For most people, or at least for me, it’s hard to come up with good gift ideas, so I’m always on the look out for good resources for finding gifts for friends and loved ones. I actually wrote a post right before Christmas called Awesome and Different Christmas Gift Ideas that you might also find helpful.

Over the weekend, I came across No Sweaters, which is gift idea search engine.

On the home page, you type in the person you’re getting a gift for, such as your mom, husband, girlfriend, fiance, girlfriends parents, boss, barista, roommate, or anyone else you can think of, and the website offers some suggestions on the following page. If you don’t like what’s offered, you can drill a little deeper by entering an occasion, such as a birthday, and then selecting a few interests.

I gave it test run for my fiance (I had to enter “wife” since fiance is gender neutral) and after selecting a few of her interests, it actually came back with some very relevant results. I was surprised.

And if you still can’t find a good gift, you have the option of asking the No Sweater community, who can help you come up with even more ideas. This is such a cool idea.

Remember this site come Christmas!

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

New Website To Help You Come Up With Great Gift Ideas

When you’re sitting on the toilet, you’re most likely reading something, such as a magazine or you’re messing around on your phone or tablet. If you don’t have a smarthphone with Twitter capabilities, but you want to do some catching up on your feed, check out “Shitter“.

Shitter will print Tweets from your feed onto rolls of toilet paper so that you or your guests can always stay in the loop. Of course by Twitter standards, those tweets will be terribly out of date, but I think it’s still a fun idea.

You can order four rolls for $35 plus the costs of shipping and taxes and you have four choices of what you can pull from your account to be printed; your own tweets, the latest tweets the people you follow have posted, tweets you have favorited, and tweets from a Twitter list you’ve created.

I think it would be fun to buy some rolls to put out when I have guests over, but when it’s just me, I’ll read my tweets on my iPhone

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

Get Your Twitter Feed Printed on Toilet Paper

I’m a regular listener of the Larry Miller podcast and one of the most popular topics on his show last year was about how he would go around the house and pick up the little leftover soap chips, which he would then weld-together with water to make a new bar of soap. I believe his record was five soap bars, but I haven’t been able to catch the show in a few months, so he might be up to more by now.

Can you imagine if Larry found out this STACK soap Kickstarter project? I think he’d flip!

It’s such a cool idea. It’s amazing that nobody thought of this a long time ago. You’ll never have to waste another soap chip again. Watch how it works in the video below.

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

Never Waste Another Soap Chip Again

Do you remember Super Mario Crossover? It’s the entire original Super Mario Bros. video game that can be played with characters like Samus from Metroid, Mega Man and several other hugely popular game characters. What makes the game really cool, is that each character has their own abilities, instead of simply playing like Mario or Luigi would.

That game was a ton of fun, and the updated version is now officially available for everyone to play. It’s still based on the original Super Mario Bros. but with a ton of upgrades. There are more playable characters, better graphics and you can play the game on visual styles such as the NES, SNES and Gameboy.

To be honest, I thought this was going to be based on Super Mario Bros. 2, which I think is the best Super Mario game of them all, so I was really excited to play it and then a little disappointed to find out it was still based on the first game in the series. With all the new features, my disappointment didn’t last long. This game kicks ass.

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

Super Mario Crossover 2.0 is Now Available For All to Play

I was looking over the Joan Allen Metal Detectors website and I got to thinking about what sorts of interesting things people have found using metal detectors, so I started doing some searches on trusty ol’ Google News! Here’s are a few interesting stories I found.

Paul McEvoy found a 14th century gold ring studded with a ruby and an emerald using his metal detector in a field in South Yorkshire, England. He found the ring six inches beneath the surface. The ring hasn’t yet been valued, but it has been declared officially as a “treasure trove” under the Treasure Act and is now being held in the Retford Museum. McEvoy says he has found ancient coins before but nothing as interesting as the ring.

Terry Herbert came across one of the biggest Anglo-Saxon gold hoards ever, using his metal detector which he purchased at a yard sale for only a couple bucks more than 10 years ago. His find contained about 1,500 pieces, mostly elaborately decorated war gear, which included 11 lbs. of gold and 5.5 lbs. of silver and was valued at £3.285 million. Daaaaaayumm!

A team of metal detector enthusiasts paid £12 each to join a charity dig on a farmers land in Twinstead, a village in Essex county in England. They discovered an estimated 200 valuable coins, each coin valued at approximately £350. All findings were supposed to be handed over to the event organizer to be given to the British Museum for evaluation, but only two of the coins were turned in, while the rest were pocketed by the participants who swarmed the area. There are plans to prosecute anyone who hasn’t returned the coins after 14 days. Uh oh.

There are lots of other crazy things people have found using metal detectors as well, such as the discovery of Iron Age coins, and someone finding an Iron Age neckband, and one person found a 16th century sword. There are plenty more stories, but I didn’t want this article to run on too much longer. There’s one thing I’ve learned while doing this research. If I want to find a treasure, I need to move to a farm in England.

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

Should I Buy a Metal Detector and Move to England?

Pre-Packaged Recipes

People always say that it’s the thought that counts, right? It shows that you actually put some thought into your gift when you put it together yourself. One of the coolest presents I’ve ever received were pre-packaged recipes from my Aunt. Each recipe had the perfect amount of ingredients and a recipe card, so no measurements were required. Those are the actual recipes in the picture above – black bean soup and Mexican corn bread. The seasonings were also attached.

Wine and Dinner

Don’t just take her out for dinner. Do something special and make her dinner. Set the mood, put up candles, buy her favorite wine and serve a three course meal. This can be one of the most romantic things you’ve ever done and she gets to sit back and relax while you do all the work. You need to do the dishes too. If she has to clean up anything after this dinner, you’ve blown it.

Something That Won’t Go Into Storage

One of the biggest reasons Christmas is so wasteful is because most of us don’t know what to get friends and family as a gift. Sure, we know they want a new treadmill or an Xbox 360, but we can’t afford to give out things like that. So we walk around Kmart and hope that something in the $20 range will suffice. That wastes your money and those things end up in storage or at a yard sale come Summer.

Instead give a gift that can’t be stored. Get him tickets to a concert or a play. Get her a gift card. Or perhaps schedule something adventurous, such as a rafting trip or a sky diving outing.

Admission To a Marathon

Is the person you’re buying a gift for active or athletic? Buy her a ticket into a marathon or an upcoming cycling event. I really wish I would’ve known about the Tough Mudder before Christmas last year, because my fiance would’ve loved tickets to that. And I would’ve loved a paid admission to any cycling or running event that took place this past Summer.

Something For Every Month of the Year

As long as it’s something he’ll like, consider a gift that will keep giving all year long. For example, my brother would love a monthly comic book subscription. Just about any of my friends would love to be in a beer of the month club. I would love to be in a book of the month club. Give your girlfriend a wine of the month membership and every month when she gets her gift, she’ll be thinking of you!

Other Tips

If you just can’t think of the perfect gift, one of the best tips I can give you is to search her social networking profiles. Check her Twitter or Facebook profiles. Dig deep and search for things she talks about and places they’ve been. These can be clues to restaurants she likes or her hobbies.

One of the worst things you can do is to think of yourself. Don’t be selfish. I’m guilty of this one myself. My fiance wanted to take salsa dance classes with me a couple years ago. In hindsight, it would have made a perfect Christmas gift, but I just had no interest in it, even though she wanted it so badly. It turns out that I ended up taking classes with her later anyway. I wish I did get for her for Christmas instead of her having to beg me to do it. The smile on her face the whole time was a gift to me.

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

Awesome and Creative Christmas Gift Ideas

STIHL Brand Campaign from Whybin\ TBWA on Vimeo.

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Technology Is Turning Us Into an Atari Video Game

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

Perfectly Choreographed Synchronized Indoor Skydiving

I get to enjoy my dogs shaking water all over my living room every morning when I let them out and the sprinklers are still on, but I’ve never been able to witness it frame-by-frame. Check out this great set of pictures titled “Shake” from Carli Davidson Photography, presumably taken using a hi-speed camera. Gross and cute at the same time

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

Hi-Res Photos of Dogs Shake-Drying

image courtesy of BruceTurner

I don’t have any kids, but many of my friends do and one of the biggest complaints I hear about is that their babies grow out of their clothes too fast. Well instead of dealing with the hassle of constantly purchasing new, larger sizes of baby clothing, consider renting baby clothes instead. That’s exactly what Plum is offering. They call themselves the Netflix of baby clothes.

There are three packages available right now – seven outfits for $49 per month, four outfits for $29 per month, and two outfits for $16 per month. They send all clothes freshly laundered using “green” laundry products and if you get stains on the clothes, they will donate the clothes or use the fabric to craft baby gifts at no charge to you.

This is one of those services that you can’t believe someone didn’t think of a long time ago. The prices seem a little high right now, but one great benefit is that you can switch out clothes every month if you want new styles. I think it’s a cool idea. I hope it takes off and prices drop in case I ever decide to have kids

This is a post from Aimless Direction.

New Parents – Rent Your Baby Clothes!