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.<p>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!
Some things I noticed:<p>The list is fairly short (70 activities total). Once filtered it would be easier to simply display all matching activities.<p>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!<p>It was easier just to read the raw JSON than browse the site. ( The activities are <a href="https://www.whataaabout.com/activities.json" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.whataaabout.com/activities.json</a> and seem to be static, not based on parameters. )
Neat! 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.
I would definitely make permalinks to each activity and make the “surprise me” button navigate so you can hit back.<p>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.
Not 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?
Really cool can definitely use something like this, thanks! Even more activities would be great.<p>Suggestions:<p>- Perhaps a way to view all activities? or activities within the specified selections rather than having to use the suprise<p>- I noticed repeating activities before hitting the 70 limit, perhaps some memory?
I 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!
A 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.
Perhaps 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.<p>The reason, though, that I think it's <i>especially</i> bad for your project is because the whole purpose of your site is to try something <i>new</i>. 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, <a href="https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/bouldering.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/bouldering.png</a>? Why use a "Hallmark card perfection" example of a (fake) smiling grandmother and her daughter, <a href="https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/familyTree.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/familyTree.png</a>, for "Creating a family tree"? An almost fairytale scene for "Scavenger Hunt", <a href="https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/scavengerHunt.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.whataaabout.com/imgs/scavengerHunt.png</a> (though apparently some of the cars in the lower right are about to be sucked into another dimension).<p>Your site should be about people embracing the joy of the <i>reality</i> of doing something new, not more fantasy land bullshit that doesn't exist.<p>Sorry, will get off my soapbox now and go back to eating my soup.
This is awesome! I have a list of activities somewhere I need to suggest<p>It would be cool to have daytime/night filters too if we're looking for something to do at night!
just 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.
I got "visit the post office," "go to the supermarket," and "defrost something from the freezer."<p>...Oh wait, that's just my "to do" list for today.