Retro Recomendo: Fun things

Recomendo - issue #451

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’re trying out something new — Retro Recomendo. Once every 6 weeks, we’ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 8 years.

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Anti-boredom

I always carry a deck of cards. Not to play card games, but to practice sleight of hand. It’s 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 is a bargain at $15, and a great way to get started. — MF

Geography quiz game

I thoroughly enjoy playing this geographical guessing game “City Guesser” — 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’m great in Asia and no good in Africa. The game also works as a virtual vacation because inhabiting someone else’s walk is weirdly comforting. There is a related game, “GeoGuessr”, 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 “walk” 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. The lightning speed of his detective work is unbelievable, and as entertaining as magic. — KK

So many paper airplane designs

I was happy to come across this repository of paper airplane designs on Foldnfly.com. I didn’t 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. — CD

Deep YouTube

My daughter told me about Astronaut.io. It’s a website that plays a few seconds of random YouTube videos with almost no views — like this video of a cafe in Vietnam with 1 view, and this one of goats eating weeds near a freeway in rural Japan with 0 views. After a few seconds, it starts playing another video. It’s addictive. Many of the videos aren’t in English, which is a plus for me. — MF

Feel connected to the Universe

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

Puzzle source

The go-to source for physical puzzles is Puzzle Masters in Canada. They have everything, including lots of Japanese puzzles: Puzzle boxes, puzzle locks, jig saw puzzles, rubik’s cubes of all varieties, magic puzzles, toys, collectible puzzles, all very high quality. — KK

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Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others. Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Just 1 Question, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.

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