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Show HN: Whataaabout.com – unique activity ideas for the holiday break
Hi HN, I’ve been working on whataaabout.com with a friend, while learning to code. It's a fun little website for those short on time but seeking new experiences.
It started from a question, "when was the last time you did an experience you had never done before?". As human beings we need some degree of novelty, to expose ourselves to the unfamiliar and keep learning throughout our lives. So to add a spark to my daily routine and keep novelty coming my way, I started collecting ideas of interesting and unusual activities I’d like to try out sooner or later.
The main selection criteria is things that take a short amount of time and are not too demanding, nor location-specific. I organized them based on categories like uniqueness, humans involved, location, price, time required, and others.
I hope you like it, and I’d be happy to hear your thoughts, as well as any cool activity ideas you might have. Cheers!
- eluketronic 3y agoThe first suggestion that appeared for me was “Trying CBD”. Is that really a “unique activity idea for the holiday break”?
- erkjs 3y ago:D sorry about that! Well, it could be... but no, not ALL of them are, of course
- zenapollo 3y agoIf you do like 80-100mg, yes it def can be! Add freestyle yoga or deep house-cleaning and you’re in for a good day.
- sirsinsalot 3y agoSounds good to me. Each to their own. It'd be boring list if designed to avoid value judgement.
- bongobingo1 3y agoMore exciting than mine, "doing an expense report" or "checking your subscriptions".
- samstave 3y ago"contemplate how that spider you can see in the corner when youre on the toilet, can survive so long without any critters in her web?" "spend ten minutes attempting to come up with a name for your dying plant, because if you just remember to talk to it - it wont leave you like everyone else has" "Promise yourself youll fold the laundry after you rest your eyes for a few minutes" I'm pretty good at this game!
- samstave 3y agohaha mine was "lockpicking" I make custom lock picks was member of TOOOL - and have a few cool tricks up my sleeve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3I6lbpF68Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3I6lbpF68Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwD54DiYprw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwD54DiYprw
- jacquesm 3y agoNeat! In the same spirit I'm trying to put together a minimalist gaming platform for kids that want to learn how to code. The gratification of a game is such that messing with the code if you have access to the source is a given and so far all my kids have taken to hacking on the games almost as fast as they did to playing them. Mission accomplished, nothing like seeing a 7 year old modifying a game and uploading it to a microcontroller, I didn't expect that end result but I'm very happy to take it.
- erkjs 3y agoSounds great! I could probably use it myself, I'm still learning the basics.
- jacquesm 3y agoNeat, I am working on the thing right now and will soon post an article on how it is all put together. What really interests me is to lower the barrier to programming as far as possible but not to have it be some visual stuff where you click things together.
- knowknowledge 3y agoIs there any way to get a permanent link? If I wanted to share an idea with friends, how would I do that?
- erkjs 3y agoThere's no way now, for a quick one, I'd suggest to just take a screenshot
- kevinwang 3y agoI looked at a bunch of the ideas, they were all pretty good!
- erkjs 3y agoThank you, I appreciate it! I spent quite some time selecting and organizing them
- eterm 3y agoSome things I noticed: The list is fairly short (70 activities total). Once filtered it would be easier to simply display all matching activities. Many of the "Low" cost activities have significant upfront costs. I wouldn't describe Archery as "low cost", nor describe Astronomy or a board game night as Free activities! It was easier just to read the raw JSON than browse the site. ( The activities are https://www.whataaabout.com/activities.json https://www.whataaabout.com/activities.json and seem to be static, not based on parameters. )
- pimlottc 3y agoNot sure about archery and astronomy, but free board game meetups are pretty common. There’s normally plenty of people bringing games that you don’t need to bring any yourself.
- erkjs 3y agoThanks for the feedback! It is short yes, mostly because I didn't want to spend more time on it before showing it to somebody. If the feedback is positive I'll add more. About displaying all activities, it's a good point, I though it was more fun to get one at a time, but I might add the display all as another option. And about the categories, I hear you, but take it with a grain of salt, those depends on many factors. For example I consider board game night free because where I am there are many pubs with games you can play. Same with archery, I've been in places where with 20euros or less you can try it for one hour..so yes, it depends.
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- joshuamcginnis 3y agoMy first three recommendations: shooting guns, consuming marijuana brownies, axe throwing. Oh my.
- serf 3y agojust give me a button so that I can look at the list, or pre-cache the future results. it's obnoxious to spam a button over and over again on a website with poor performance from click-til-load.
- y-curious 3y agoSuggestion: reset filters button
- erkjs 3y agoMakes sense, thank you! For now, I'd suggest to reload the page for a quick reset
- imafish 3y agoThe name is off to me. More natural: - whaaatabout - whatabooout
- erkjs 3y agoOuch! I was not sure about it. Is english your first language? I'm asking out of curiosity, I'm italian
- cole-k 3y agoNative English speaker, I agree with the parent. I don't think it's a big deal, though. The site itself is more important than the name. Edit: If I were to say a drawn-out "what about" to someone I would probably say "what abooout" but both suggestions sound okay to me.
- tikwidd 3y agoIt's because the first vowel in 'about' is an unstressed schwa. It sounds unnatural in English to stress or lengthen a schwa. (The only exception I can think of is 'evennn'. e.g. Bob and Sue are at a dinner party with friends. Bob tells everyone that he likes all vegetables. Sue knows he doesn't like broccoli, so she nudges Bob and says "evennn...?". This makes sense if 'even' in fact contains a syllabic nasal consonant rather than schwa: /'ivn=/.) That said, I don't think it's a big deal!
- sentientslug 3y agoNot so sure about this. I like the idea but for my chosen filter combo (which would be a relatively common one) there seem to only be three activities?
- erkjs 3y agoI'll add more activities, I wanted to collect feedback before spending too much time on it
- hn_user82179 3y agoI adore this! It already has neat ideas that never would've occurred to me, and indoor/outdoor or active/sedentary are the options I'd prefer to turn on/off when deciding what to do. Really looking forward to you adding more suggestions!
- erkjs 3y agoHappy to hear it, will do!
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoPerhaps this is a bit "old man yells at cloud", and this is not particularly directed at you (as I see it all over the Internet these days) but I've grown to despise the use of fake, AI-generated "stock images" for sites like this. They make me want to get off the Internet altogether. The reason, though, that I think it's especially bad for your project is because the whole purpose of your site is to try something new. I like the saying "Be brave enough to be bad at something new". So many of us get into a vein (often subconsciously) of always comparing ourselves to others because basically all of the examples we see online are the 0.001% experts that make it to the top of some feed algorithm. So, for example, why use a "perfect model specimen", complete with fake veins, for your "Bouldering" example, https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/bouldering.png https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/bouldering.png? Why use a "Hallmark card perfection" example of a (fake) smiling grandmother and her daughter, https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/familyTree.png https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/familyTree.png, for "Creating a family tree"? An almost fairytale scene for "Scavenger Hunt", https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/scavengerHunt.png https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/scavengerHunt.png (though apparently some of the cars in the lower right are about to be sucked into another dimension). Your site should be about people embracing the joy of the reality of doing something new, not more fantasy land bullshit that doesn't exist. Sorry, will get off my soapbox now and go back to eating my soup.
- bicx 3y agoFor such a small project done while learning to code, it was probably a choice between stock/AI images like these, or no images at all. I think it looks fine, and ads some visual cues for what the activity actually is.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoNot saying they aren't staged, but I still think reality is still a better option, e.g.: https://www.pexels.com/search/bouldering/ https://www.pexels.com/search/bouldering/ https://www.pexels.com/search/grandmother%20and%20grandchildren/ https://www.pexels.com/search/grandmother%20and%20grandchild... https://pixabay.com/images/search/scavenger%20hunt/ https://pixabay.com/images/search/scavenger%20hunt/
- praveen9920 3y agoPerhaps adding a page for users to suggest things would improve location specific stuff.
- o0-0o 3y agoThis list includes taking drugs? Do you think it should have an age acceptance for terms and conditions?
- pests 3y agoCaffeine is a drug yet there's the fad of collecting donations via "buy me a coffee". Or as you might call it "buy drugs for me". Not all drugs are bad, not all drugs are illegal.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- leke 3y agoSpace cakes are where I'm from.
- erkjs 3y agoI think not, I'm not selling drugs. The only two related activities are trying CBD (which is legal in many countries, and depends on the THC amount), and space cake. I'm just giving suggestions, if it's illegal in your location or you don't like it, just ignore it. Terms and conditions sounds like an overkill to me, but let me know if there's something I'm overlooking here.
- pants2 3y agoThis is awesome! I have a list of activities somewhere I need to suggest It would be cool to have daytime/night filters too if we're looking for something to do at night!
- erkjs 3y agoHappy you like and thanks for the suggestion!
- oriettaxx 3y agowow, super cool!
- erkjs 3y agothanks!
- legerdemain 3y agoI got "visit the post office," "go to the supermarket," and "defrost something from the freezer." ...Oh wait, that's just my "to do" list for today.
- glennonymous 3y agoA couple of thoughts: I’m unable to go back with my browser’s ’Back’ key. not being able to revisit an activity reduces the site’s usefulness. Also, I’d recommend adding a feature that lets users add activities.
- erkjs 3y agoNoted, thank you!
- your_friend 3y agoThe website led me to a Wikipedia article with a list of cognitive biases. That was fun, thank you.
- erkjs 3y agoYou are welcomed!
- cwp1989 3y agoThe woodworking stock photo is… funny lol
- erkjs 3y agoyes it was, I updated it with a better one
- nxobject 3y agoI love this! People here like to think that the time for small quirky and lean webpages is gone - well, this is it here and now.
- bonsn 3y agoReally cool can definitely use something like this, thanks! Even more activities would be great. Suggestions: - Perhaps a way to view all activities? or activities within the specified selections rather than having to use the suprise - I noticed repeating activities before hitting the 70 limit, perhaps some memory?
- erkjs 3y agoThanks! Wait, you tried to see ALL of them? That's some commitment. Yes, unfortunately you'll get repeated activities. We set a limit to not repeat an activity you've already seen in the previous 3 cards, but for some filter combinations there's not enough of them
- burlesona 3y agoI would definitely make permalinks to each activity and make the “surprise me” button navigate so you can hit back. This is pretty neat! I think it’s actually nice that the list of activities is not enormously long, because at a certain point it would just feel like too much work to dig through an entire dictionary of possible things to do. So, if you wanted to keep working on it, I might focus more on refining what you have, for example you could have “how to get started” links on each activity.
- burrish 3y agoI don't really like that "trying CBD" was in the list
- docmars 3y agoSuggestion: move your filter selections into URL state so people can share what they've specified.