I’ve been visiting some malls of late, mostly looking for makeup shops. Naturally, this means I was mapping them too 🙂

I was personally looking for brands not on the BDS list - e.l.f., Huda, NARS, Tarte, Milani, Lush, Laneige, Étude, Charlotte Tilbury, and loads of Indian brands like Nykaa, Swiss Beauty, MARS, ColorBar, …

…but I also map the ones to be boycotted, just for sake of completeness - L’Oreal (Maybelline, Nyx, Garnier, Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, …), Estée Slaughter Estée Lauder (MAC, Tom Ford, Clinique, Aramis, Bobbi Brown, …), Revlon, Sephora, Unilever (Lakmé), Johnson and Johnson (Neutrogena)…

(This constantly reminds me of why diversity is important for OSM and why we need more women - few men would add POIs like this in such detail. Hell, it took me quite some time to work up the courage to actually walk into these shops to observe the brands they sell 😅)

Of course, mapping in malls also means…indoor mapping 😇 I love seeing indoor maps on OSM, and I hope routers can start supporting them soon. I recently also learned that, in addition to OsmAPP.org, Cartes.app is another app that uses IndoorEqual to display indoor features…and it also displays 3D buildings in color!

Saket - add 12 shops, 5 amenities, 10 building details, corridors (Achavi)

DLF Mall of India - add 12 shops, 11 amenities, building details, corridors; fix duplicate building and POIs (Achavi)

Most of the indoor mapping in this post has been done by estimation + Vespucci’s indoor mode, without any actual measurement or published plans. The results can be surprisingly decent. But I also took photos of the floor plans…let’s map from them soon 🙂 These malls could make for good mapping party venues as the summer gets worse.

#contraMaps #OpenStreetMap #OSM #BDSIsrael #Makeup

Holy shit. Fuck #Reddit and fuck Reddit mods.

Made a post about the upcoming OSM #Mumbai mapping party in r/Mumbai - mods delete the post within minutes.

Sent them a DM asking why it was deleted, since it was not in contravention of any of their rules - no response in like 12 hours. I assume they just don’t want to reply.

#contraMaps

Photos and statistics of our latest mapping party are out!

https://en.osm.town/@OSMIndia/116589891316807759

A lot of us (the organizers) found this one to be more fun than usual, although we can’t really pinpoint why 🙂

The larger turnout and all the new faces, perhaps?

#contraMaps #OpenStreetMap #OSM #OsmNcr #Delhi #India

While I quite enjoyed the latest mapping party in Delhi, part of me is also struggling with the emotional burden of other realizations.

Not only do we have to contend with only around 10% of people invited actually turning up…

…and only 10% of the people turning up becoming regular participants and active mappers…

…we also have to deal with longtime mappers either quitting mapping parties (but still mapping on their own), or just quitting mapping entirely.

OSM just can’t seem to catch a break.

#contraMaps #OSM #OpenStreetMap #India

Someone at yesterday’s mapping party pointed out that their area had no buildings mapped, so…

East of Kailash - add 452 buildings

Took about 45 minutes. Wish I had a trackball, my laptop trackpad is getting old and difficult to use 😅

(There’s still a ton of buildings left to add, I’ve only added the low-hanging fruit that’s easy to add with the building terracer plugin…help needed! 🙂)

#OpenStreetMap #OSM #contraMaps

Our Reddit post announcing the upcoming mapping party got a whopping 50 upvotes! That’s a first 🙂 (The highest we got in the past was like 20.)

I was also happy with the copywriting - over the years, I’ve seen the text evolve to address just about every question and misconception we’ve encountered, and it now does so in very few words.

But we still only have 10 RSVPs 😅 I hope we see a spurt in RSVPs tomorrow, as tends to happen as the weekend gets closer…

#OpenStreetMap #OSM #Delhi #India #contraMaps

Oh hey, I crossed 7k changesets on #OpenStreetMap ! 😀

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/contrapunctus

(And in October I’ll hit 10 years of having an OpenStreetMap account. 🙂)

#contraMaps

In about 25 minutes, i.e. at 23:00 hours (GMT+05:30), I’ll be mapping some buildings and public transport routes using JOSM. Feel free to watch, talk, ask for OSM help, or even map along yourself 🙂

https://meet.fsci.in/contramaps

#OpenStreetMap #OSM #contraMaps