I have posted a discussion on the wiki Forums, but will cross-post here for maximum visibility to the community.

https://wiki.opengeofiction.net/index.php/Forum:Global_and_regional_issues/The_South_Archantan_%22Grand_Lakes%22_System

Comments posted here will be moved to the forums, so it would be preferred to just go ahead and post there if you can.

Thanks! Happy mapping.

I am preparing to run new and updated contours for the ogf-topo layer tomorrow.

Currently I have submissions for:

zone-alved (SwissCrusader) zone-liberian (pzs111111) zone-udzdanarat (Ūdilugbulgidħū)

Are there any other contour updates?

If you have material for me, please remember to follow the procedure outlined at the bottom of my blog post (Part IV):

https://blog.geofictician.net/index.php/2022/03/05/the-state-of-the-ogf-topo-layer/

I will not accept “made from scratch” .osm files moving forward. Contour submissions MUST be edits of downloaded templates, per the outlined procedure (I have ways of knowing)! If templates don’t exist, you must ask me to create one before editing your contours.

Happy mapping.

[UPDATE 2022-04-03] I ran into some problems running these contours. Specifically, Udzdanarat is too close to the “edge of the world” which creates some very strange boundary conditions that give the ogfsrtm scripts “out of memory” errors. I have run out of time to work on this - so unfortunately contour re-load will be delayed for now. Sorry all.

I have posted an extensive entry on my geofictician blog to discuss the OGF Topo Layer, including the new procedures to support topo going forward. Rather than replicate that long write-up here, please visit my blog to read all about it.

https://blog.geofictician.net/index.php/2022/03/05/the-state-of-the-ogf-topo-layer/

Thank you to all the mappers who have contributed to topo so far, and looking forward to lots more and much-improved topo in the future!

Comments welcome below, rather than at the blog (where they’re also welcome but people are less likely to see them).

A “shibboleth” is a word or name that locals know how to pronounce but that outsiders or visitors don’t know about.

One excellent example of a real-world geographic shibboleth from my personal experience: when I first moved to Philadelphia (I lived there from 1995-1998), I had no idea that when locals said “Skookle” they meant “Schuykill” - as in the Schuyill River and parallel Schuykill Expressway. Another example is more subtle, but important: you can tell the outsiders in the the US Western states by how they pronounce the name of the state of Nevada. Westerners (and, specifically, Nevadans) pronounce the name of their state /nəvædə/, while outsiders (particularly Easterners and Brits) generally pronounce it closer to /nəvɑdə/, or else they make the mistake of assuming it deserves a fully etymological Spanish pronunciation, and render it as /nebada/. It is jarring on US TV shows like the old “CSI Las Vegas” when supposed locals mispronounce their state’s name.

Another interesting shibboleth from my current locale, is the tribal and cultural name Tlingit. This is the most numerous Native American group in Southeast Alaska, and is still a living and dynamic language community, too. When I first came here, I had no idea what people were talking about when they talked about “Klinkit” - turns out everyone (including the natives themselves) pronounce the name of the tribe and language this way. I guess under the influence of English, the /tl/ cluster of the language has evolved to one easier for English speakers: /kl/.

Anyway, the question I have for all of you is: what shibboleths exist in your OGF territory?

Makaska is full of little shibboleths, mostly due to the early exploration and naming by the Franquese, and then subsequent mispronunciation of those Franquese names by the Ingerish-speaking later settlers. This is meant to parallel the US West and Midwest, which is full of such “bad French” place names: Des Moines (“Duh Moin”!), Boise (“Boizy”!), etc.

Some important shibboleths in Metro Ohunkagan (map) include the following:

• Xaintrailles (neighborhood on the northside, major arterial street): pronounced “Zen Trail”
• Jonnequiel (the airport, former Army fort, southside): pronounced “Junk Heel”
• Jonquiere (the road): actually the same name as Jonnequiel, just spelled different, but pronounced the same, “Junk Heel”, or sometimes “Junker”
• Vrijheid (a hill, and arterial road in the northwest): pronounced “Freehide” (which reflects a kind of awareness but distortion of the Lentian meaning, “freedom”)
• Aeschlimann (a neighborhood and street in southside Hotanka Peninsula): pronounced “Eeshle-min”
• Le Maingre (a neighborhood, street and horseracing track, southside): rhymes with “anger”
• Marony (the small lake at downtown, the canal, the original name for the southside, “Fort Marony”): rhymes with “macaroni”
• Most oldtimers call the southside “Fort”, and the northside is called “Town”
• Nobody local pronounces Iyotanhaha fully - it’s simply called “Iyo”
• Robeyns (neighborhood in south Iyo): pronounced “Robins”

Happy onomastics!

We had unexpected longer downtime last night and this morning.

The render server had some problem (not really clear what went wrong), and needed to be restored from backup (not part of the plan), and then the ogf-carto render was reset (which had been the plan).

Just want to say thank you to the community for your patience.

Those who have been struggling with “render ghosts” - I think they are all fixed now. You can see one really good example here:

map

For comparison, the ogf-topo render still has the ghosts (yes, topo needs maintenance work, I know!):

map

UPDATE: by the way, Happy mapping!

We had some problems last night and today with “certbot” - a tool we use on the server to make sure the OGF webpages are secure (“https”). And that also caused problems with our automated emailing from the server, which supports functions like new user sign up, lost password recovery, and replication monitoring (making sure data goes over to the render and to overpass correctly).

I’m sorry I had to shut down the server without much advance notice - I was worried the problem was worse than it was, and so I was trying to solve it quickly.

Thank you to everyone for your patience!

Also, we have reached the $200 / month level with donations supporting our rental fees for our servers. So thank you to all who have been donating.

Happy mapping and happy (northern hemisphere) Fall.

First thing:

We’re Live! Welcome back, everyone. Happy mapping!

Second thing:

I’ve noticed some of you have discovered that under the new rails port software from OSM, you’re able to change your username.

This is pretty cool, but there’s a problem: our territory assignment system is based on your username. Uh oh.

If you change your username without first letting us know, you might lose your territory. And if you let us know, we might not notice, because we are all very busy right now.

Recommendation: hold off on changing your username. And if if you have changed your username, change it back. For now.

In the long run, we will change our territory assignment system to be based on your user ID number, which is guaranteed to stay the same.

We rebuilt the site (OSM rails port), again, from the bottom up.

Things seem to be working alright.

Thank you to all the OGF community for their patience while we solved this issue. Part of “growing pains” as we get settled in our new home.

Happy mapping!

I am still seeing users being locked out of the site because their email addresses are rejecting our new mail server’s best efforts to deliver email to them.

This is not our fault. Microsoft, Apple, et al. have decided our email server is an untrustworthy email server and are returning our emails to us undelivered. They offer no technical support in how to get un-blacklisted.

Other email providers are not having this problem. Notably, gmail works fine.

If you have a hotmail, icloud, outlook, live .com, or other email provider that might be ignoring our emails, your best solution is to change to a different email address.

To fix the problem, send me an email at luciano(at)geofictician.net , FROM your new email address, and telling me your OGF username and your old email address.

Thanks for understanding.

We are still seeing performance issues with the render server.

To better be able to understand these issues, we have decided to temporarily suspend the ogf-topo render.

Please be reassured - the topo render is very important to me. It’s one of the reasons I’m so involved in this project. I will not leave it “abandoned” as it was on the old OGF server. If I must, I’ll build a second render server to host ogf-topo.

But meanwhile, we will shut down the topo render so that we can troubleshoot performance problems and get the ogf-carto render running at its best possible ability.

Thank you for your patience.

Let’s give this a try.

The rails port seems to be performing okay. So if you want to sign in and try mapping, go ahead and visit the lost password recovery page:

https://opengeofiction.net/user/lost-password

You will get an email with your new password. Reset it and start mapping.

Please note the wiki remains “closed” - you can look at it, but no general editing will be permitted, for at least another week, while we get things organized.

Meanwhile, welcome to our new servers.

Our email server is not yet fully functional for incoming messages, therefore please message using the OGF messaging system or send me an email at luciano(↻)geofictician.net . If I’m swamped with questions, I might take a while to get to yours, however.

Several common problems:

1. A bright red “ActionController…” error. Or else the site keeps logging you out. This is nothing to panic about. It’s a “stale cookie” problem and can be resolved by patient refreshes of your browser cache (control-F5) or maybe trying to open our site in an incognito window. Annoying. How to fix is unclear, so far.

2. Slow load on map render. This will happen for any region where you’re the first visitor. It will pick up speed as more people visit various spots on the map.

3. Oauth seems weird, wrong data, etc. Delete and revoke any old Oauth applications, authorizations and tokens attached to your account, and make new ones. Oauth is working fine, they just need to be generated on the new server rather than inherited from the old one.

This is one of the hoped-for benefits of my historical mapping approach. I do a screenshot every now and then using the exact same window size and coordinates, and make it into a gif. This gif covers the years 1880-1896. As time passes, it will get longer and more interesting.

As part of my historical mapping of Makaska, I have been working on the Ohunkagan 1895 Exposition & World’s Fair. The concept is somewhat modeled on Chicago 1893 or St Louis 1904. Think of it as a turn-of-the-last-century temporary theme park.

The Exposition grounds are mapped on the shores of “Lake Great and Unnamed” (and when will we ever name it?), east of downtown Ohunkagan. The city raced to complete the beginnings of its new elevated electric train network in time for the fair, with two stations accommodating visitors and directly linking to downtown. The grounds also feature a temporary train terminal where VIPs and special excursions from around the FSA can park their charter trains, and an intramural ferry and streetcar for getting around the park.

Here is a map link: https://opengeofiction.net/relation/175412

I have two things for the OGF community.

First - feedback? What’s missing? What do you recommend? Remember this is for the year 1895. The theme is “developing our frontier” and features lots of exhibits on industry, resource extraction (with a focus on Makaska’s primary industries: coal, lumber, wheat, buffalo/cattle, iron ore). What would you like to see me add?

Second - if you own or coordinate a state or country (which is most of us!), which existed in 1895 (maybe not everybody!), then you need an exhibit at the Exposition. The FSA “state exhibits” are in the red circle area in the screenshot below. The international “country exhibits” are in the yellow circle area. You may take over an existing building labelled as “State Exhibit” or “Country Exhibit”, or you may create a new one in an empty spot in those circled areas. No permission needed, just do it. I’m trusting you all to behave yourselves, and I don’t want to be swamped with messages. Worst case, I’ll delete your edits as inappropriate.

Happy mapping, and greetings from summery (today, anyway) Southeast Alaska.

User donnamaw posted something to their sandbox recently:

https://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Donnamaw/Sandbox/Tamarindia_OOC

It’s about the origins of their mapping - an OOC discussion of how their geofiction came to be.

It inspired me, and I got quite carried away. I have posted my own documentation of my geofictions over at my blog:

http://blog.geofictician.net/?p=234

… not what you think.

I think we can all agree that regardless of all our differences, we are all “map geeks.”

So I think the humor on this twitter would be appreciated:

https://twitter.com/TerribleMaps

Happy mapping… from somewhere on the road, Oklahoma, USA.

I have major changes happening in my life - announced in my blog: http://blog.geofictician.net/?p=126

Hi everybody!

We are not completely satisfied with the “WikiForum” extension, but we have decided it’s the best option to provide forum-like functionality to the OGF community. Its advantages including being a part of the wiki (thus easy to maintain and integrated to the site). It can be a little bit wonky (the “edit” post function doesn’t work, for example), though, and it’s not particularly rich in features.

Anyway, it’s an improvement over these User Diaries, and it’s now open.

http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Special:WikiForum

Since this is an announcement ABOUT the forum, how about you don’t comment about it below, and comment on the forum, instead? Try it out.

I have decided to combine testing the new WikiForum with a sincere request for feedback on a big project I plan to start. So don’t comment here - go see my question and give feedback at the WikiForum.

http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Special:WikiForum/Villa_Constituci%C3%B3n_-_what_should_be_saved%3F

Thanks for participating, and happy mapping.

Hi fellow geoficticians.

I have returned from my 12 day trip to Queensland, Australia. I am always somewhat inspired to visit there, because I suppose some aspects of Ardisphere’s PHYSICAL geography are inspired by that place. Although culturally / politically, Ardisphere is definitely Latin American, the natural aspect takes inspiration more from Australia - you will notice things like eucalyptus trees, kangaroos and platypuses, too, mixed in incongruously with African and American species. The place is basically a zoo.

Here are four representative pictures.

For you infrastructure fetishists, here is a view of the excellent Brisbane regional rail, taken from inside the International Terminal.

http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/images/2/23/Luciano_Photo_20170914_081106.jpg

For city people, here is a view of Brisbane at night, from the river.

http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/images/3/36/Luciano_Photo_20170913_204803.jpg

For country people, here is a view of the Far North Queensland “Tablelands Region” - basically, this is tropical rainforest plateau, but much of the rainforest has been cleared for the last 100 years or so for grazing and agriculture (e.g. sugar cane).

http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/images/e/e5/Luciano_Photo_20170913_104239.jpg

Finally, here is a picture of some very cute wallabies that lurk along the long (500m), unpaved driveway at my mother’s property in the drier regions a bit west of the previous picture.

http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/images/d/da/Luciano_Photo_20170913_100639.jpg

Having reassured myself of my elderly mother’s health situation (the reason for my trip), I have returned home to Seoul and expect be quite active with OGF now, for the next several weeks.

Happy mapping.

I have posted a brief resolution of my August Railroad Challenge on my bliki (here: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Luciano/Bliki/Recent). Congratulations are due to joschi81, as the winner.

For the next 2 weeks, I will be only minimally participating in OGF. You may see me in the diaries a bit, or in wiki comments, via my phone, but I will lack JOSM so it’s not likely I’ll make any edits.

I am traveling to Queensland to visit relatives (I have relatives in 5 countries on 3 continents, which is nice when it comes to choosing where to travel), and will return home to Seoul on the 15th.

Meanwhile, happy mapping to everyone.