The Geek Atlas
by John Graham-Cumming · first published 2009
58% recommend42% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Travel guide to real places tied to computing and science history, with sites like nuclear bunkers and early tech landmarks; readers enjoy its unusual style and suit anyone interested in hacker tourism.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The history of science is all around us, if you know where to look. With this unique traveler's guide, you'll learn about 128 destinations around the world where discoveries in science, mathematics, or technology occurred or is happening now. Travel to Munich to see the world's largest science museum, watch Foucault's pendulum swinging in Paris, ponder a descendant of Newton's apple tree at Trinity College, Cambridge, and more. Each site in The Geek Atlas focuses on discoveries or inventions, and includes information about the people and the science behind them. Full of interesting photos and
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It's not exactly what you outline, but The Geek Atlas by John Graham-Cumming lists many places that would fit the description "hacker tourism." It's a travel guide... but it's published by O'Reilly! http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do
on “Submarine Cable Map” ↗You might be interesting in "The Geek Atlas" by JGC https://www.amazon.co.uk/Geek-Atlas-Places-Science-Technolog...
on “Pay a visit to Cambridge’s computer museum” ↗…self publishing route because of its tight integration with Amazon. If you go with a different self publishing company, you're looking at even more hassle trying to make distribution work correctly. Geek Atlas looks good - congrats on that. I'll pick up a copy next time I'm settled down and not on the road. Congrats on that, it's a cool project and piece of art that I respect, notwithstanding our internet scuffling.
on “A year of Geek Atlas sales (some facts about book royalties)” ↗You might like to read my book, The Geek Atlas, which contains many places related to the history of computing. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do
on “Save 50% on all oreilly's ebooks and videos (today only)” ↗My book is three years old now, but it's still relevant. The Geek Atlas: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do
on “Ask HN: Summer reading” ↗…you can write well outside of blogs is evident from your posts. You obviously put in a lot of time sweating how to write before you joined Cloudflare, and that makes your blog posts a joy to read. The Geek Atlas is one of my favorite books by anybody, BTW.
on “Bolt founder on Stripe/YC” ↗When I signed my contract with O'Reilly to work on The Geek Atlas they sent me a copy of this book as part of my 'welcome to the O'Reilly family' pack. It's excellent. I'd recommend reading it and Strunk and White for anyone who needs to write non-fiction.
on “On writing well” ↗I must say that your book "The Geek Atlas", uses a unique and quite interesting style. Perhaps you might know of a book that is similar in style but based on literature? Something like: The booklover's Atlas
on “Dirty Little Secret of Success” ↗At the risk of being shouted at for recommending my own book, The Geek Atlas. This location is in there, as are two nuclear bunkers (one in the US where Congress would have hidden, and one in the UK where the Prime Minister would have gone). And there are other significant nuclear…
on “Notes from the No Lone Zone - A computer scientist looks at ICBM security.” ↗…that Apress don't give a --- about the quality of their books. Or perhaps I should be more circumspect and say that they leave those decisions entirely up the authors and just publish it as-is. BTW Geek Atlas was great. I bought it for my dad, but my mum ended up reading it the most.
on “A year of Geek Atlas sales (some facts about book royalties)” ↗John Graham-Cumming is also the author of The Geek Atlas. http://www.geekatlas.com/
on “Nerdy Day Trips” ↗…information, as not everyone will need it. For the data format: How about a simple CSV file with 3 fields: "domain-part,path,url". This would translate to such entries: amazon,a, http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Atlas-Places-Science-Technology/d... If you compress the file (or start a new file every week/month) this shouldn't be much of a burden for your server.
on “Twi.bz: the transparent URL shortener” ↗I recently wrote The Geek Atlas (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596523206/). The main tool I used was XMLMind XML Editor since the book was marked up using DocBook XML. Before I started doing the XML work I was writing using emacs.…
on “Ask HN: do you write book?” ↗You know, I don't like Scribd either and it pissed me off royally when The Geek Atlas appeared on the site for free download. But this lawsuit seems bogus to me. When my book was up on Scribd they quickly removed it once the publisher complained and it's now gone. It annoys me greatly…
on “Scott vs. Scribd, Inc” ↗OK. What would you like me to talk about? Could perhaps talk about what it's like to write a book for O'Reilly based on my experience of writing The Geek Atlas. Or talk about the Analytical Engine project. Or how everyone in London should be using CloudFlare. Or bit banging on micro controllers. Or what I like about Go. Or being a programmer over 40 :-) Or..?
on “London Hacker News meetup: Thursday, 18 Oct” ↗