An interview with a bear

Sometime in February, I was in a payphone somewhere in Los Baños while my interview subject is in a motel in Angeles, Pampanga. it was a Thursday afternoon, and I was killing time before my next class.

Ian: Good afternoon. I’m Ian and I’m going to interview you. Is that okay with you, sir?

Brownie: Sure. You can call me “Brownie”. I don’t want other people to know my “other name”.

Ian: Okay. Speaking of names, how did you enter the country?

Brownie: I flew from Tokyo to Manila using an assumed name. Used a Brazilian passport during my arrival, will use another identity when I get out – that is, when I survive raids by authorities.

Ian: Okay… So, how’s the Philippines?

Brownie: Leaves much to be desired. I LOL’d at immigration since they’re telling Filipinos to turn in our kind instead of turning them away. Thanks to that, more of my kind are entering your country in droves.

Ian: I think that the Tourism Department wouldn’t like to hear that. Anyway, what are the other aspects that you’ve noticed?

Brownie: I love the food, and I love the people even more. Especially that special group of people that makes my heart warm. Speaking of warm, the weather is hot and I can barely tolerate it. To be honest, it’s like Cancun.

Ian: Do you like the weather?

Brownie: Not that much, but it’s way better than summers in Brazil.

Ian: Have other places in mind?

Brownie: CamSur, Boracay and a lot of major cities plus typical tourist spots.

Ian: Are you afraid that something bad will happen to you once you enter Mindanao, considering that the area is volatile?

Brownie: Fuck no. Here to spread the love, not the hate. I’m sure that the people in Mindanao will understand.

Ian: you have a busy schedule, right?

Brownie: Yup. I have a flight later in the evening and its chartered by yours truly. If I go the commercial route, it would be a horrendous experience. plus, I could be arrested at the airport.

Ian: Why aren’t you in Laguna?

Brownie: No time, maybe in the summer.

Ian: Do you have time to go to Malacañang and deliver a message to our sports car-loving president?

Brownie: Not in the near future, but he should repeal RA 9775. “Protecting the children” is a great excuse to impose political controls and censorship and I don’t want that. Don’t cry running to me or to Anonymous once your country ends up like China or even worse, North Korea.

Ian: I understand that you’re busy buying and packing stuff for your flight. DO you have Skype? I may have to do a follow-up interview tomorrow or on the other day.

Brownie: Sure, Ian. I’ll give you my Skype account off the record.

Ian: Okay, Brownie.

This is the first part of my interview. In the next 3-4 weeks, I’m going to post at least two more interviews with the same subject. He will drop hints about his identity and personality in the succeeding interviews.

Pending Interview

A few months ago, I interviewed a special subject. I ignored the interviews until he sent me a friend request on Facebook. I ignored it, thinking that it was another attention whore. Minutes after I ignored his friend request, he sent me a message.

“Why the fuck aren’t you publishing my interview on your blog?”

I replied

“Busy with schoolwork”

After five minutes of electronic correspondence, he went offline but not before he sent this request:

“As much as possible, publish the first part of the interview on or before June 30. You can deal with other parts of the interview next month. Hope you make contact real soon!”

Yes, it’s time to GTFO of inactivity. Time to post an interview with someone who influenced me the most for the past year or so.

the mapping challenge

Over a year ago, I was “inspired” by a BBC News report about OpenStreetMap – it was about a mapping party, which was held in Atlanta (a large city located in the southeastern part of the United States). They planned to make the said place “the world’s most digitally mapped city“. According to the said report, approximately 200 volunteers will map out various parts of the city from 15 – 20 “mapping stations”. I think everyone in Team OSM is happy because of that – they’re starting from freeways and motorways, then on to other major roads, then on to smaller roads. If that part is done, they can go map the points of interest, like pubs, schools, churches, museums and restaurants. Although the mapping party ended over 18 months ago, efforts to update and verify the data, and promoting the map are ongoing.

Since then, I’ve decided to turn a large area encompassing San Pablo City, Los Baños and other areas in between into some of CALABARZON’s most digitally mapped areas. I’ve managed to get some alleys and eskinitas on the map, and they aren’t on Google Maps. One piece of the OSM jewel is accurate names for most streets. The other one is node overload – which means adding nodes representing amenities, like restaurants, internet cafe’s, and at least two make that three famous/infamous trees. The former jewel is shining in both San Pablo and Los Baños, while the latter is implemented in the Grove, Silangan Road area, the Raymundo area and other areas in Los Baños, while simultaneously doing it in San Pablo City. (Just a reminder – Google Maps may have superior coverage and better name recall, but OpenStreetMap has an advantage that Mapmaker moderators try to flush down the drain – correcting and verifying the data in near-real time. In some cases, I’ve even added POI’s, even if those places are yet to be opened. Do note that some POI’s in Google Maps are either misspelled, have different names from reality, or do not exist)

But the secret recipe to my stew is this – buildings, housenumbers and landuse in the middle of San Pablo City.

Before I got my GPS, I added a bunch of buildings in Metro Manila through Yahoo! Aerial Imagery. Sadly, some of those buildings that I added were either obscured by cloud cover, not in its coverage area, or the imagery was considered more or less obsolete in some places (like the SM Mall of Asia Complex and Fort Bonifacio). The good news is that there are dedicated mappers out there to add more detail to the map that we all love, especially in places that have crappy aerial coverage, regardless if those places are inside or outside the metropolis.

However, San Pablo City used is a different story. No aerial imagery, just GPS traces and usually less-than-refined guesswork. But those obstacles aren’t a problem. I already added over 20 buildings within San Pablo City, and at least two outside the city limits without the help of aerial imagery. Not only that, I added more landuse and housenumbers and other things that need to be mapped.

Since Microsoft allowed OpenStreetMap to use Bing aerial imagery for tracing, I was excited since it covers a good part of southern Luzon. (Plus, it has newer aerial images than Yahoo!) What surprised me is that Bing extended its coverage a month after they initially allowed OSM to trace over its aerial images. Luckily, San Pablo City and most of Laguna are covered by the new aerial images. Since then, I’ve been realigning and tracing a lot of amenities, shops, buildings and various Map Features. Compared to three years ago when San Pablo City was depicted as an area with a bunch of roads with little or no POI’s, the city is on its way to becoming one of the most mapped areas in the country.

Other links

OpenStreetMap in Fox News http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yidk6zI7gY

Map of Atlanta (OpenStreetMap): http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=33.7489&lon=-84.3899&zoom=13

Making a list cartographically important

Recently, I stumbled upon an article on the ten things to do while in Los Baños. After careful research and extensive lurking, I found something that can make the list “cartographically” important: The Open Static Map Service provided by MapQuest.

After playing around with the feature, I was able to put markers on the places/areas mentioned on the list and create this map:

Here are the stats:

Center: 14.167,121.24364
Size: 720,540 (Within the Facebook image size limit)
Type: Map
Zoom: 13
Imagetype: png
POI’s:

1,14.163146,121.215645,-20,0|

2,14.134661,121.192331|

3,14.169616,121.244538,35,0|

4,14.168919,121.241094,-40,0|

5,14.173642,121.243197,25,0|

6,14.16816,121.254687,30,0|

7,14.169179,121.244731,-30,-10|

8,14.181433,121.230912,0,-40|

9,14.165008,121.241566,-30,0|

10,14.159796,121.242757,0,30

Link to map: here
Source of POI’s: here
Data “converted” to POI’s by Ian Lopez

Map: CC BY-SA 2.0 OpenStreetMap and MapQuest

Note: POI # 3 points to Boston Cafe (Grove Branch)