Plepe's Blog

Cycling once more

Juli 1st, 2009

So, now it’s the last week of Erasmus in Bulgaria. Tomorrow we will have a little fare-well party, then with some friends to the sea side for some days. I’m looking forward, it will be very nice for sure. I suppose this is the last post on my blog which I write from Bulgaria, at home the internet stopped working today (new month, I don’t think it’s worth to pay for it anymore, but a friend of me has her diploma presentation today, therefore I went to university and took the opportunity to make use of one of the open wireless networks around). Next week I will have one day in Sofia, on Wednesday I’m going (by way of Vienna to drop of some things) to the ‚State of the Map‘-conference (THE OpenStreetMap-conference) in Amsterdam. I’m sure I will be able to give you some „live“ impressions from there on my blog.

Now I want to raise some more thoughts about cycling. Even the Sofians start to build bicycle lanes everywhere, but they still have a lot to learn. In my opionion it’s not (only) the amount of bicycle lanes that matters, it’s the interconnection of those. A good example is the first image: You see that bicycle road parallel to the big road? It’s a good road, I used it many times (for walking and cycling). But if you want to go there or leave it, you have to cross the bridge to the left (which is brand new), where you find more or less the same situation (at least you can go to some underpass), or you do it like the cyclist, who bravely crosses the big road.

The second picture: Do they really want to make us cycle on that lane? Not that it’s curvy and narrow as hell, there are also many pedestrians. Beside the high possibility of accidents, the pedestrians will not be happy about the cyclists, although in fact, it’s the politians who make these stupid decisions (but they will be angry about the cyclists, like in Vienna). If I cycle, I want to cycle fast.

What shall I say about the third one? Actually I’m surprised how they managed to paint the bicycle lane, maybe they were waiting for each parking space until it was free.

In the last days I was watching some short movies about Copenhagen, it must be a wonderful city, especially for cyclists. I started to wonder … I know many cities, which are proud to have a high modal split (percentage of ways in a cities made by a special kind of transportation, like car, public transportation, walking, cycling, …) for cycling and walking. And those cities are glowing from their public spaces and cultural life. Do you know any cities which are proud to have a high percentage of car use? I don’t know any, because they usually are stuck with traffic. So municipalities, go out, build bicycle lanes and take the space from the roads, not the pedestrians. You can only win cultural life and happy inhabitants!

Oh, and please do something against bicycle robbery … my second bike got stolen last week, while I was having a small dinner and a short beer in a restaurant.

Brave cyclist suffering from municipality

Curvy and narrow roads … only nice in the mountains.

Bicycle lane or parking spaces?

Posted in Cycling, Erasmus, Politix | No Comments »

How the Power of the Crowd could change Urbanism

Juni 23rd, 2009

My studies in Sofia, Bulgaria, where I did my year of studying abroad with the Erasmus program, are finally over. Most of the things I did this semester were not so interesting, at least not for presenting them on my Blog. But one of my subjects, where I didn’t participate in the classes, but had weekly private seminar meetings, was really interesting. The subject of the class was „Environmental Policy and Sustainability“, and I was asked to write some essay about this topic. My first idea was to take some example about ecology in Austria and write about this, but then I decided, that this is lame and boring.

Prof. Elena Dimitrova, the teacher of the class, gave me some books as readings about Sustainability, the most interesting being „Earth at a Crossroads: Paths to a Sustainable Future“ (read it online on Google Books) by Harmut Bossel (published in 1998). The theory behind the book: If you want to have a sustainable development, it’s not enough to just live ecological, you also need sustainability in the social system, in transportation, in your political system and in the economy. When I read the book I had to think about Linux, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, CouchSurfing and other initiatives all the time.

So I decided to write about sustainability in digital culture and gave it a spin to politics and urban planning to get back to the topic of my studies. It took me a long time to research for this essay and to write it (even if my English is pretty good now, it’s still not my native tongue), there’s already a lot of information on the internet, but urbanism is still an unexplored field. In the process I learned a lot, and I found many ideas which I would be interested to implement. If you are interested in this topic you should definitely check out the literature references in the end of the essay. I hope you will like it, I think it got pretty good in the end.

	As you might see, the essay is available under a Creative Commons license, so please take it and do something interesting with it.
	This is the presentation to the subject, that I gave in a class (in front of a handful of people). There are two black pages, which should hold videos. The first is a great music video of a guy called Kutiman who remixed Youtube-videos. The second is a beautiful animation of the edits in the OpenStreetMap in the year 2008.

Posted in Culture, Erasmus, OpenStreetMap, Politix, Studies, Urbanism | 2 Comments »

Good times in Austria and Bulgaria

Juni 17th, 2009

Sorry for not posting a long time, but I’ve been very busy in the last four weeks. After a weekend in the Rodopi-mountains on a trip with the Erasmus Network (nice mountains, gorges and caves but stomach problems and bad organisation) I went to Vienna by bus (~13 hours each way) for a spontaneous visit (to help with the elections at the university and to join some parties which were going on that time). I finally even stayed a day longer and went to my home town Graz, because a friend, Peter, celebrated his birthday. In the following week I tried to finish my projects for university, there was still a lot to do. And finally three friends came for visit, Babsi for two days and Sub and Argyll for more than ten days. We had a good time together, in Sofia, on the mountain Vitosha and also some more places in Bulgaria, Veliko Tarnovo and Plovdiv, were we stayed for two nights each and short visits to Stara Zagora and Asenovgrad. These days I’m finishing my studies here in Sofia, after this I will enjoy my last weeks in Bulgaria, e.g. on a CouchSurfing-meeting this weekend on a beach near Varna on the Blacksea Coast. Here you have some impressions from the last weeks:

View from the Asenovgrad fortress on Asenovgrad	Trigrad .. it’s like in the merry tales, isn’t it?	The head of the devil in the cave „the Devil’s throat“
Election compaign for the students association in Vienna	The museums quarter on a warm evening in Vienna	On the small mountain hut „Esperanto“ on Vitosha near Sofia with friends
The view from a waterfall on Vitosha on Sofia (and the shadow of Sub)	On the mountain hut: repairing the car	Astonishing view on the town of Veliko Tarnovo
Tsarevets, the old castle in Veliko Tarnovo	The view on Veliko Tarnovo	Tracian excavations in Stara Zagora
Argyll, Sub and Babsi sightseeing in Sofia	The view from NDK (an event centre) on Sofia	The amphitheater in Plovdiv
View on Plovdiv from Nebet Tepe, an excavation site on top of a hill in the old town	Houses in the old town of Plovdiv	View from Asenovgrad on the Asenovgrad fortress

I hope now I will find some time to concentrate on my project, the OpenStreetBrowser, the „State of the Map“-Conference in Amsterdam is coming close (9.-12. July in Amsterdam). Yes, I haven’t announced it yet on my Blog, I’m going there, I hope it will be very interesting! During the last weeks I even had time do some OpenStreetMap-mapping in Bulgaria.

Posted in Eastern Europe, Erasmus, Friends, OpenStreetMap, Travel | No Comments »

Cycling, Cycling, Cycling

Mai 21st, 2009

You know, I’m a passionate cyclist. But since my bike got stolen in middle of October, I’m without a ride here in Sofia. I didn’t really miss it, because this place is just not made for cycling.

But, something amazing happened :) A friend of my mother, Nordfried, was doing a cycle tour from Novi Sad in Serbia to Vidin in the very north-west of Bulgaria along the Danube. To go back to their home country (Germany) they came to Sofia and wrote me an e-mail beforehand if I would be willing to help them with train tickets and show them around a little bit. For sure, I like being a guide, I myself always learn something new. After helping with train tickets Nordfried offered me to take his bike – he had just bought it in Novi Sad and has no use for it in Germany. I’m feeling so flattered … I’m very happy about it. But still I’m afraid to use it, because I don’t want it to be stolen again. And I need a good place for the night. First I need a good lock!

Two days later on Saturday, there was an invitation to a „bike parade“ through Sofia, to demand more bicycle lanes. As I have my new ride now, it was mandatory for me to go there. And I was really amazed, I think there were more than 2000 people. I didn’t even think there were so many bikes in Sofia (ok, I’m kidding). Afterwards there was a small party in the „Kolodrum“, a former bicycle arena, but I decided to go to the night of museums with free entrance. I think Sofia needs some more years, but finally it could become a good place!

In the last days I read in my newspaper, that – maybe due to the financial crisis – many more people uses bikes for their everyday ways in Vienna as in the last years. At the most important counting point – at the Ring near the State Opera – there’s an increase of about 25% to the last year. On other points, Lassallestraße, Kennedybrücke and Langobardenstraße the increase is about 50% (more statistics). This is really great news, I hope that the politicians now feel the need to do something (for example find a good solution for the cycle route at the Ring).

My new bike!

After cycling down Zarogradsko Shose before Orlov Most

In the Kolodrum, where the participants got numbers (stickers for the bike)

Posted in Austria, Cycling, Eastern Europe, Erasmus, Politix | No Comments »

Again OpenStreetBrowser

Mai 5th, 2009

As I told I’m gonna present some features of the OpenStreetBrowser from time to time. It’s also a good documentation for the project.

Routes of public transportation

Routes of public transportation are still not being displayed on the main Mapnik and OsmaRender renderings, although they are very important in my opinion. For me this was actually the start of the project, I had planned to make a nice map with public transportation routes. Now they are only an overlay, as they would clutter the main map too much.

There are two noteworthy features: The references of routes sharing the same way get collected and separated by ‚,‘, which looks much better, and stops with the same name get combined and get a box drawn around. Both of these features improve visibility.

Link to Wikipedia

In the OpenStreetMap it’s possible to link to the Wikipedia. The key is „wikipedia:language“, e.g. „wikipedia:en“ or „wikipedia:de“. If such a link exists, the OpenStreetBrowser displays an abstract of the article and an image, when it finds one (it has to be before the first abstract … this is something still to improve).

Stylesheet for the Overlays

The last feature for this time is the newest feature. The styles of the Overlays „Food & Drink“, „Shops“, „Culture & Tourism“ and „Services“ is generated from a page in the OSM-Wiki. So if you find something missing on these overlays, or you have better icons (many objects don’t have an icon or share icons with other features), feel free to upload them there (the new style sheet will be used after the next database reload, so typically after 1-3 weeks).

If you have suggestions for new feature, complaints or praise, feel free to leave me a comment :)

Posted in OpenStreetBrowser, OpenStreetMap, Project | 1 Comment »

No more motorways!

April 24th, 2009

Just two weeks ago I vent my anger on my blog about governmental financial support for cars and construction of new motorways. Today you could read on the news page of our federal broadcasting station orf.at about a study, that investing in cycling, public transportation and alternative means of transportation employs much more people and is much more sustainable – and the study talks only about the process of construction, not including the effects afterwards.

My words. I’m curious if our politicians will change their path … I doubt it.

But maybe there’s hope. Our planet deserves it.

Read the whole text here (for sure in German).

Posted in Cycling, Politix, Urbanism | No Comments »

Talk about „Social Infrastructure“

April 22nd, 2009

Today I gave a talk about social infrastructure in Vienna … in comparison to social infrastructure in Sofia. It was quite difficult to work on this topic, I think you could write Phd-theses about it. I think I managed quite well. If you look at it please bear in mind that I tried to hold it for someone who has the perspective of living in Sofia most of his/her life. Here are the slides.

Social Infrastructure in Vienna – in comparison to Sofia

Posted in Erasmus, Studies, Urbanism | No Comments »

The Golden Nuggets

April 17th, 2009

Last weekend Daniela, a friend of me (architect, half-Bulgarian/half-German, I lived at her place in Sofia in autumn), organised an event called „The Golden Nuggets“ here in Sofia. It was an experiment to explore how people react to unknown objects in public space. The objects – golden bottles with flowers; golden bags filled with balloons or goodies; black balloons with golden masks – were arranged at places where many people pass. Then we – the organisers and observers – hid and watched what happens. The results? Hard to tell and not statistically significant. In my opinion: Many people just didn’t care (maybe they are to much occupied with themselves?), the bags with the balloons were totally ignored (but they were not that visible maybe), people were afraid of taking them, and parents usually didn’t allow children to see what’s there. The best events were the first, on a central place on a traffic island … many people stopped and looked, and in a park on a sunny Sunday afternoon, where the balloons with the masks attracted many people, especially children.

Here are some pictures:

Preparing the Golden Bottles.	People curious about the bottles	„What is this?“
A golden mask	Still preparing	Children having fun
Children usually take notice	Investigating the bottles	„Look! What a nice bag!“

It will be interesting to see a comparison between different cities and cultures. Daniela is planning to do it also in other countries, like Spain and Germany. A first test-run in Hamburg already took place.

It was fun to take part in this event! Thanks a lot for the nice idea and the commitment.

Posted in Culture, Eastern Europe, Erasmus | No Comments »

Some Features of the OpenStreetBrowser

April 13th, 2009

This time I want to show you some features of the OpenStreetBrowser. One of the goals of my project is to display as many information as possible in a simple and understandable way. Sounds like the quadratur of the circle? Maybe it is :)

Housenumbers

The first feature I want to show you are house numbers. Sounds rather boring, isn’t it? The default Mapnik and Osmarenders styles don’t rotate the numbers, so it’s hard to say where they belong to. It’s also a problem of the software (I can only speak for Mapnik, because I’m using it too), there isn’t really a possibility to rotate texts and icons. So you have to use crude workarounds, which are a pain in the ass. But I think I’ve done a pretty good job … although ideas for improvements are always welcome! The house numbers are also being listed in the details of the street in the side pane.

More informations about entering house numbers to OSM.

Cemetery

I don’t know about you, my precious reader, but I like visiting cemeteries. Maybe it’s a Viennese thing, they were always crazy about their afterlife. On cemeteries you can visit all these graves of famous people. Even better if you can see them on the map, isn’t it? The important graves on a cemetery are also listed in the side information pane. Time to visit your local cemetery!

What is still missing is the background of the cemeteries, at the moment there are theses crosses, which is not really appropriate for graves of other religions.

There is no approved method for tagging graves in OSM yet, the OpenStreetBrowser currently accepts cemetery=grave and historic=grave.

Borders

Places (Countries, Regions, Cities, Villages, …) are only entered as Point (Node) to the OSM right now. In many cases you also have borders, but it’s hard to see them and the information which border belongs to which node is missing. The OpenStreetBrowser combines the borders and the nodes and shows both of them if you see the places‘ details.

The border is a relation of the type boundary or multipolygon, the tag admin_level matches more or less to the place-tag. To help find the correct border add the node to the relation and give it the role ‚label‘ (which is a proposed feature).

These were just three of the features of the OpenStreetBrowser. I will show you more another time. If you have some ideas or questions, you can post them as comment here or to this page.

Posted in OpenStreetBrowser, OpenStreetMap, Project | 1 Comment »

Unhappy Birthday „Die Krone“!

April 11th, 2009

Living abroad really helps to heal your mind, because you just have a selective perception about things going on in your home country. Which for the case of Austria, is a good thing. But still today I had to read about the 50th birthday of „Die Krone“ (The Crown), Austrias most popular newspaper. Unfortunately this newspaper is well known for it’s influence on politicians and people living in Austria. Not a good thing and not very democratic, but symptomatic for Austrias ’small mind‘ (Kleingeist).

I already enjoyed the movie Kronen Zeitung – Tag für Tag ein Boulevardstück (Kronen Zeitung – Day by day a boulevard play) (see on Youtube) of the critical (German-French, in Austria this wouldn’t be possible) TV station arte some years ago, but the following articles in the Austrian magazin Profil also help to heal the mind (I just hope more Austrians would read them):

So … unhappy 50th birthday „Die Krone“. Hopefully next time you can’t celebrate that much ;)

Posted in Culture, Politix | No Comments »

Plepe's Blog

Cycling once more

How the Power of the Crowd could change Urbanism

Good times in Austria and Bulgaria

Cycling, Cycling, Cycling