

Nerdy Day Trips - jgrahamc
http://www.nerdydaytrips.com/

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prawn
Great idea. Dragged my wife out to Lowell Observatory on our honeymoon in the
US. She will be horrified to learn that I now have many more options for
future trips.

My brother, father and I visited the Budweiser Budvar factory in České
Budějovice earlier this year and could've watched the bottling processes and
robotics at work for hours. We talked later about how tours of so many
factories would actually be a really interesting experience. Auto plants,
cooperages, electronics factories, food processing factories, etc. If these
opportunities already exist, I imagine they'd be lost in a sea of common
tourist options.

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hugh3
The trouble with factory tours is that they're uneven in quality. Many of 'em
don't let you see anything interesting. I've soured on them after a couple of
bad experiences. The Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory in Vermont should be
fascinating, but it consists of watching a long video followed by looking
through a window at the factory floor while they point things out to you.
You're not allowed anywhere near the actual machines. The Lindt chocolate
factory in Zurich is even worse -- there's no tour at all, you're just stuck
in a museum room at the factory. The free tasting redeem 'em both somewhat,
but for what it costs to get there you might as well just stay home and eat
ice cream and/or chocolate without the factory.

Best factory I've ever seen wasn't open to the public, it was a factory making
fibrous cement sheets. I've also toured radiotelescopes and the National
Ignition Facility, but the fibrous cement sheet factory was way cooler.

~~~
prawn
The Cadbury factory in Tasmania (Australia) is now similarly weak - no more
factory floor tour: now you just watch a video and see a basic chocolate
making demo. It's also only redeemed by the shop selling discounted and
seconds chocolate.

A real shame.

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kqr2
John Graham-Cumming is also the author of _The Geek Atlas_.

<http://www.geekatlas.com/>

~~~
jgrahamc
Thanks for mentioning my book. For people who are interested in maps there's a
map of all the locations in The Geek Atlas here:

[http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&#...](http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=115534058077032750528.00046797f70f17dec592b&ll=46.55886,-9.140625&spn=162.559086,360&z=1&source=embed)

And if anyone's got the energy they can enter them all on the Nerdy Day Trips
web site. I've done the first 22, but need to do other stuff tonight. If you
do that and enter a significant number (say > 30) then (a) please add a note
"This is one of 128 geeky places from the book, The Geek Atlas" and (b) email
me and I will send you a free signed copy of my book.

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king_jester
As a fan of the The Geek Atlas, this was pretty awesome. It turns out I used
to go past the Mossman Lock Collection every day at an old job many many
months ago, and I didn't even realize it until I saw it put on a map!

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verisimilitude
Don't forget the world's tallest (guyed) structure, a TV broadcast mast in
North Dakota: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVLY-TV_mast>

First man-made structure to exceed 2000 feet in height.

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redcap
Feedback using Firefox 6.0.2

\- no meaningful feedback when mousing over a tag.

\- mouse scroll wheen controls the window's menubar, not zooming in and out.
Disconcerting for someone used to Google Maps.

\- clicking on a tag takes a relatively long time to load.

\- when you load location information maybe make the background a little more
transparent.

~~~
natep
I was definitely looking for a Google Maps-like experience. In addition to
what you said, I'd like to the place description to _not_ cover the
destination, so that I can keep track of where it is on the map.

Also, clicking the search box doesn't clear the existing text. I ended up
clicking multiple times before realizing that the window wasn't frozen.

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aw3c2
If you focus on the UK check out openstreetmap. The map data coverage might be
better. cloudmade has some beautiful styles.

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sambeau
This is brilliant. I hope it stays spam-free. Thanks for building it.

Can we have a way to go back and re-edit our entries as I'd like to add a
website link to one of mine?

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togasystems
What does everyone think of the map as the background portion of the UI? I
found it to be a little cluttered.

I recently wrote similar app for cougar sightings (the cat)
<http://cougarreport.com> . I moved the map into a separate spot.

Any opinions on which layout is the preferred way?

~~~
etcet
Big maps look really good. I remember the first time I used the 'hide panel'
button in Google Maps, I literally voiced 'ohhh'. I'm not a fan of the modal
dialogs on the linked site (nor the cufon - for whatever reason I can only see
a handful of letters). The modal dialogs just add that unnecessary 'close'
step which really detracts from casual browsing of trips.

On your site, you could definitely make the map bigger using a fluid design
and you may be able to show all the cougars to some users. On an aside, the
way you present the data on both the map and text is very slick.

~~~
estel
I had a similar issue with Cufon, and it was resolved with a graphics driver
update. Perhaps try that?

Not that it isn't a hideous piece of software that has no place in the web
eco-system.

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orenmazor
this is awesome. I just discovered another place to hit on my vegas trip next
march.

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abailin
Great idea! A little browser geolocation would be a nice finishing touch.

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estel
Love the idea! But please can you make the map the default action for
mousewheel scrolling? I want to zoom into the map, rather than up and down a
page I'm not going to read anyway.

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marc10000
Reminds me of <http://atlasobscura.com/>

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funkah
How about a little IP geolocation action? The UK isn't exactly a day trip for
me.

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sudont
Also in complaints: _do not_ break Maps's scroll-zoom for me. Unforgivable UI
design.

~~~
jeremydavid
Or at least give the option not to break it. Scroll-zoom drives me crazy - the
slightest touch causes the map to either zoom in fully, or out too far (I wish
all websites that used maps gave me the option to turn it off).

~~~
etcet
This is actually a wider problem than just scroll-zoom. Using JS to hook
scrolling to anything is a UX nightmare. The problem is that on my desktop I
can discretely scroll one step at a time with my mouse but on a laptop using a
trackpad a scroll ends up firing dozens of events. This discrepancy basically
bars scrolling from having any use on the web besides, well, scrolling.

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rnernento
Slowwwwww. :(

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38leinad
are all nerds living in the UK (or going only there for day trips)?

