Blimey, what a couple of weeks it’s been! I honestly wasn’t expecting quite this level of activity on nerdydaytrips.org when I last posted on earlier in the month. Turns out when you give nerds a map and ask them to add their favourite geeky destinations, they really go for it. Who knew?

The Numbers Game

Let’s dive into the stats, because I know at least three of you reading this will appreciate them:

Since June 11th:

• 185 new places added
• 25 locations removed (mostly because someone’s idea of “nerdy” was a bit… loose)
• 250 edits to existing locations - people actually care about getting the details right
• Around 20 code tweaks to keep the site from falling over
• 25 new issues raised, with 20 already sorted

Not bad for a side project that started as “wouldn’t it be nice if…”

Heroes of the Spreadsheet

I need to properly thank some folks who’ve been putting in serious work while I’ve been tinkering with other things.

Hugo Mills (darkling) has been an absolute legend. He’s methodically working through all the pre-2016 entries - you know, the ones I hastily imported without much quality control - and actually checking they’re still relevant and accurate. It’s the kind of tedious but essential work that makes the difference between a useful resource and a digital graveyard. Cheers, Hugo!

Stuart Langridge has been fixing my dodgy code and adding genuinely useful features. The latest one makes sure the “Add a Place” page remembers where you were looking on the main map, which is one of those obvious-in-retrospect improvements that I should have thought of ages ago.

Big thanks too to andibing, mcphail, and debb1046 for their steady stream of contributions, and to all those on GitHub for actually bothering to report bugs instead of just tutting and moving on.

What’s Actually New

We’ve got some properly interesting additions to the map now. The Blender Institute in Amsterdam, the Great Lakes Science Center, and the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force are just a few of the gems people have shared. It’s fascinating to see what different folks consider worth a nerdy pilgrimage. It’s also wonderful to see the names and locations of museums, heritage sites, and good old steam trains, all over the world!

On the technical side, we’ve squashed some encoding bugs that were making markers vanish (always embarrassing when your map loses bits of itself), and made the mobile experience less of a finger-gymnastics exercise.

It’s been a genuinely encouraging couple of weeks. The site feels like it’s finding its feet, and having actual humans contribute makes it infinitely better than anything I could cobble together on my own.

Keep those submissions coming!