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
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
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
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
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
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
Sometimes science news, sometimes interesting TV/movie facts. WHATEVER
7. The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue has movie and TV news as well as random fan-made creations.
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.
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
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
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?
Sofa Pizza is pretty similar to Pleated Jeans, without the original content. BUT with a delicious pizza background.
Literally Unbelievable collects misguided facebook reactions to Onion articles, and I love it.
14. STFU, Parents
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!
This comic is baller. It updates every Friday with the summary of an X-Files episode in comic form.
16. Extra Ordinary
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
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!
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
Pictures of delicious food! With links that lead to recipes of delicious food!
20. Pinch of Yum
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 desserts always look amazing. Some of them are way beyond me, like fancily decorated cakes, but all of them look awesome!
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
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
Pictures of crafts! And links to tutorials to make those crafts!
25. Flamingo Toes
The crafts on Flamingo Toes are always cute and never inordinately complicated!
26. The Purl Bee
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.