington Basin
    Why? The two Paddington Underground stations a separate and a long walk from each other. Importantly, tourists getting going to the other Paddington Underground station, to go east, will have to get off after one stop anyway, and change at Edgware Road – a hassle.
  • Paddington (Bakerloo/District) to Praed Street
    Why? Same reason as above – to distinguish the stations more and make it less confusing to tourists arriving from Heathrow Airport. It used to be called Paddington (Praed Street) anyway.
  • Euston Square to Gower Street
    Why? It used to be called Gower Street, and it’s on the latter street, not Euston Square. Plus it’s a block away from Euston station, although it might be connected in the future if/when High Speed 2 happens.
  • Tottenham Court Road to Centrepoint

    • Why? It’s at the far end of Tottenham Court Road – so not much use for someone wanting to be at the north end of the road. Plus it’s right by the Centrepoint tower and could be considered to be the centre station on the tube network – the crossing point of the North-South Northern Line (Charing Cross Branch) and the East-West Central Line.

Photo CC-NC-By-SA-ND Chris Beckett.

Back in the Park?

Posted by on 22 February 2013 No comments

piptour

Well last year was the year that the Olympic Park was seen in all its glory. Since then, the gates have been firmly shut and the electric fencing remains about the perimeter. I’ve touched briefly on the schedule for the walls coming down and the park reopening, but it’s this summer before the first bit opens.

However, you can get in now for a sneak peak. Initially, it looked like the free bus tours, which operated during the main “Big Build” before the Olympics, and which I went on a couple of times in 2010 and 2011, were coming back in their traditional form. They would probably be less exciting than during the construction phase, as deconstruction is inevitably less interesting. However since then there appears to have been a slight change in strategy.

Now, the tours have been rebranded Park in Progress and are £15 – which doesn’t sound good. But when you look closely, the bus tour is essentially to get you to the base of the Orbit tower, from which you can climb up and take in the view. The Orbit cost £15 during the Olympics itself, but you also needed a ticket to get in the Olympic Park in the first place, and that was the difficult bit, if you weren’t an appropriately accredited Gamesmaker. Now, it’s much easier to get there – and for groups the price drops to around £10/head, with it being cheaper still for children. Not too bad. Slightly cheekily, they won’t give you a refund if the Orbit is closed due to high winds – but they’ll try and book you on a later tour.

Here’s what the park looked like just before the Olympic Games last year.

Orienteering Plans for 2013

Posted by on 17 January 2013 No comments

Here’s the events I’m aiming to run in for the first half of this year, plus five big weekends in the latter half. *M* = possible Munro trips.

  • Edinburgh Big Weekend, 26-27 January YES!
  • 3 February
  • 10 February
  • CSC Qualifier, 17 February YES!
  • Burnham Beeches, 24 February YES!
  • VM, 2-3 March? YES!
  • 10 March
  • 16/17 March (possible training with club)
  • 24 March
  • 29 March-1 April (Easter) *M*
  • SN Sprint & Middle, Wellington & Bagshot 6/7 April
  • Southern Championships at St Ives, 13-14 April
  • British Sprints at Loughborough, 20 April + London Marathon help, 21 April
  • Hampstead/St Albans Urban Race Weekend, 27-28 April
  • BOC Weekend in Dorking, 4-6 May
  • Porto City Race, 12 May
  • Monar round? 17-20 May *M*
  • 26 May
  • Surrey Hills Race?, 2 June
  • Poundbury Urban, 8 June
  • Salford/Manchester Urban, 15 June
  • Perthshire round? 22-25 June *M*
  • 30 June

Later in the year, there are these to look forward to:

  • Dunwich Dynamo, 20-21 July
  • Scottish 6 Days, 28 July-3 August
  • Lincoln/Sheffield Weekend, 31 August-1 September
  • Bristol Weekend, 7-8 September
  • London Weekend, 21-22 September
  • Rome Weekend, 1-3 November

Evolving the Shoe, Evolving the Terrain

Posted by on 20 December 2012 No comments

mizuno_wi9w

I occasionally receive the odd running-related press release, and got an interesting one from Mizuno recently, announcing a couple of new running shoes – the Wave Rider 16 and Wave Inspire 9 – the two being quite similar but with the latter being more of a support shoe and a fraction (10g) heavier.

The shoes look the part as you would expect, and are appropriately vividly coloured and styled – very much the trend these days, and why not – at this time of year, much of the time it’s dark when I’m running, and it makes sense to be as visible as possible.

Anyway I mention the shoes for three reasons.

Firstly I’m impressed that this is the 16th iteration of the Wave Rider shoe. Mizuno clearly know they are on to a good thing – not launching a new brand every year or so, but instead evolving a well known one. The average running shoe only lasts for 3-400 miles so a typical club runner might need to buy a new one twice a year. If the shoe is good, then the club runner will not want to change it for another brand if the old one is no longer available – they might just as easily change the manufacturer altogether, but they would much prefer to stick the name of the shoe that they know – shoes are the critical tool for a runner. So, give them what they want, and take the opportunity to refine it.

But you also need to keep new people discovering the manufacturer and brand, and also update the look to keep it looking new and relevant. So – relaunch it!

The second reason I mention is that I got a rather nice Mizuno freebie – which just happened to be a Wave Rider 15 – during the launch of an unrelated training shoe by them, earlier this year. Like the new shoes here, it wasn’t a subtle shoe – purple and lime green. When added to my red, white and blue running tops, the look is somewhat psychedelic. But it’s a very comfortable shoe and has become my current running shoe of choice. This is partly due to superstition – I started wearing my previous new shoe when I hadn’t fully recovered from an injury, and I put the resulting niggles down to the shoe and not my injury – d’oh. But it’s surprising just how superstitious you can be when it comes to injuries.

Anyway, long story short, I’ve been very pleased with my “v15″ Wave Rider the last few months – I even took it to the Venice Street Race in November, although Venice was underwater at the time* so there was not much running involved, and it could well be the v16 that I end up getting next, when the current one wears out – or maybe there will even be a v17 by then? It looks like the Wave Riders will be evolving for a while yet.

The third reason is the that PR came with some photos, of runners running in the shoes, like you would expect. But the locations strongly reminded me of urban orienteering races. None of the running in the photos is taking place on roads, but instead they are along the seafront, through building courtyards, along garden paths – all the places where the best urban orienteering takes places. The campaign’s ad (short video – 30s) even includes the runner ascending some external stairs – very Barbican. You could easily imagine a control in each of these photos. In fact I very nearly doctored the photos to add one in the background. I don’t think Mizuno would have been too impressed at that though.

I’m planning a big urban orienteering race – in fact the second biggest standalone one in the world – next September. It might even be the biggest in the world next year, because the traditional incumbent, Venice, has got cancelled in 2013, after some concerns were raised during this year’s flooded race. Details of the race I’m planning will be up at the end of this month – all I can say for now is that it will have a distinctly watery feel to it. As the planner, I get to pick where the control sites go. And I’ll certainly be aiming to pick ones like the sorts shown in the photos here.

* Resulting in a rather saline shoe now. I’m not sure if it would survive a wash cycle.

mizuno_wi9m

Urban Events – How Far Do People Travel?

Posted by on 26 October 2012 1 comment

Intrigued by a comment on the Nopesport forums suggesting that local clashes rather than a very major international clash were the thinking behind the scheduling of a future urban event, I thought I would do some analysis of how far people travel to races, using my stats database of results.

To do this, I’ve excluded (a) people listed with a club of “IND”, “None” or “” (probably local non-orienteers), (b) people in non-geographical clubs (e.g. RAFO, AROS), as it’s difficult to pinpoint where they travelled from, and (c) clubs with less than 100 runs in the 3 or so years the events database runs back for – this leaves 113 clubs, the largest being BOK with 8534 runs. The latter exclusion also excludes most foreign clubs, although a number do make it through – particularly Irish ones. I’ve also assumed that remaining people live in the centroid of their club’s area of influence – which is “guesstimated” by me based on the name of the club. I’ve also assumed that the event, put on by the club, also takes place in the centroid of that club’s area of influence.

Anyway, here’s where everyone* travelled from to get to the Edinburgh City Race in January 2012:

…and for comparison, here’s where people came from to go to the London City Race in September 2012:

…and York’s City Race in June 2012:

…and everyone (& their dog) went to Aberystwyth in July 2012 for the biggest urban race ever in the UK:

None of these maps are normalised to each other – thickness directly corresponds to the number of people.

Tobler’s Law in full effect for these races, of course, but also showing a decent amount of long distance travel to London and Edinburgh. For Aberystwyth, everyone was already there for the rest of the Welsh 6 Days event.

Finally, for a bit of fun, here are the events that I (and also my namesake in Devon!) have been to in the last three or so years:

* Bearing in mind the filters outlined at the top of the post.

Background imagery courtesy of OpenStreetMap contributors.

Legacy Timetable

Posted by on 13 August 2012 No comments

Here’s the announced timetable for the transition and reopening of the Olympic Park and a few other Olympic-related venues:

  • 8 September 2012 – Lea Valley Whitewater Centre reopens
  • 10 September 2012 – Lee Navigation Towpath reopens
  • Late September 2012 – Northern Retail Lifeline and Angel Road access to Stratford City reopens
  • 30 September 2012 – The Greenway (except at Stratford High Street) and the View Tube reopens (some reports say the beginning of December instead.)
  • February 2013 – Canal Park opens
  • Spring 2013 – Temple Mill Lane reopens
  • 27 July 2013 – North Park and Multi-Use Arena (aka Copper Box) reopens, London Lions move into the Copper Box, Waterden Road opens
  • Summer 2013 – East Village (aka the Olympic Village)opens
  • 4 August 2013 – Ride London race starts from the Olympic Park
  • September 2013 – East Marsh reopens
  • December 2013 – Velo Park and Eton Manor reopens
  • Early 2014 – White Post Lane reopens
  • March 2014 – South Plaza, Aquatics Centre, Orbit, IBC/MPC reopens (although this brochure says 2013 for the Orbit and the South Plaza
  • August 2014 – Stadium reopens
  • Late 2014 – The Greenway (at Stratford High Street) reopens
  • 2014 – First houses in Chobham Manor (site of the Basketball Arena) finished

A Change of Direction

Posted by on 10 August 2012 No comments

Regular readers will have noticed that my last seven posts, and the great majority of posts this year, have been about the Olympic Games – specifically, the Olympic Park in East London. I’ve been pretty excited about London 2012, but I’m just as excited about what comes next for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, to give it its post-games name. Yep Sport started as an orienteering events and training blog – but Attackpoint largely serves that purpose for me now, so while I’ll continue to mention orienteering, cycling, running, hillwalking and OpenStreetMap from time-to-time, I’m going to focus more closely on what happens to the Olympic Park in the next few years – and not just because I think it will make an amazing venue for a future orienteering race to complement the City Race that I co-founded in 2008.

I already have a couple of ties to the Olympic Park. Until recently, I lived just the other side of Victoria Park, and could see the lighting gantries of the Olympic Stadium, under construction, from my kitchen window. I’m now further up the Lea Valley but still just a short cycle ride away from the Park. Also I was responsible for naming one of the five neighbourhoods that will be built, over the next 15 years, in the park – namely East Wick – it’s the bit east of Hackney Wick appropriately enough, and I like the name “Wick” as I spent a year near Wick in the far north of Scotland. Coincidently, my current duties as an Olympic volunteer, or Games Maker, have me working by the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in the north-west part of the park – which is the bit that will become East Wick.

At the moment I’m gathering some links relevant to the legacy plans for the park.

Top: CGI image from the LLDC website. Bottom: Aerial image of the park just before the Olympic Games, from Google Maps.