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Show HN: Whataaabout.com – unique activity ideas for the holiday break (whataaabout.com)
235 points by erkjs on Dec 26, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 93 comments
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!



Some 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 and seem to be static, not based on parameters. )


Thanks 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.


I really like the idea and the site looks nice. It's good the list is short as of now, as quality of suggestions is crucial. I'll be absolutely looking at it, sometimes I get really too narrow in focus.


I appreciate it!


I'd remove "Try CBD" and "Space Cake" once you've got more options. The latter is still illegal in many places and for the former is just gauche.


Plus the CBD one appeared when I had the "Kid Friendly" filter selected :-|


Seriously or are you trolling? If so, it's some strange bug, Kids friendly is not a category assigned to that activity


The issue may be that your filters act as ORs whereas someone might interpret them as ANDs. If I filter for Social+Kids and Culinary, the CBD/space cake ones come up.


Oh right, makes sense, that must be it!


Well it is FDA approved to treat epilepsy in children :-)


It’s also commonly used for treating parenthood in parents.


No, we use THC for that, CBD is for physical back pains.


Didn't HN just get in an uproar over T Mobile disallowing marketing texts where the topic was illegal in one state but legal in another?

So do we want legal-in-some states items or not?


Who is "we"? There's more than one person commenting on HN and they don't always agree.


The people who I describe, which were a bunch.


Surprisingly, CBD is illegal in Hong Kong.


CBD = Central Business District too. Worth a try!


> a board game night as Free activities!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1120/print-play

&

https://boardgamegeek.com/forum/974620/bgg/design-contests

BGGs site is always a bit confusing to me to navigate, but searching for "pnp" or "print and play" and a contest year will probably surface a lot of good "free" (or at least, free to print....) You can at least certainly get a bunch printed for cheaper than 1 boxed game and if you dont like half of them, no drama.

Shutup and sit down has done a few round ups of solo-print-and-plays https://inv.tux.pizza/search?q=shut+up++and+sit+down+print+a.... I'm sure there are people on here that can recommend some +1-player pnp games.


Besides, board games are dirt cheap entertainment. Assuming a cost of 50 of your local currency, split between four people for entertainment for perhaps six to ten hours is hard to beat. And you can typically sell the games to recover 50% of what you paid.

In fact, if you buy used, and resell when you're bored of the game, if can be pretty much free.


I kinda like that it shows only one activity at a time. If one doesn't like it, they can always spin for a new one. Makes it better than the typical, google seo farmed lists. Also, let's you focus on one and make a decision.

In regards to the costs, again, what's low cost for one might be different for another. My archery club allows you to show up and try it for a session (or two) before enrolling. Astronomy nights don't cost us anything or much fuel, if at all. Been to plenty of board game nights where there were no entrance cost.

To share some contrasting opinions.


I agree, I like being forced to make a decision on an activity sequentially. Prevents optimization, which is a common way to spin around doing nothing.


I feel the same way, it's good you are presented with one option and can process it in depth. Let's. Slow. Down.


> I wouldn't describe Archery as "low cost"

Obviously the range is very broad, but around my parts you can get away with archery for about ~15 EUR per person (and up). That's not very expensive. What is "low cost" also obviously depends on the person.


Yup. About $20 USD where I grew up, with several archery ranges at public parks. I’d probably spring $20 for a few more niceties.


Having bought basic archery gear for 3 people in the last year, unless you're talking about a toy longbow, $20 is not going to get you anywhere. Even buying the absolute necessities for a basic barebow recurve setup, let's list things off:

Riser, plunger, arrow rest, limbs, string, arrows, finger tab. That's the absolute bare minimum. You'll also probably want an arm guard unless you don't value your forearms. You can't do this for less than US$150-$200, unless you find someone basically giving away second hand equipment.


They're talking about rental archery, aka. "I give you $20 and in turn can use your bow and arrow for an hour."


Not 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.


Or just play Go online.


And Board Game Arena has many more online board games (non-premium) for free.


>>It was easier just to read the raw JSON than browse the site*

this is hilarious. Like when us it guys have to call a call center triage desk "yes, i already rebooted...."


For me astronomy night would be much longer than an hour, and yeah not free because of fuel costs.

More like 3-4 hours, and low (but not zero) cost.


At a basic level astronomy requires you to wait until twilight or dusk, and then tilt your head up :-), which costs nothing. You can also enhance it with an night sky app which are usually free too. If you have binoculars hanging around grab them.


Is there any way to get a permanent link? If I wanted to share an idea with friends, how would I do that?


There's no way now, for a quick one, I'd suggest to just take a screenshot


The first suggestion that appeared for me was “Trying CBD”. Is that really a “unique activity idea for the holiday break”?


Sounds good to me. Each to their own. It'd be boring list if designed to avoid value judgement.


haha 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=qwD54DiYprw


If 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.


I often suspect it’s the trace amounts of remaining THC that make higher doses of CBD a good time.


How do you clean deep house music? The stuff I listen to is fairly clean as is?


Try something with dirty stinky bass.


More exciting than mine, "doing an expense report" or "checking your subscriptions".


"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!


:D sorry about that! Well, it could be... but no, not ALL of them are, of course


My first three recommendations: shooting guns, consuming marijuana brownies, axe throwing. Oh my.


Just don’t do them all at the same time, and it should be pretty fun.


This reads like those SEO spam headlines that link to a slideshow.


Oh wow, you got lucky! These are probably the most hardcore ones


The name is off to me. More natural:

- whaaatabout

- whatabooout


Ouch! I was not sure about it. Is english your first language? I'm asking out of curiosity, I'm italian


Native 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.


It'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!


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.


Sounds great! I could probably use it myself, I'm still learning the basics.


Neat, 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.


This list includes taking drugs? Do you think it should have an age acceptance for terms and conditions?


I 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.


Caffeine 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.


Space cakes are where I'm from.


I 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.


I looked at a bunch of the ideas, they were all pretty good!


Thank you, I appreciate it! I spent quite some time selecting and organizing them


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?


I'll add more activities, I wanted to collect feedback before spending too much time on it


Really 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?


Thanks! 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


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!


Happy to hear it, will do!


Suggestion: reset filters button


Makes sense, thank you! For now, I'd suggest to reload the page for a quick reset


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.


Noted, thank you!


I don't really like that "trying CBD" was in the list


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.

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? Why use a "Hallmark card perfection" example of a (fake) smiling grandmother and her daughter, 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 (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.


It's a fair point and I partially agree with you. The reason why the images are this way is on one side because that's what the AI comes up with, which is clearly biased (but it took me long enough just to get to a photorealistic look). And on the other side because I think a more aspirational look will push you more than a strictly realistic one. If I see the muscled guy bouldering I think how I could become, and it just looks "easier". While if I see a regular person who can barely hold onto the wall I just think of how bad the experience might be and could end up not even considering it.


> And on the other side because I think a more aspirational look will push you more than a strictly realistic one. If I see the muscled guy bouldering I think how I could become, and it just looks "easier". While if I see a regular person who can barely hold onto the wall I just think of how bad the experience might be and could end up not even considering it.

This is the part I pretty strongly disagree with you. There is a reason "Comparison is the thief of joy" is a popular saying. People are pretty quickly going to be exposed to the reality of the situation, at which point the gap between their fantasy and reality will be a huge demotivator.

In any case, there are lots of free stock image sites you can use to find images that actually depict reality. Not saying they aren't staged, but there are lots that I think would be "friendlier" to newbies, which is what your site is about.


> There is a reason "Comparison is the thief of joy" is a popular saying.

New to me! But it’s great and I will use it. A related one that I use (with my kids) is “Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.”


For 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.


Not 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/grandmother%20and%20grandchild...

https://pixabay.com/images/search/scavenger%20hunt/


These actually looks great, I didn't know about Pexels. I'll have a look, thank you!


This 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!


Happy you like and thanks for the suggestion!


I 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.


Suggestion: move your filter selections into URL state so people can share what they've specified.


Perhaps adding a page for users to suggest things would improve location specific stuff.


The website led me to a Wikipedia article with a list of cognitive biases.

That was fun, thank you.


You are welcomed!


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."

...Oh wait, that's just my "to do" list for today.


The woodworking stock photo is… funny lol


yes it was, I updated it with a better one


wow, super cool!


thanks!




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