User:Alchamist

Hi, I am Jay Eames, and I am a relative newbie to OSM, but not to mapping and geospatial programming as a whole. I am mapping around the Stone, Cold Meece and Yarnfield areas of Staffordshire, as well as some of Stafford as well, where I work. You can reach me at alchamist at gmail dot com. (Yes, I know "Alchamist" is spelt wrong, but there is a reason behind it! :-) )

I am the Operations Room Manager for a company that deals with Police vehicle removal schemes across the UK, so mapping is a vital and integral part of the work that we do. We work with PAF data, as well as ESRI polygon mapping and search, and various other geospatial requirements, all of which are programmed in house. I also work as a freelance programmer, working with PHP, ASP.NET, C#, C++, VB.NET, Java as well as MySQL/PostgreSQL/MSSQL, as well as being an administrator of one of the largest websties dedicated to Vauxhall Frontera's

Unfortunately, being part of a 24/7/365 "bluelight" operation as well as freelancing means that my availability to attend social meetings/mapping parties is severely limited.

I am a strong believer in open source software, and have been involved in some fairly large projects such as Asterisk PBX and OpenSim

My GPS to OSM Platform

Currently I produce all of my GPS traces on my HTC Touch Diamond running OSMtracker software. As this is my mobile as well, it means I never leave home without it! The GPS is reliable and usually locks on within seconds of starting up - which compared to my ageing Road Angel satnav is a flash. It also means that with the car charge lead and 4Gb of internal storage on the phone, I can track for hours without having to stop if needs be. So far I have started small, but as time permits I will increase this, including mapping some of the more obscure "roads" across the country that I use when go Greenlaning