The free Merlin bird app will listen for birds around you and tell you what they all are, and help you identify them by sight.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/
Every day a diary entry from the 17th century. Today he went to see Hamlet at the theatre. Seems like an equivalent to watching TV for him, and went to have his portrait painted, no cameras then.
I enjoyed reading Pepys diary. Seems like almost every day he meets up with his pals, gets totally wasted, eats fine food and generally just lives his best life. It's kind of how I remember things before I had kids...
Heavens Above app is pretty awesome. I use it a lot when I'm outside walking my dogs at night time. It also makes locating comets (past tense now, I know...) easier, along with stars and satellites, etc. from your vantage point.
Shazam app for when you're out in the wild, and hear a song you would like to hear again later.
AIY Projects app if you want to play around with Google's AI and robotics hardware at home.
Robot36 app if you want to decode picture images sent over shortwave radio.
Bike Share app if you're in a city where you can rent their bikes. Otherwise, whatever the local one would be.
Google Lens app, for those times you're looking at something and want to know wtf it is, or how much it normally costs. I use it a lot just about everywhere. I know an awful lot about the plant life in my neighbourhood as a result. A lot of it is edible, and some of those actually taste good.
Oticon app if you have hearing aids and like to fiddle around with the settings in a way that you can't with the hardware controls.
FlightRadar24.com website for determining what that plane is that just about to fly over.
These are just a handful of what I use my phone for. I like to make sure when my phone dies, I feel like I got value out of it!
I've uninstalled all of the Social Media feeds from my phone. Whenever i get the itch to scroll through something, i've set up a RSS reader app with a bunch of blogs that i follow instead.
It provides relief for the before mentioned itch and i end up engaging with longer form content and often learning something, instead of brain rot.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/ Every day a diary entry from the 17th century. Today he went to see Hamlet at the theatre. Seems like an equivalent to watching TV for him, and went to have his portrait painted, no cameras then.
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