

Show HN: Learn about a new country every day (my side project) - rbol
http://countryaday.org/

======
rbol
Author here.

I found myself wanting to learn more about history/culture/politics/etc of
more countries throughout the world, so I built a little web app that provides
you with one country to learn about each day.

The information provided is intended to just be a starting point; I see the
using this as a study guide.

Any feedback is welcome. This is the first personal project that I've shipped!

Edit: I hope you guys don't mind if I add a personal plug. I'm not a full time
web developer, and I would very much like to be (I currently design and
maintain safety systems for commuter transit). I'm especially interested in
Ruby/Rails, but I can generally pick anything up quickly. If anyone would be
willing to help me out (advice, job recommendations, resume tips, etc) I would
be very grateful. My email can be found in my profile.

~~~
firefoxNX11
Would be great if you shared the tech stack with HN crowd.

~~~
rbol
Of course! It's open source and available here:
[https://github.com/bolandrm/countryaday](https://github.com/bolandrm/countryaday)

Mostly AngularJS and Sinatra

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dominotw
This looks neat. Here is how discover the world online.

\- I start with some travel show or a foodalogue to see what people look like
there, what is their ethnic makeup, what do they eat, how rich/happy are they,
how advanced is their society. I would probably watch gordon ramsey's kitchen
nightmares to get the first glace at britain.

\- then I watch something about the current affairs of the country. Putin's
russia ( Aljazeera documentary) /Khodorkovsky on netflix

\- Read a book or two , both fiction and non fiction. Russia: Snowdrops
(Fiction) , Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin.

\- Then I dig deeper and try to see how the people there got to be like what
they are now. Eg: Battle of Russia on Fandor, National Geographic's
Engineering an empire( Russia).

~~~
eddieberklee
This is such a good post for the OP if he wants to extend the functionality of
his site.

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WestCoastJustin
The CIA The World Factbook [1] is also really cool. Just pick and country and
away you go.

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/)

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huhtenberg
Consider meshing in the facts from the CIA's Worldbook -

[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/) ?

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bobwaycott
I like the idea and intent.

However, why have you broken the back button? This should _never_ be allowed
to happen except in very carefully decided situations (say, preventing a user
from going backward in a workflow that could provide undesired results).

Is this intentional or an accident?

~~~
rbol
Where are you at that it's breaking? What browser? It seems to be working ok
for me (chrome). Anyone else experiencing this problem?

Edit: I see what you mean. I'm looking into a solution.

~~~
majormajor
Chrome 27 on Snow Leopard: clicking the link from HN takes me to the page, but
hitting the back button doesn't bring me back to HN, it looks like it tries to
takes me back to countryaday.org which then redirects to
countryaday.org/#/welcome

~~~
pork
Same on Chrome/Linux. Looks like you're using push/popState slightly
incorrectly. To the parent: if you long-click the back button, you can jump to
an arbitrary point in your history.

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cheeaun
Hmm, seems like Singapore is missing in the map?

~~~
pajop
here's the pull request:
[https://github.com/bolandrm/countryaday/pull/6](https://github.com/bolandrm/countryaday/pull/6)

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ukoki
Nice! Also if anyone wants to learn the world capitals, I'm working on user-
friendly spaced repetition software to do just that:

[http://cardflashapp.com](http://cardflashapp.com)

It's still very alpha, but I was able to learn all the world and US state
capitals in just a few sessions.

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marquis
I'd find this useful if you sent an email every other day. The short text on
the first country Namibia was interesting and about as much as I have time to
read on a near-daily interest-email. I didn't sign up as I don't have the time
but I'm interested to learn.

~~~
hkmurakami
I second this as well, as a guard against forgetting about a site that I'm
really excited to use :)

~~~
eddieberklee
With a big large unsubscribe button just so people can opt-out easily.

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namwen
I had an idea for something similar awhile back. I love learning about places
I haven't been before and I especially enjoy looking at those places on a map.

I'll have to play with it more before I can give you any feedback.

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reion
I don't like being redirected to Wikipedia on read more. When you do that,
there is good chance that visitor is not coming back. I think you should
display rest of the content on your site as well.

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tagabek
This is a really neat idea. It also gives me a few ideas for iOS apps.
Gamifying and speeding up the learning process is crucial to teaching this
generation new things. Thanks for building this.

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hkmurakami
wow this is so awesome for a omnivorous compulsive reader like myself. I've
actually never been this excited about a show hen before! thanks for making
this!

~~~
rbol
No problem! Glad you're enjoying it!

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cpursley
Cool idea!

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dallagi
Nice!

BTW, am I wrong or some small countries are missing? Just to name few: Vatican
City, Mauritius, San Marino

