Louisa Parry :: Journal

In Liverpool in 1998, I bought a book from a publisher clearance style bookshop called ‘The Breeders Box‘.

It’s set, primarily, in New York, around Greenwich Village - where I have never been - and for the first four, five times I read it, I had to imagine what the area looked like, how the streets fitted together and where things were in relation to each other.

The last time I read it - a couple of years ago - I realised I could look up the area on Google Maps and I could navigate all around, looking at the positions of stuff and blurry satellite photos of the tops of buildings.

This time I read it, I went back onto Google Maps, looked up the area then clicked for the street view - I could see the shapes for all the buildings in the area then plonk my little guy down where, say, the fictional eponymous club was on Spring St and look at the street itself, both sides and moving back and forth along the road.

I wonder how I’ll be able to interact with the real version of the fictional world in another ten years time.

Cats are easy to grow, even in a reasonably exposed north-facing garden like ours - but benefit from early propagation in a greenhouse (see left).

When the cat is ready to be planted on, pick a large pot to give the cat sufficient room to root/curl up (see right top).

Cats are reasonably hardy but can be infected with the “evil virus”. If that occurs, remove the cat from the pot (to avoid cross-contamination) and leave it to “dry out” on an old doormat (see right bottom - tell tale evil signs can be seen, namely the staring eyes, the fact her head is on backwards and the slightly manic “I’m going to eat your soul” expression). The evil is usually eradicated/forgotten about within a few minutes and the cat’s growth will continue as normal again.

Cats will raise from the curled/lying position as they grow until they reach their final height (typically around 40cm). Cats who have been infected with evil early in the growth stage may retain a rather hunched appearance and maintain the soul-eating gaze. In actual fact, they don’t eat souls, they prefer Go Cat. And tuna.

STEP 1
Take an old pillowcase, or in my case an new-to-me-but-old pillowcase, purchased for a very cheap price from a local charity shop. Get a cat (in this case Sili) to inspect it for quality and cleanliness.

STEP 2
See this picture of a pillowcase shopping bag on the internetz.

STEP 3
Find the instructions the red bag lady used to make hers.

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STEP 4
As directed, fold in half along the diagonal, pin and cut. Do a better job than I did then have a cat expect your handy work. If you didn’t do a better job than I did, expect the cat to stalk off in disgust (a la Carbon).

STEP 5
Turn the pieces inside out (everything is pretty much done on the wrong side from here on in) then ask the nearest cat (still Carbon) to help fold and pin all the diagonals for hemming. You may think the cat is in the way but you are wrong: they’re making sure you don’t get too over-eager with the folding and that you listen to Martha and fold it in twice, about 5mm a time. Cats are stickler for detail and have claws to make sure you follow their instructions, even when they’re so disgusted with your efforts that they can barely look at you.

STEP 5a
Brief pause for a quick tickle with Carbon because, let’s face it, you’re not going to get any more work done while he’s in this mood.

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The street is silent
Except for one girl screaming:
“I hate you, you fat fuck”

Like birdsong, with swearing
The girl grounded, the door locked
The fat fuck will slap her, she will.

(* to another human, conversations with cats are excluded as they’re too verbose and frequently revoltingly soppy)

“Not while I’ve been here.”
“Dayrider please.”
“Thanks.”
“Just that please.”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t need a bag.”
“Thanks.”
“Just this.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thanks.”
“Do you go down Town Street?”
“Armley Town Street.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll put the lemonade in here so that bag isn’t too heavy.” (Said bag split open anyway, shopping went everywhere, shitty Somerfield bags.)

Word count = 46
Thanks count = 7
Thanks/word ratio = 1:6.6

We held our first WYLUG(ish) Open Street Map micro-mapping event on Sunday and it went well.

Six of us - me, John, Paul, Tim, Simon and Rob - went out mapping and then we went back to Dave’s afterwards to start turning the traces into maps.

It was the first OSM event I’ve organised but I had some advice from Tim (aka chippy) about timings etc and I think it worked out ok. We met for about half an hour to decide where we were all going and we decided on filling in some blank spots around East Leeds. I’d printed out maps and highlighted areas I thought needed attention, and once we’d double-checked no other speedy Leeds-er had filled in our selected spots between me printing the maps out in the early hours of Saturday and us meeting on Sunday afternoon, we headed out.

We headed out in pairs - John & I were in his car, the rest on foot - and traced for about two hours (including travelling there and back) before heading to Dave’s for the mapping part. As I mentioned the other day, the mapping software JOSM is rather hard to learn how to use so the hour-ish of mapping with experienced users Tim and Dave was really useful. I don’t think I’m an expert user now by any means but at least I can confidently do the most basic stuff like adding nodes and turning them into named, categorised ways without wanting to tear my hair out.

(The pics of the bits we’ve added from Sunday’s session so far, using the Osmarender view - click through for it on OSM.)

Lessons learned/Things to remember for next time

• The printed maps worked really well. I did some area overview ones and some more zoomed ones around the particular area that needed mapping. I think next time I’ll do some hyper-zoomed in ones for scribbling all over too instead of just using blank bits of paper. (Clipboards would be helpful for doing this.)
• Paul managed to lose his traces some how but could pretty much reconstruct them because he took waypoints (which didn’t delete) at every intersection. Our hacked TomTom is a pain for marking waypoints and so easy waypoint making is something I’ll definitely look out for if I buy a dedicated GPS unit.
• It was useful to have internet access at the initial meet session for double-checking the printed map data and it was essential to have internet access at the post-tracing session to download map data from OSM and to be able to access the reference parts of the Wiki.
• It was more time consuming to trace than I thought it would be - what with having to write down street names and everything - and the traces-to-maps is taking longer than I thought (although that’s because of JOSM problems and because I’ve been busy on other stuff since then, hello Oscars). Tim says we should allow about an hour for mapping time for every hour of tracing - and looking at the amount we did and the amount that’s already done of Leeds, I have to commend the people that have contributed before we got here. Thanks for doing so much already, lovely people :)
• Simon came over from Manchester after reading about it on a blog of a blog of a WYLUGer or something which made me realise if we organise another event - particularly the summer seaside day trips I’ve mentioned - we should publicise it more widely as people may be willing to travel for a hour for a day-long event. (Incidentally Rob came from Dewsbury and Paul from outside Huddersfield so thanks to all three for coming to contribute to evil Leeds’ map ;) )
• I should really have gone for a wee before I set off. Or not drunk a big glass of coke in the pub. Or taken some sort of receptacle.
• And on other forgotten human functions, we were all pretty hungry and thirsty by the time we finished too.
• We had a general WYLUG social afterwards (although it turned out to just be the mapping party plus people who had intended to map but couldn’t for whatever reason - Dave, Tom and Geoff) and we kept coming back to mapping issues amongst the general geeky talk - and I thought this review time was useful and interesting.