I've been setting up the toolchain for Mapnik on our new fully managed internet server at work. We're hopefully going to make quite extensive use of OpenStreetMap for at least two projects in the near future: One Planet Living in Sutton and The Laundry, our company who do office recycling in London.

So far I've managed to render some pretty large images of specific areas in London, including this rather large render of the whole city (5000x3856px, 20MB). The docs on the wiki aren't the easiest to follow, but I'm looking forward to playing with the styles, adding clickable points of interest, and providing specific maps for public transport, cycling, pedestrians etc. in Sutton.

I've also been out and about mapping bits of London, including getting Rachel really enthusiastic about mapping the area where she lives. I've taken advantage of the unseasonably sunny weather to map Burgess Park (I love doing parks in lots of detail), part of Clapham with Rachel, and more cycle routes & cycle parking whenever I'm on the move. I'm particularly glad to have sought out some public cycle parking around the Houses of Parliament, mostly you're greeted with warnings about cycles being nicked by the police but for the record the best place is down Millbank next time you're popping into the Commons!

Had a lovely Christmas and New Year and got reflecting on what I've achieved in 2007 outside of my job. Except for some good media work for the Green Party on free software issues, and keeping up my commitments for People & Planet and KDE, I've mostly dithered about not really making good ideas happen. So here's what I'm planning to get up to in the following year:

• Organise a Free Culture art show - I've got an offer of a space on Old Kent Road, now I just need to gather together the bods to make it happen;
• Become a Sustrans Ranger for part of the Wandle Trail in London;
• Get a decent Green Party campaign going on free software and free data;
• Join a south London choir and get singing again;
• Get on with the economics reading group I'm doing with friends to broaden and deepen my knowledge;
• Map around Wandsworth Road station area with my wonderful lady;
• Meet more nice people in my area to avoid having to travel so far to see old friends or sitting around lonely.

Hello all on Planet KDE,

After yet another session of select all + delete on kde promo and marketing lists, I decided to unsubscribe and say goodbye once and for all. With all my work for my employer, the Green Party, People & Planet and getting completely caught up in a new relationship, I just don't have the time. Probably not even to help out much with the KDE 4.0 release.

Besides, there are so many cool new people involved in KDE promo work these days that my presence is hardly needed anyway!

So goodbye, thanks for all the fish & good times, I wish you all the best of luck and I'll try to keep track of the planet / Dot. I'll get my blog off Planet KDE too so nobody need read my occasional off-topic rants about UK politics and making maps!

Back from a short break in Snowdonia, where I enjoyed a collection of Walt Whitman poetry ("Undrape! You are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded"), Evelyn Waugh's bitterly tragi-comic A Handful of Dust, Cadwalader ice creams, little mapping sorties in Criccieth, the UK's finest landscapes and particularly fine weather - occasional clouds make for happy walks and dramatic photos:

More from the dept. of maps that nobody else has (nyahhh).

Here is a map of East Dulwich Estate, yet again absent from most maps. The A-Z incorrectly calls it "Dog Kennel Hill Estate", which is the name of the main road it's on, and shows Albrighton Road without the footpath break in the middle, whilst most others show nothing at all! If only the software that rendered this image would show the estate name and be a bit neater :)

I've also started adding cycling data. Sustrans have a really awful online map service, whilst Transport for London and the London Cycling Campaign have produced some decent paper maps (that irritatingly lack any route numbers!) A chap in the OpenStreetMap community has produced this great cycle map with negligible fuss! So far I've been on a 40 mile bike ride with a mate to do a national cycle route through London, and doddling around my neck of the woods to start adding bits in:

I've been having lots of fun on my new Specialized bike that I got from this jolly nice workers' co-op in Brixton. I'm on holiday for a couple of weeks now, I hope to get some more estates finished before I go walking in Snowdonia, which is just going to be bliss after a summer in London!

When I lived in Reading I enjoyed growing veg in my student house garden, and writing about it. Gardening has always been one way in which I can indulge in passivity without quickly falling back into hyperactivity. Now I'm living in London, a big dirty blemish, but I've managed to get a spot in a friend's garden to grow some veg.

After two afternoons of clearing brambles, tangleweed and nettles, then digging out the roots and assorted rubble, here's my allotment:

I've put in two courgette plants, and I have plans for sugar snap peas, carrots and perhaps some greens. Rob and I even built a little crazy paving path down one side using the clay layer under the topsoil and rubble that we dug out. Next job: dig the rest of the soil, plant the seeds for the other plants, and paint the wall with some art student friends!

After a few horrendously busy and boring weeks at work managing a massive server failure, planning and starting to move house into East Dulwich (London), and trying to keep up with my other responsibilities, I've almost resurfaced into the fresh air of normal life and this unseasonally warm spring.

On the bright side I've revamped my web site to remove lots of unnecessary cruft, I've updated the articles section with my regular features on free culture and a few KDE/GNOME stories, and I've moved to flickr for photos for simplicity's sake. My favourite change is that articles are now integrated into the blog, which will encourage me to pop them up once the first publisher's exclusitity period expires.

I've also created my favourite OpenStreetMap to date, the results of a mapping party and a couple of lunchtime strolls with colleagues. It will be used by a group of 60-odd local community figures as part of a day-long event looking to make the area more pleasant and sustainable, and shows varying degrees of "pathways of desire" from official footpaths to faintly eroded trails. I'm looking forward to mapping my new ~6mile cycle route to work, much bettter than 3 hours / day on the train!

Late last year I wrote about my disappointment at having to use proprietary software at work. We're a charity working to develop and promote mainstream solutions to sustainability, so it would be more consistent with our values to use and promote software freedom. Well since then things have changed considerably - I've had a number of good leads, not least by discovering and using the fantastic Open Source Consortium, who help you find suitable companies.

I have in mind three basic scenarios: using free software on the Windows desktop, replacing Windows on the server(s) and switching wholesale to Linux+KDE on the desktops.

During my first staff appraisal yesterday, which went really well for those who care, we agreed that I would conduct a feasibility study into using free software in the organisation. I've got a year to do it, so I'm going to be able to do a really thorough job of it. So far I have have a three page document outlining our general requirements and the research I need to do. I've stuck it up here, if anyone is interested and has any suggestions of things I should look into please get in touch! I'm not, by the way, interested in suggestions along the lines of "you should use application X to do Y", but rather things I need to get right in my research to avoid a bad decision down the line.

In other work-related news the meeting with David Miliband went really well, our response to a govt consultation that I'm coordinating is rumbling along, and I'm off for an interview about carbon footprinting this afternoon. Super!

Spot the slightly obscure lyric reference there. I was assaulted on the train on Monday evening. I had the temerity to try and sit down on a seat onto which a chappy was spilling over. After generally mouthing off at me, which I responded to with calm pleading, when I just plonked my bottom on the chair and suggested he move up he swung around and punched me full in the face. Police reports, a trip to Accident & Emergency and a second hospital visit later and I have a fractured orbital bone (the bottom-of-the-eye-socket one), a lovely ripe bruise and a couple of days off work to recover.

It's not the first time my fair features have been tested, I was mugged at knifepoint a few years ago in Reading. Thankfully that just resulted in the loss of birthday presents in my wallet and a huge welt on my chin, though I found it difficult to go out alone at night for a surprisingly long period after it happened. I hope I can face the trains over the next few months since they're rather central to me reaching work!

The best bit was that after the thug, whose mentality I can't begin to understand, left the train everyone was lovely. My friends from work helped me off the train, gave me tissues to stop the bleeding and called the police. I went back to Helen's house and she looked after me, went with me to A&E, sat there the whole time rabitting away to keep me company and then gave up her bed so I could get some sleep. The hospital staff were also really friendly -- god how I love the NHS, how can people stand living in a country without free healthcare, paid through taxation out of solidarity?

Another thing to brighten me up -- the huge volume of press coverage from the recent Vista story we (The Green Party) raised. We even got some quotes in the Saturday edition of The Guardian. This article is quite funny, this one rather interesting. Despite a predictable outcome on Slashdot -- nobody reads the press release, researches the likely hardware upgrades and DRM technologies ("a recent report from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency found that... 55% of current computers could not even run Vista with Aero tuned off"), but they post anyway slagging off those crazy Greens -- despite that I'm pretty pleased with the coverage.

I've been appointed as the Green Party England & Wales Speaker on Intellectual Property and Free Software (huzzah!)

This means I'll be their spokesperson on the issue -- responding to news stories, writing letters and articles, possibly taking interviews, and generally raising the profile of the party and principal speakers on this important issue.

The good news is that it should be easy to impress, since the party has a good track record on the issues. The Greens led the fight against software patents in Europe by co-organising conferences on our behalf, getting us into the Parliament and giving us a base to work from. As part of the Green-EFA Alliance they're still talking in the EU about the knowledge commons and the problems with TRIPS & the super-pro-IP position adopted by most other mainstream parties.

Back in 2003 Tony Cooper wrote this interesting article about the party's view on IT, which filtered through into policies passed in 2005 committing the party to promoting free software, opposing software patents and seeking an intellectual property regime that preserves the incentive to create whilst maximising public access to information.

So it will be really interesting pushing these issues in the media, and raising awareness of the Green Party's position amongst free software / free culture advocates.

The bad news is that it means I'll have to re-evaluate other work I'm doing, especially since my really cool job is taking up a lot of my time and energy. I'm tempted to drop everything except this new position, my job and the Free Culture Foundation, perhaps helping KDE a little around the big KDE 4.0 release.

I get to meet the party press officers next Tuesday, and the principal speakers in due course, which will be really interesting. Tuesday will be fun, I'm also meeting the chief prosecutor from First Capital (Dis)Connect to discuss my little episode! Right, time to wash up and take a trip to the farm shop...