hey map enthusiasts

[bubblingbeebles]

A little after I got into running long distances, I started wanting a giant map of pittsburgh, the sort you could hang on your wall and put thumbtacks with string attached into.

As a second-best, openstreetmap has this great mode where you can export sections of maps in huge resolution. I made one of pittsburgh (15MB - smaller version 5 MB) (and

Comments

[_tove]

Protip: OSM also exports vector data. It's a rat's nest of unnecessary layers (and for some reason, there are always a bunch of solid boxes with obnoxious patterns as the top ten layers), but if you have a program that lets you select all of the shapes with the same color/lineweight (like Illustrator, and maybe Inkscape), it's pretty easy to sort out. This is how I made my Border Town maps.

[bubblingbeebles]

oh yeah, and also in XML (which I think is how they store it on their end). joshua_ will also probably scold me for not using svg, but I don't care about any resolution larger than the one I generated.

[simrob]

First guess: West Dana between View and Bush.

[bubblingbeebles]

Half credit! That's where feis and slizyboy live -- I've crashed there several times (once for a week last summer, which is where one of the runs comes from), and also met up with feis to run together there.

[simrob]

I feel like my second guess is compelled to be the building south of the rec center and west of the S building between Cypress Point and Middlefield, but I kind of doubt that's even a building for living in so I'm not expecting to be right.

[bubblingbeebles]

oakwood apartments comprises all those buildings; that one is G. I am sitting in G102 impressed at you.

[gregh1983]

Whoa, nice maps! When I first got to Pittsburgh, I bought one of those fold-me-a-zillion-times car maps and did hang it on my wall at home :-)

My guess for your Mountain View residence would be in that cluster of buildings between Central Avenue, Middlefield Road, CA 85, and the other orange-ish road whose name I can't see. That might be cheating, though, because I zoomed in and figured that little buildings might mean condos or apartments, which was added information beyond the right sort of route shape.

Without zooming in, I was going to guess the corner of Dana Street and Bush Street, further south.

[bubblingbeebles]

yes - the giveaway bit there was that the routes had funny corners and turns in a place that there wasn't a road. all other such funny corners match the road corners. that key is what i was hoping you would realise (otherwise i probably wouldn't have bothered asking).

the not-giveaway-after-all-i-guess that it isn't Dana and Bush (or Dana and View, where jack's and krieger's house is) is that not all of the surrounding roads there are already covered. at oakwood, there are only a few roads i can run on to get anywhere else.