Books, Sitcom Binging, Funny sites, Cooking.. What to do inside these days

[Vajra Fist]

The kid is half Japanese so that will go down a treat. Thanks!

[Taomeow]

21 hours ago, Bindi said:

 

 

I've seen the same map posted by someone who suggested a tour of the local wineries -- a glass of wine placed in every location.   

[Nungali]

Many motorcycles out  on the  Waterfall Way run  today , more than usual, I guess thats a safe group activity  - spread far apart.

 

Training this weekend was mostly kata ,  no contact with each other , then we did long range weapons    .  The Aikido peeps who share the park with us have a policy of  'not touching weapons '  , so they just practised against  the air .   ...  I did 'pierce'  (more like a rip ) the 'instructors'  skin , (  and I had neglected to clean my sword {wooden}  with an alcho-wipe  before hand ) .  He's been sick anyway - a few  people around here  seem sick ... but they are ; " Its not Coronavirus I have just have a cold ."   Hmmmmmm ......  

 

 

[Nungali]

So, visiting some friends yesterday , delivering a table ,  they are like me , we have been 'social distancing' for years now  - the hermit lifestyle pays off !  Thing is ,  the general population seems to be living closer to OUR lifestyles now ; not going out, not doing stupid activities ( going to the water slide park, racing go karts, mosh pitting, movies, burning fuel ,  etc etc )   staying at home, growing some food, recycling and not burning up resources like mad  ......    and as a result, world pollution is way down ,  Venice's canals are clearing, you can see the fish in them now - someone spotted a dolphin in one the other day .  

 

.... but they will come back   living their wasteful lifestyles , burning resources and polluting the world , before to long .

 

 

[Rara]

22 hours ago, Vajra Fist said:

Love this. I'll take a look for this game on Amazon. The kid is really into Risk at the moment which we all love and can often take three hours too.

 

I did 3 hours of Risk last night. Had it in the bag within 2 hours but then ended up coming 3rd!

[SirPalomides]

Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! games are for a limited time available free on the App Store (and the Android store too I think). These are adaptations of the 1980’s game books, with all the wonderful original drawings. It is similar to books like Choose Your Own Adventure or Lone Wolf except a lot deeper in terms of choices and plot development. Four games in total, get them all and give em a try! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sorcery/id627879091

Edited March 21, 2020 by SirPalomides

[Rara]

16 hours ago, Nungali said:

He's been sick anyway - a few  people around here  seem sick ... but they are ; " Its not Coronavirus I have just have a cold ."   Hmmmmmm ......  

 

"It's not corona, just some head cold...you know what it is? I took a drink straight out of the fridge and drank it too quickly"

 

Were the words coming from one guy.

 

I was like, "chill man. Can I just have my change please?"

[Rara]

Back to the original title of this thread, if anyone wanted to spend the whole day doing meditation, martial arts and living the simple Daoist life, here is a rough self-timetable you could try:

 

Wake pre-5am

5am Meditaton

5:45am light reading, prepeare breakfast

6:30/7am eat breakfast

8am Pysical training - cardio/stretches/kung fu drills/strenght exercises

9.15am Break

9.45 am Taiji practice. Run through weak sections on repeat.

11am Break / Prepeare lunch, eat / basic tasks around home / nap, if you want

3pm Taiji or qigong. Again, working repeatedly on strengthening some sections

4:15pm Break

4:45pm Same as previous. Remember cool down and pat down exercises to finish physical for the day.

6pm Finish. Prepare dinner, rest, eat then read or equivalent to allow digestion.

8pm meditation

8:45pm onwards, leisure, unwind.

10pm lights out

 

Of course, the above is doable if you have a fair amount of things in your arsenal to practice.

[silent thunder]

2 hours ago, SirPalomides said:

Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! games are for a limited time available free on the App Store (and the Android store too I think). These are adaptations of the 1980’s game books, with all the wonderful original drawings. It is similar to books like Choose Your Own Adventure or Lone Wolf except a lot deeper in terms of choices and plot development. Four games in total, get them all and give em a try! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sorcery/id627879091

Thanks for sharing! 

We'll get some good mileage out of this for sure.

[senseless virtue]

A lot of old movies and animations free on the Internet Archive.

 

This treasure immediately caught my eyes:

 

Spoiler

https://archive.org/details/protectors_of_the_universe_korean_animation

 

It's so bad that it's good!

 

[forestofclarity]

My family is working through this free course on the Science of Well Being:

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/coursera-yale-science-of-wellbeing-free-course-review-overview

[silent thunder]

2 hours ago, forestofemptiness said:

My family is working through this free course on the Science of Well Being:

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/coursera-yale-science-of-wellbeing-free-course-review-overview

I enrolled the moment I read this.

Thank you for sharing!

 

*bow of respect*

[thelerner]

On 3/21/2020 at 11:28 AM, SirPalomides said:

Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! games are for a limited time available free on the App Store (and the Android store too I think). These are adaptations of the 1980’s game books, with all the wonderful original drawings. It is similar to books like Choose Your Own Adventure or Lone Wolf except a lot deeper in terms of choices and plot development. Four games in total, get them all and give em a try! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sorcery/id627879091

I'm trying sorcery2

[Starjumper]

I spend some time watching silly racing matches on Utube.  Here's one, the action starts at 1:40.  What I thought was cool about this is I've never seen a helicopter go so vertical to make a maximum acceleration start

 

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by Starjumper

[Starjumper]

 

[Starjumper]

These can be used for meditation, it's kind of like meditating on a mandala, but more entrancing.  I don't look at these too often, but this is the longest duration, and deepest zoom, of any I have seen.

 

 

[silent thunder]

HAMLET

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell

and count myself a king of infinite space,

were it not that I have bad dreams.

[SirPalomides]

Here's a fantastic storytelling game, Once Upon a Time, ideal for three or more players. Everyone is collaboratively telling a story, while trying to steer the story to use up their cards and come to the ending they've been dealt. The cards give just enough guidance while leaving things very open-ended. Even people who don't think of themselves as terribly creative end up making amazing, hilarious stories with this game.

[thelerner]

Here's a bunch of free or cheap sci fi books available on kindle.  Thus you can download the app and read them on your computer or phone.  I see Dune is available for $1.99.  https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/science-fiction-ebooks .

 

When I order from Amazon, if its not needed immediately I press the ship later option and that usually gets me 1 to 3 bucks of emoney from them.  Which allows me to get cheap ebooks for free. 

 

and for a large collection of free or cheap ebooks- https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/latest

 

The app Overdrive can connect you to your local library where you have a wide variety of ebooks & audiobooks that can be downloaded, for a few weeks, for free.  If you have a library card. 

Edited March 23, 2020 by thelerner

[silent thunder]

3 hours ago, SirPalomides said:

Here's a fantastic storytelling game, Once Upon a Time, ideal for three or more players. Everyone is collaboratively telling a story, while trying to steer the story to use up their cards and come to the ending they've been dealt. The cards give just enough guidance while leaving things very open-ended. Even people who don't think of themselves as terribly creative end up making amazing, hilarious stories with this game.

That's a great game.  We love it.

We keep it in our camping gear along with Story Dice.

Story Dice works like the card game but you roll a set of dice and create the story by incorporating elements from every die rolled.

We have the physical dice set, but the above link is to an app. 

 

[Earl Grey]

https://io9.gizmodo.com/15-unique-board-games-and-rpgs-for-families-that-arent-1842430080

 

I'd love to try some of these, but I doubt my kids would want to play, given that they'd rather scratch the posts or chase their tails and beg for treats. 
 

I have a bunch of games as well I recommend: Gloom, Lunch Money, Fluxx, Guillotine, The Great Dalmuti, and Chez Geek.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Earl Grey

[SirPalomides]

My wife got me Gloom for Christmas, that’s a great game!

[Earl Grey]

Just now, SirPalomides said:

My wife got me Gloom for Christmas, that’s a great game!

 

I have all the expansions, and had Cthulhu Gloom, but that ended up playing a lot differently since the theme was fundamentally contrasting to the original with cosmic horror instead. 

[Earl Grey]

On 3/22/2020 at 2:26 AM, Rara said:

Back to the original title of this thread, if anyone wanted to spend the whole day doing meditation, martial arts and living the simple Daoist life, here is a rough self-timetable you could try:

 

Wake pre-5am

5am Meditaton

5:45am light reading, prepeare breakfast

6:30/7am eat breakfast

8am Pysical training - cardio/stretches/kung fu drills/strenght exercises

9.15am Break

9.45 am Taiji practice. Run through weak sections on repeat.

11am Break / Prepeare lunch, eat / basic tasks around home / nap, if you want

3pm Taiji or qigong. Again, working repeatedly on strengthening some sections

4:15pm Break

4:45pm Same as previous. Remember cool down and pat down exercises to finish physical for the day.

6pm Finish. Prepare dinner, rest, eat then read or equivalent to allow digestion.

8pm meditation

8:45pm onwards, leisure, unwind.

10pm lights out

 

Of course, the above is doable if you have a fair amount of things in your arsenal to practice.

 

Close to mine. I have two variations. What I started out with is based on the lockdown curfew here with the second to follow later:

 

0500 Wake up and walk dogs, feed them and cats.

0615 Back to bed

1145 Wake up

1200 Flying Phoenix and Tao Tan Pai

1245 Magical rites

1300 Walk dogs

1330 Walk 28 flights of stairs up to roof deck

1345 Stretching

1400 Zhan Zhuang: Trinity or Mantis

1500 Baduanjin, Contracting, Linking, Throwing Hands

1530 Zhan Zhuang: any of 8 Yi Quan postures with some variations for leg power

1630 Eight Treasures, Competing, Contradicting, Strength Trial

1715 Either another hour of Zhan Zhuang or strength training (100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 squats, 10 km run, etc)

1815 Return home, shower

1930 Walk dogs last time

2000-2300 Books, video games

Sleep time varies.

 

And yes: I do post on TDB in-between training sets. 

[SirPalomides]

My wife got me the Cthulhu version too though I haven’t had a chance to play it yet.

 

A two player game I really love is The Awful Green Things from Outer Space. One player is the awful green things, and the other is the crew of a spaceship desperately trying to get rid of the awful green things. There are various weapons (eg baseball bat, fire extinguisher, blowtorch) scattered around the board and their effects are randomized each game, and you only find out what they are by trying them. Some of them kill the awful green things but others make them grow or multiply which can lead to some hilariously bad situations. 
 

 

Edited March 24, 2020 by SirPalomides