Ness is an example of a great app that does one thing and does it well. It's a restaurant recommendations app which uses your ratings of places you've visited, places where you've checked in on Foursquare, and suggestions from your Facebook friends to generate really personalized results, with a score of how likely you are to love each place. I have no idea how its recommendation system works, but it's the best I've found and just keeps getting better the more I use it. I've found many of my favorite restaurants and coffee shops thanks to this app.

I've only lived in D.C. less than two years, having moved from Venezuela shortly before joining Vox, but in that time I've fallen in love with my new adopted home, so I've tried to learn as much as I can about it and its history. Grand Avenues offers a fascinating look at the early history of D.C., L'Enfant's grandiose vision for the new city, and the conflicts that eventually led to his dismissal by President George Washington.

I’m lucky enough to live a few blocks away from Mangialardo & Sons, a small mom-and-pop sandwich shop on Capitol Hill. Their signature sub is the G-Man, a delicious mix of ham, pepperoni, salami, mortadella, provolone, and fontina cheese with an interesting origin story. According to the Washington Post it was created when a couple of FBI agents stopped there to eat, and asked the owner to make them something special. A few days later, a different group of agents came by asking for the "G-Man sub", and the legend was born. It’s pretty much the best sandwich I’ve ever had.

I'm a little bit obsessed lately about this fun sandbox game that lets you build rockets and launch them into space. It's light-hearted enough that you don't feel too bad when your rocket fails in spectacular fashion, blowing your poor "kerbonauts" to bits, but its depiction of orbital mechanics seems realistic enough to make it challenging and hard to master, yet very satisfying when you manage to pull off complex maneuvers like bi-elliptic transfers and gravity assists.

I've tried many methods of making coffee, from drip machines to french presses, but I always come back to my trusty Bialetti Moka pot. It's simple, elegant, easy to clean, and makes delicious, strong coffee if you use high-quality beans. The downside is that it doesn't make a whole lot of coffee, but if you enjoy good (and strong) coffee and don't need to guzzle a huge pot in the morning just to function, you can't go wrong with a Moka.