I’ve continued my GPS-equipped bicycle rides around Charlottetown for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve continued to pour the data I’ve gathered — my “digital bread crumbs” — into OpenStreetMap.

The process of turning GPS points into lines, and then combining lines into streets has been much easier since I started using JOSM — a standaline Java editor for OpenStreetMap data. The OpenStreetMap browser-based editor has proved quite flaky — it’s slow, and inconsistent with what, if any data it returns; JOSM grabs data from the OSM database, lets you edit it and then allows you to upload it, which works very well. The only thing that JOSM is missing compared to the browser editor is the Landsat satellite imagery under the map; this is so “confusing green and red blob”-like for Charlottetown that it’s of questionable use in any case, so it’s not a big deal.

Here’s the data I’ve gathered for Charlottetown shown in the browser-based editor. The yellow dots are my GPS traces, the white lines are streets I’ve created, and the green segments are lines that have yet to be joined into streets:

Here’s the sub-set of the same data in the standaline JOSM editor. The white specs are GPS traces, the red dots are OpenStreetMap nodes and the blue lines are streets:

Finally, here’s what this data looks like on the public OpenStreetMap map (this snapshot is a little out of sync with the edited data) — yellow lines are streets, green segments are “yet to be streets” lines:

You can see this data for yourself at OpenStreetMap using the map viewer right on the front page.

The process of using and understanding JOSM has been made much easier for me by the helpful JOSM screencasts created by the editor’s author, Imi; no open source project should be without such helpful resources!

Want to put a map of Prince Edward Island somewhere on your website? OpenLayers makes it dead simple; just paste in:

<iframe 
   src="http://openlayers.org/viewer/?center=46.2361,-63.13&zoom=5"
   width="500" height="250" scrolling="no" 
   marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0">
</iframe>

Here’s what you should end up with:

It was time to climb back on the bus yesterday for our weekly trip out to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market. We caught route #3 from the Confederation Centre to its stop right across the road from the market entrance; we were the only ones on the bus for most of the way (hey, downtown livers: there’s a bus that goes directly to the market from downtown; what gives with all the cars?).

After our usual stops, we walked north through the University of PEI campus, across through Brown Court, and down into a very pleasant and mostly hidden trail that runs along the creek from UPEI to North River Road (that’s Oliver walking along said trail in the picture there). The trail comes out just south of Ellen’s Creek Plaza, so only needed to walk about 1/2 mile to get our various lemon-based beverages.

Just past noon we walked back towards UPEI, this time through the Charlottetown Rural yard and out to University Avenue and up to the Student Centre where we caught the 12:40 p.m. bus back downtown.

Four bucks in bus fare and a pleasant walk in the woods.

There have been two important innovations in the bus schedule. First, route #1 now runs up and down University Avenue every hour; that’s really big, because it means that the maximum wait for the next bus is now one hour rather than two. Second, the same route #1 now runs much later into the evening: the last bus out leaves downtown at 9:05 p.m. and the last bus back leaves the Charlottetown Mall at 9:30 p.m. This means that you can take in an early movie at the mall and take the bus both ways.

Whatever happened to “Covers the Island Like the Dew?”

So you think your travels went off the rails? Read Pelle’s tale of getting from Denmark to Panama.

I had my first visit to the re-launched Cora’s this morning. The staff are about 10% friendlier than they were before the franchisee switch; otherwise, it’s exactly the same: expensive food, well-prepared, heavy on the fruit.

My sources tell me that the Thai food place on Pownal Street is scheduled to move to Kent Street near Prince, into the old tattoo parlor space.

Word is that work on Formosa Tea House number three, going into a renovated house on University Avenue next to Bowlan’s, is proceeding, but perhaps a little slower than originally anticipated, as the renovation job over three floors is a lot of work.

Meanwhile, Kenny and Winnie, who have been operating the Formosa Tea House at Ellen’s Creek weren’t there yesterday; they’ve left to concentrate on renovating their own new acquisition, the building on Pownal currently occupied by the aforementioned Thai place. No word on what their plans for the space are yet.

I found out this morning that Timothy’s doesn’t open until 10:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings, which nearly plummeted me into an irreversible state of despair (I was rescued by Cora’s, thank goodness). This seems like an awfully late time to open, but then again the streets of Charlottetown were deserted this morning, so maybe it’s simply a wise business decision.

Meanwhile, I’ve become fond of Timothy’s “iced mocha” drink; it’s about as close as you’ll come to the much-loved, sadly retired “Iced Cowpuccinno” at COWS. And it makes the “Iced Capp” from Tim Hortons down the street taste like swill.

Every time I walked into Timothy’s this week I found superstar contrarian David Weale settled in behind his laptop (and a very snazzy laptop at that — sold me on the virtues of the “glossy” screen). David is off to Les Îles de la Madeleine to escape the mosquitos at Cranberry Wharf, so I might be able to move into the chair he’s vacated and take advantage of its proximity to a power outlet.

Timothy’s is about to expand southward (or is it eastward — who can tell in Charlottetown?) with the opening of an outlet in Founder’s Hall on the waterfront. The new place won’t actually be a Timothy’s, but has a home-brew new name like “Island Grounds” or “Island Grind” that I haven’t committed to memory yet.

Despite negative reports about the Rustico restaurant Dayboat from trusted friends, I’m newly motivated to try it out as I learned yesterday that my coincidence-drenched new friend Patricia Van Bolderen is working there (when she’s not slicing bagels with Kim Dormaar at the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market).

Meanwhile, Kim reports that he had a new customer from Virginia stop by the smoked salmon counter at the market a few weeks ago after learning of its wonders from here on the weblog; behold my awesome market-changing powers.

Speaking of which, please stop by Karin LaRonde’s booth at the market next time you’re there and order some iced tea; Karin is very inventive when it comes to iced tea, and some of her recent concoctions have been fantastic.

In a surprising turn of events, after first revealing that it owed the maker of the ill-fated parking kiosks $200,000, the City of Charlottetown admitted that the city coffers are now completely empty, and the ownership of Charlottetown now rests with ParkSmart.

“We really had no choice — we’re broke,” said Public Works Committee chair Stu MacFadyen when asked about the strange turn of events. “We realized that the only responsible course was to turn over ownership of the City to ParkSmart so that we can meet our obligations to them.”

It’s unclear whether the kiosks will remain in place under this new arrangement.

The Interactive Charlottetown Transit Map has now been updated to include the new routes and schedules for routes 1, 2, 3 and 4. Update for route 5 to follow shortly.

Here’s my friend Stephen Regoczei quoted in a 1997 issue of Arthur (from the Internet Archive; original no longer online), the Trent University student newspaper, on New Technology Guru (and Trent alumnus) Don Tapscott:

Prof. Stephen Regoczei of Trent’s computer studies department has studied Tapscott’s work for 18 years. Regoczei says, “Tapscott specializes in technology boosterism. What he predicts is radical change. His predictions have been 100% wrong. While he’s predicting, he’s selling a lot of computer technology… He works for the vendors [such as Digital, IBM, SUN and Microsoft.]”

Tapscott consults for some of the largest information technology corporations in the world. Says Prof. Regoczei, “Its the same old story. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. He’s an advertiser more than a credible futurist.”