Poached Eggs

Panagyursky style poached eggs

Old Vs. New

Well, as mentioned in the previous post my trusty old cycling shoes have given up. Today I purchased a pair of new shoes. They are far worse for walking but seem much better for cycling which of course is nice.

Sole Crackage

My precious cycling shoes suffer from a cracked sole! After four years of daily summer use and many thousands of kilometers one of them finally gave up and I now have the unwelcome task of finding an equally excellent pair of shoes.

Chilly

Last week was pretty cold, at least compared to what we have experienced earlier this year, so the cycling suffered. I had actually planned on participating in a race saturday but a warm bed and excessive amounts of tea seemed like an excellent substitute. During the holidays I have managed to do some mapping for OSM though and right now Lund seems in really good shape – almost all roads are covered. Recently a new contributor, Grillo, has mapped lots of roads. Blastur and tobias have also been frequent contributors. Plenty of kudos goes to them.

Tux Shop

Thursday I went for a couple of beers with some friends from work.  While walking to the bar I noticed a store I hadn’t seen before.  Its logo caught my eye:

Sunday Ride

In what has become a weekly tradition, I joined CK Lunedi for a Sunday ride. Today a fair number of people showed up (last time we were a total of three riders) and seven cyclists left Lund shortly after 9 am. The ride took us due north and for almost two and a half hours the wind fought us for every inch. I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Mappin’ Vallkärra

Today I took a detour on my way to the shopping area in order to do a GPS track containing most streets in the small village of Vallkärra just north of Lund. It’s fun to put stuff in a previously empty area of OSM. Still plenty of mapping left to do in the northern parts of Lund though.

Bundles of Banitsa

Made Banitsa today, a Bulgarian speciality. In essence Banitsa is a pie-like dish having a filling of egg and cheese – although my impression from after tried it is that any tasty filling should do just fine. Of course, since this was the first time, I made it according to my impression of “that is how you’re supported to make proper Banitsa”. Unfortunately I could not find Sirene cheese so a rather nice Feta had to jump in as a substitute.

The dough should be very firm and simply consist of flour, water, salt, some oil and perhaps some vinegar (I used some vinegar and thought it gave a nice touch). Serious kneeding is required to get it in a nice state for making very thinly layered strips – this is the big trick when it comes to Banitsa. I used a combination of a rolling pin, elbow greese, and cursing to make a number of somewhat presentable strips. I’m not sure about the traditional technique for making these strips is but I imagine that Bulgaria is a net importer of elbow greese.

Anyway, spread some filling (eggs, cheese, and oil) on each strip, roll em’ up and put in nice spiral pattern in a pie pan. Stick in oven at about 200°C until they look ready, took just over 40 minutes for me and when the oven has done its thing, try to avoid stuffing yourself with the burning hot, but delighfully scented, Banitsa. Instead let it cool down for a while under a kitchen towel before cutting up in portions of potentially life threatening size. Very very tasty but I still managed to leave enough to properly evaluate its potential as a fridge cool snack.

Baking Rocks!

Man I loves to bake. Admittedly, for the two loaves I just made I cheated and used a ready made blend of flour. However, it was the first time I did that and it was organic so I’m not going to feel ashamed dammit! Still tasted absolutely excellent though!

OpenStreetMap

Lately I have begun contributing to the OpenStreetMap project. I guess you can think of it as a sort of Wikipedia but with the intent being to create free maps rather than a free encyclopedia. Working on OSM is lots of fun for me since one of the primary means of creating the raw data used to trace roads is by collecting GPS tracks. Basically the procedure I use is to go for a bike ride with the GPS running and taking plenty of photos of street signs. Back home I correlate the photos with the GPS track to easily see the geographic position of each photo. Finally, I load the track and photos into the JOSM mapping software where I can use the track and photos to create roads with correct names. It is also possible to map positions of libraries, sporting facilities, bus stops, and lots more.

The visual impact of your work is also quite satisfying. For example, compare the before and after images of the mapping I did of the village Stångby earlier today:

I bet people who see me photographing street signs think I’m a bit crazy. I don’t mind though, I live to entertain