I guess this is also a result of yesterday’s grand overhaul, but some fairly small changes I made yesterday evening are still not rendering, for example here, in any zoom level…

Following up on Adam’s discussion below about Flyht Myrcia, I’ve created an code-sharing airline alliance, Geolliance. The wiki page is pretty thin, but there’s space to add airlines and hubs there (no table yet, but that can be added once airlines join). And I’d love to have at least one or two other airlines to join Air Wiwaxia as founders as well. The alliance particularly needs airlines that fly more outside Eastern Uletha, i.e. Archanta, Tarephia and Antarephia, as well as Western Uletha.

As discussed earlier, there might be other alliances created with Air Ataraxie as a founder of one and KojAir as founder of another, so if you already have code-sharing deals with either of them you probably don’t want to be part of this alliance.

So, I was inspired by Deltanz’ Golden Delta Film Awards to write a wiki article about Wiwaxia’s entry in the awards. Despite my serious lack of digital savvy, I made one feeble attempt in my sandbox at creating an infobox template for films. Not surprisingly, it failed. Any advice on creating infobox templates? Or someone else who knows how to do them want to create one like the Wikipedia wikipedia film infobox?

Inspired by the Geovision Song Festival 2016 and my Wiwaxian contestant Sibyl, I’ve written wikipedia articles on two vaguely related things:

• A global TV show called Popstar Factory with contestants competing to become popstars and various country editions. Feel free to add your own country’s version of the show or let me know here and I’ll add it myself! Also, I didn’t write which country originated the show. Wiwaxia I feel is too small and insignificant a country to have started it - any other bigger and more culturally dominant countries with major TV production companies (that have wiki articles about them!) interested in being the originator in 2002?

• An aid event called Concert for Commonia with aid going to displaced Commonians. Feel free to add singers and pop stars from your country to the list (and expand on the article if you want) or let me know here and I’ll add it myself.

Fasten your seatbelts, we’re in for what could be a very bumpy conversation (if you have the patience to read my looooong post)!

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After a bit of planning, a group met up on Google Hangouts this past Sunday to talk about OGF. Well, a group of two as it turned out: me and Simon, a.k.a. Sarapeva. I can’t speak for Simon, but I had a great time talking with him for nearly an hour and a half about random OGF things.

One topic that came up that I promised to mention publicly here was the idea of a physical meet up.

I know in April that Thilo, Joschi81 and Histor met in Hamburg for a day of workshopping - I wonder how that went. What do you say, guys, how’d it go?

Simon and I thought, since there seem to be a fair number of Brits, Germans, Dutch and Belgians on OGF, Amsterdam might be a good central place to meet (and an interesting city map-wise ;-) Although we also realized also that there might be more people from the Americas than from any other region, so maybe Europe isn’t so central.

And thinking furhter, I realize for this to happen will mean a lot of work for someone(s) to plan and even finding a place to actually meet up could be tricky.

So what do people think? Sound like fun? Sound doable? Who’s interested? What would the purpose be? Should there be an agenda and if so, what should be on it?

One question I brought up at yesterday’s online meet-up (which ended up being text only) was women mappers. I’m curious as to how many of us are women. It feels like nearly all are male. From some comments I heard, it seems that most fictional mappers happen to be men. I have no idea if that is true. But I wonder why?

And I wonder, do women feel welcome here?

Personally, it seems strange that mappers tend to be men. As with most things, I think having good representation from both sexes tends to make things richer, more complex and, well, better.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Like Norfolkadam and his city of Elmham > http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/-36.6129/169.2046 which looks great I think, I’m trying to create better non-gridlike cities in my new country of Østermark. I’ll only have two sizeable cities, both of which I’ve started: the capitol, Mynninghamn > http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/48.3941/158.2613 and the smaller Gråklosters > http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/47.9323/157.6434.

I’m trying to take it slow, develop realistic natural features and other towns and villages in places that make sense, avoiding the temptation to build highways and railways to connect everything until I’ve built more habitations and put in more terrain.

My next challenge though is suburbs. I want my suburbs to mostly be depressing with unpleasant commercial centers and aging blocks of shoddy apartments, some of them monolithic. Østermark is not a rich country and it should be apparent in the many brownfields and sad suburbs.

Any tips on building suburbs? What differentiates them from city? What differentiates them from each other? What is characteristically suburban? (And I realize this is really, really broad and the answer really lies in looking at maps of cities that are like what I’m trying to create).

Just saw this - British Library releases 1 million images, now in the public domain. Looks like a great source for the Wiki. British Library Flickr stream

I’ve started a new country, not so far from my original country of Wiwaxia. It’s called Østermark. It will be fairly Scandinavian in flavor, although I want to make it much poorer than current Scandinavia - maybe more like the Scandinavia of 100 years ago, with few resources other than fishing and forestry (lumber and paper). It will have a fairly small population of just under 4 million, with only one major city, one minor city and two very large towns.

I’m trying to make it much more realistic than Wiwaxia, starting with the geography and then building cities and towns, rather than the other way round as I mostly did with Wiwaxia. The country is small but with a lot of coast as it’s an island. Since the southern coast has some very big bays and large barrier islands, I want to make it very rugged with tons of small islands and islets. So it’s going to be arduous. And the interior will have a mountain chain running from Northwest to approximately the center, with lots of little lakes and streams, plus seven sizeable rivers that make their way down to the coast.

Unlike most people here, I use Potlatch instead of JOSM. Which I know, I know, is not recommended. I won’t go into why I use it. But I am trying to use it in a better way than I did with Wiwaxia. Starting with the coasts and maritime boundaries, which I’ve created tagging relations in a smarter way. But I realize in creating them and removing the boundary tag from the coasts, I’ve somehow affected how the country name is rendered - or actually the problem is that it’s not rendered - on the big map. What have I done wrong? I suspect it’s because the boundaries I’ve created are not a closed loop, but actually four different ways (the land boundary with Nucia, two different maritime boundaries with Nucia, and the maritime boundary that’s not shared with any other country). Do I need to connect them? But will that screw up how Nucia is rendered and turn it into Østermark?

… See full entry