Hey Team! My birthday is next week!!!! I’m pretty excited to be 27! That’s a perfect cube! Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m getting for my birthday yet (!!! surprises!!!!), but I really like Bilbo’s idea of giving presents to other people on your birthday, so I thought I would get you something!
Unfortunately, I’m pretty cheap, and you’re the Internet, so it’ll have to be free things. So, here are 27 free things I like that you might like too! I organized them into categories for you:
1-5 are great web tools for different things!
1. GoodReads
Sorry the first one isn’t much of a gift, since you already know all about it
I know I talk about GoodReads all the time and you probably know all about it because you have it anyway. If not, you should!
2. Postable
Super simple and convenient interface!
Postable is a free online address book! I like it because it’s cute and easy, and they provide a link you can send to people to fill in their own info that automatically gets added to your contacts.
3. Feedly
It does its job well
Feedly is what I migrated to after the sad death of GoogleReader. It’s the only way to keep up with all the RSS feeds I follow!
4. Postcrossing
I just learned about Post Crossing pretty recently, but I am all in
Basically you sign up to send someone in the world a postcard (you’re assigned an address), and someone in the world sends you a postcard!! Exciting!!
5. Geosense
Strangely addictive
It’s a simple game: two players, each looking at a map, have a few seconds to click where they think a given city is. Points are given based on closest distance. There are different maps to choose from (world or USA) and I can waste hours getting pwned by someone from Finland.
Gifts 6-9 are cool places to learn something!
6. Io9
This stuff is important
Sometimes science news, sometimes interesting TV/movie facts. WHATEVER
7. The Mary Sue
I am all about this concept, incidentally
The Mary Sue has movie and TV news as well as random fan-made creations.
The “Daily Life” posts are often my favorite
The Big Picture is part of the Boston Globe’s website that publishes photo series, either on specific news events, specific themes (spring around the world), or just “Daily Life” for a particular week.
Education or entertaining, always fascinating
A repository of charts from around the Internet, from super serious graphs about income inequality to silly Venn diagrams about pizza.
Numbers 10-14 are funny!
10. NYTimes Haiku
Some are funnier than others
This blog just collects sentences from the New York Times that are unwitting haikus. It’s best to read them in a dramatic voice.
11. Pleated Jeans
END THE SUFFERING
Pleated Jeans has funny pictures and videos, some of them reblogged from elsewhere and some of them homemade. If you ever just want to see 20 pictures of llamas being amazing or the philosophical musings of tumblr, this is where you should go.
12. Did You Just Eat Sofa Pizza?
Note the pizzay background
Sofa Pizza is pretty similar to Pleated Jeans, without the original content. BUT with a delicious pizza background.
It never gets old
Literally Unbelievable collects misguided facebook reactions to Onion articles, and I love it.
14. STFU, Parents
This one doesn’t update as much anymore, and I’m sad
This blog is entirely devoted to the ridicness of parental overshare on social media. Like people who live tweet giving birth in all the gory detail or share pictures of their children’s full diapers. I’m sad that it doesn’t update as much as it used to, but really, I guess anyone would get tired of an email inbox just full of screencaps of placentas someone posted to facebook. Because that is totally a thing people do now.
Numbers 15-18 are cool webcomics!
Yes please, more 90s nostalgia
This comic is baller. It updates every Friday with the summary of an X-Files episode in comic form.
16. Extra Ordinary
The subtitle of this comic should just be “Adorable Anthropomorphization”
This comics are usually very simple (4 panels, pencil), but surreal and often sweet. The art style is also super cute!
17. The Fox Sister
The art in this one is painstakingly detailed and beautiful
This comic is about a girl whose family was murdered by a kitsune, a legendary nine-tailed fox that can shape shift and wreck up your shit. Now she’s an adult and wants revenge!
I tried to find you an excerpt that made sense out of context of the narrative
Girls with Slingshots is a super long-running webcomic featuring a big cast, including one sentient cactus plant. And a ghost cat. There are also librarians, romance detectives, a bunch of non-traditional relationships, booze, Halloween specials, and sometimes recipes.
Speaking of recipes, Numbers 19-22 are food related!
19. Foodgawker
Food Gawker is pretty self-explanatory
Pictures of delicious food! With links that lead to recipes of delicious food!
20. Pinch of Yum
Yummy!!!
I really like the variety of recipes on this blog! And usually the ingredients and techniques are not to exotic or time-consuming so I don’t have to block off the entire afternoon just to make dinner from one of the recipes.
21. SugarHero!
SugarHero’s webdesign is also amazing
SugarHero’s desserts always look amazing. Some of them are way beyond me, like fancily decorated cakes, but all of them look awesome!
These are links to CATEGORIES of even more recipes
Sally’s Baking Addiction always has awesome pictures and very clear recipes, but I like how she doesn’t concentrate on just desserts. You can bake savory things too! And, of course, the desserts are always the most tempting, but it’s nice to make something savory once in a while.
Numbers 23-26 are craft related!
23. Ravelry
I’ve mentioned this before too
Ravelry is a great resource for knitters or crocheters because it has a TON of free patterns and a highly customizable search engine to find them.
24. Craftgawker
Pretty much foodgawker, but for crafts
Pictures of crafts! And links to tutorials to make those crafts!
25. Flamingo Toes
Just one great example!
The crafts on Flamingo Toes are always cute and never inordinately complicated!
26. The Purl Bee
Some project tutorials!
The Purl Bee offers a nice store with fancy knitting, crochet, and sewing supplies as well as kits for making things. But they also have a lot of free tutorials and patterns on their site, with awesome pictures!
And finally, number 27, is this trailer on youtube I wish was real:
Congrats on the perfect cube year. 19 years since your last perfect cube year, at 8. 37 years until your next one at 64.
Thanks for the heads up; I’ll be having a perfect cube year starting on my next birthday. I’d better enjoy it, since it will surely be the last one; I seriously doubt I’ll make it to 125 before I get to go onto my reward.