{"id":43718,"date":"2025-03-02T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=43718"},"modified":"2025-03-01T11:36:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T18:36:39","slug":"retro-recomendo-fun-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/retro-recomendo-fun-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Retro Recomendo: Fun things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anti-boredom<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always carry a deck of cards. Not to play card games, but to practice sleight of hand. It\u2019s easy to have a conversation and practice moves at the same time, and it prevents me from fidgeting. This 4 DVD set, The Royal Road to Card Magic <\/a>is a bargain at $15, and a great way to get started. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geography quiz game<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I thoroughly enjoy playing this geographical guessing game \u201cCity Guesser<\/a>\u201d \u2014 probably because I am good at it. To play online you are shown a first-person view of walking through a city and you have to guess what city in the world you are in. You get points depending on how close you are and how fast you recognize the place. You can play against yourself, or other players, and you can narrow the scope. I\u2019m great in Asia and no good in Africa. The game also works as a virtual vacation because inhabiting someone else\u2019s walk is weirdly comforting. There is a related game, \u201cGeoGuessr<\/a>\u201d, that plops you into a random place on Google Street View, usually not in the city. Here you can look around in all directions on your own \u201cwalk\u201d and control your speed and path. (The free version requires signup.) Some people take this challenge very seriously and there are YouTube channels that follow some of the master navigators, like the champ GeoWizard<\/a>. The lightning speed of his detective work is unbelievable, and as entertaining as magic. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many paper airplane designs<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I was happy to come across this repository of paper airplane designs on Foldnfly<\/a>.com. I didn\u2019t know so many possibilities existed! We had a fun family tournament in the backyard this weekend. There seems to be quick, video tutorials for all of the designs. \u2014 CD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deep YouTube<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My daughter told me about Astronaut.io<\/a>. It\u2019s a website that plays a few seconds of random YouTube videos with almost no views \u2014 like this video of a cafe in Vietnam with 1 view<\/a>, and this one of goats eating weeds near a freeway in rural Japan with 0 views<\/a>. After a few seconds, it starts playing another video. It\u2019s addictive. Many of the videos aren\u2019t in English, which is a plus for me. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feel connected to the Universe<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This helped me get out of my headspace for a bit: NASA\u2019s What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday?<\/a> I entered all the important dates I could think of and went down a Wikipedia wormhole to learn more about the Sombrero Galaxy<\/a> and light echos<\/a>. Every image is awesome and uplifting and teleports me out of my mental space to somewhere else. \u2014 CD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Puzzle source<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The go-to source for physical puzzles is\u00a0Puzzle Masters<\/a>\u00a0in Canada. They have everything, including lots of Japanese puzzles: Puzzle boxes, puzzle locks, jig saw puzzles, rubik\u2019s cubes of all varieties, magic puzzles, toys, collectible puzzles, all very high quality. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started eight years ago, that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we\u2019re trying out something new \u2014\u00a0Retro Recomendo<\/strong>. Once every 6 weeks, we\u2019ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 8 years.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recomendo – issue #451<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2323],"tags":[2324],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43718"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43755,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43718\/revisions\/43755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}