On Sunday it'll be exactly a year since spectacular flash floods hit Berkshire on 20 July 2007. At the time I was working for BBC local radio and, the following Sunday night, got so bored in front of the TV that I started adding photos of the floods - sent in by the public - to a custom Google map.

We published the map on the BBC local website for Berkshire the following morning, and it got incredibly positive feedback, especially when we added more features like video from YouTube and News 24 (as was), audio from BBC local radio, and flood warnings plotted along each river, then colour-coded according to severity.

The flood map even helped me get my next job. I'd wangled my way into a meeting of BBC Sport's Olympics team, two days before my job interview in London, when the map cropped up in a presentation, and many nice things were said - even though nobody in the room knew I'd made it. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the map became the cornerstone of my pitch for the job!

What better way to celebrate the map, then, than by making another map. The 2008 model is BBC Sport's map of the Beijing Olympics, and so far it's also had plenty of really nice reviews, both from the good folk who come to our website for sports news, and from mapping experts who've seen it.

This one wasn't quite a Sunday-night-with-crap-telly job. I sorted the editorial side - in other words, what you should see on the map, how it's all worded, which pictures we use and all that - but some very clever people made the graphics and coded lots of clever tricks into it, things I can only dream of doing myself. You can read more about how we put the map together on the Olympics blog.

On Friday evening I was getting into a lift to go home, and another gentleman just nipped in before the doors closed. On the way down to the ground floor, he turned to me and struck up conversation:

"Are you Ollie?"
"Er, yes! Yes, I am."
"Yeah, I recognised you from your photo on the blog. I've been having a play with the map and I can't find the cycling venue, where is it?"
"It's to the south-west of Beijing, a few miles out of the centre. There's a few cycling venues all clustered together."
"Ah, cheers. Thanks!"

And with that the doors opened, and he left. I mean... is that map fame?

Scorecard: 19 July
Originally uploaded by Dayorama

Played 18 at the Northolt Golf Club today and shot 75 on the par 58 course, i.e. 17 over.

Really pleased with my short game today - I think all but three drives went awry somehow, but my pitching and putting was the best it's ever been. This is the remorseful cry of every golfer I know, but if only I could marry the good driving days with the good putting days, I'd be showing the Shark a thing or two up at Birkdale.

Also worth noting that for the first time ever (I think), I've birdied the same hole twice in succession. I took two at Northolt's 2nd on Monday, and two again tonight. And then lost a ball there when I played it as the 11th, so normal service has now been resumed.

I'll be playing another 18 with Amy J near Cheltenham tomorrow, bringing my total number of holes played since last Saturday to 81. I don't do things by halves - when I like golf, I really like golf.