Motor Storm is (finally) Coming

TLM was nice enough to gift this yesterday - a PS3 original I've been secretly wanting since I played it at I Politico's so many months ago. It's just a racing game, nothing special, but with all the free time I have these days (sarcasm), it's just the thing I needed.

Time Waster: Magic Pen

This one is very fun, very innovative, and potentially a BIG time waster, so be warned. The game is called Magic Pen, and you draw and erase lines, triangles, circles and other shapes onto the screen to manipulate an object across some flags. You can play it at MiniClip.com.

Magic Pen Collect the flags with the red ball to complete each level.

Play this free game now!!

OSX System Sound Song

I came across this on The Graphic Mac...and felt the need to post about it immediately. Apparently someone had entirely too much free time on their hands and created a song using only the system sounds from OSX. Ok, I'll give an "A" from creativity.

If you actually want to tweak this, you can download the actual Garageband file here.

Need to Clean Your Screen?

In one of the rare cases where I find one of those emails making the rounds to be funny...


...and for those who think cats are better cleaners...


For full screen versions, click here for the pug or here for the cat.
 

Cloverfield

One thing I've definitely procrastinated (see yesterday's post) is writing about an upcoming movie I am ridiculously excited about: "Cloverfield".


For those who missed the previews when they saw "Transformers" last summer (and for the rest of you who forgot to go altogether), there is a new movie coming out this month by J.J. Abrams, the creator of "Lost". At that time all we saw was a trailer that gave new meaning to the word "teaser" as the only information we got was that Abrams was the creator, it had something to do with the date 1-18-08, and the head of the Statue of Liberty was going to fly down a New York City street.

Now that's a way to start some hype.

New commercials and trailers are out, and the intrigue has only been magnified. As if the vague imagery of buildings falling, bridges collapsing, soldiers launching missiles and people exploding behind curtains wasn't enough, there is also an entirely different kind of promotion machine out there, and it exists entirely on the web as a super-viral marketing campaign.


For starters, you have 1-18-08.com, a frustratingly vague site that features a bunch of pictures, complete with timestamps and all apparently taken on...wait for it...January 18, 2008. Since it's inception users have been able to move the pictures around, and over time newer (and just as vague) abilities have been packed in. For example, if you take certain pictures like the Japanese chef and give them a quick little drag down and up you can flip them over revealing handwritten notes or, in this case, what looks to be a recipe in Japanese. The most recent addition to the site is a monstrous roar that you'll hear exactly 6:00 minutes at the site (or by just clicking the play button below).



There are countless fan/speculation sites out there (like CloverfieldClues), and if you really want to waste some time you should read the boards at the IMDB page. People go to great lengths doing things like analyzing the trailers and commercials and putting mash-ups on YouTube, most of which revolve around glimpses of the monster.

Many of the characters in the upcoming movie have MySpace pages. A fictional beverage named "Slusho" (which may or may not be an integral part of the plot) has its very own site too, as well as a slew of (odd) commercials. I wouldn't be surprised if we see an actual Slusho beverage available for purchase if the movie takes off.



Slusho's also-fictional parent company, the Tagruato Corporation, also has a site full of over-the-top detailed bogus information. There's even a site for the anti-Tagruato T.I.D.O. Wave, part of "a nonprofit, grassroots, environmental activist organization dedicated to saving our planet from the world's most nefarious corporations". Cool. Why not...

I just am really hoping the movie lives up to at least half of its hype. Oh, and please don't be Godzilla, please.
 

50 Top 10 Lists of 2007

Well, it's New Year's Eve, and what could be more appropriate for this time of reflection than a top 10 of 2007 lists?

How about 50 of them.

TIME recently posted their "50 Top 10 Lists of 2007" complete with pictures, text blurbs, and lots of video clips, a testament to the popularity of online communities like YouTube and Google Video.

There are lots of topics to go through and you may find yourself spending entirely too much time going through and reliving such instant classics like Miss South Carolina Teen USA's countless references to "the Iraq" and the Rosie O'Donnell vs. Elisabeth Hasselbeck heated verbal catfight on "The View". My hands down favorite list was the "Top 10 Viral Videos", though the clip that I just had to embed in this post comes from the sports moments list. It's the last play of a Division 3 football game that's...well, just see for yourself (just make sure you have at least a minute to watch the one play:

Deal or No Deal

I couldn't help myself. After a couple of very tough days at work, I went through my "to be looked at later" bookmark folder and found this at (where else) WidgetBox.

I kid you not, I've played exactly once and, yes, I picked the million dollar case, and had a string of "no deals" to win it...

...in virtual world anyway.
 

Time Waster: Maukie the Cat

Thanks, WidgetBox. Now we have 3 cats.

Time Waster: Pac-Man

One of the classics is still the best, and is even available as a widget, though I decided to make it a post rather than a permanent part of the site in the name of productivity. Don't waste too much time, you have work to do!

I Can Has Cheezburger

I thought a little levity was in order today. TLM showed me a site a few days ago called icanhascheezburger.com, and I agree with how she described it to me: you may think it's stupid at first, but then you keep looking and you eventually find something hilarious. This is my recent favorite:

Cat in the Sink

TLM and I found this on YouTube today...


Update 9.19.07
This just got a new tag: time waster (I realize now that's all it really is)
 

Easter Eggs

While browsing through a bookstore the other day, I found myself flipping through a book about easter eggs. No, not the type you always wanted to make with those fancy looking PAAS kits when you were a kid, but rather those little images, messages, games or features that programmers leave in their programs, hidden, of course, for others to find (thus the easter egg analogy).

I'd come across these before, most recently on the web...Google in fact. If you go to google.com and search for "the answer to life, the universe, and everything" (no quotes), your first result is the Google calculator claiming it equals 42. This is a reference to Douglas Adams's classic "Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy" series in which a hypercomputer spends centuries to do essentially the same thing.

There are lots of these eggs out there. Try clicking on Yahoo!'s exclamation point and see what happens. Or go to Google maps and try getting directions from, say, Boston to Prague. Now THAT'S a long swim...

I came across some sites that have pretty good listing of eggs in not only software but also DVDs and music, etc. The Easter Egg Archive claims to have about 10.5 thousand indexed. Egg Heaven also has a good listing.

The Easter Egg Archive had an egg for OS X Tiger I found novel. If you go to the dashboard widget and apple-option-click the weather symbol at the top, the city changes to "Nowhere". If you keep doing it, the widget will cycle through all the available weather symbols it can show. According to the image below, it looks like Nowhere is in for a pretty bad hailstorm...

Time Waster: Bible Fight

What is one of the busiest work weeks I've had this year sure to bring? A time waster of course, and in our internet-laced society (or, more specifically, on this blog) that means a web page with some Flash-y cartoon or game, ripe for hours and hours of procrastination goodness.

This time it's a game featured on the Adult Swim site called "Bible Fight". It's a standard one on one fighting game, except instead of Ryu, Guile or Zangief you choose from biblical characters such as Noah, Moses, and Jesus. You have your kicks, your punches, and of course your divine intervention.

If you're Christian and a little worried that this is on the blasphemous side of things, you might be right, but at least you can play Jesus and pound the crap out of Satan...

Time Waster: Bubble Trouble

This is maybe time waster of the year...
for the larger, more official version, click here.

Losing Your "Frame" of Reference

I'm not sure what's more disturbing, finding yourself transfixed on the hypnotic spin of the frames, or occasionally focusing accidentally on the head of the guy holding it.

Time Waster: Line Rider

Thanks to AL-9000 for this one...this is a serious Time Waster, so be careful. "LineRider" is a beautifully simple concept, and one I wish I'd thought of myself. You draw a line, hit play, and watch a small tobogganer with a ski hat and a red scarf sled down your slope .The only complaint I have of it is that there is no apparent way to erase lines....you can only start over. Maybe that's part of the challenge, I guess.

The region in which you can draw lines seems endless, and you can shoot your Line Rider off into the void for a long time before trying to make him land. Try to make a loop-dee-loop (hint, you can't go through lines). Have fun and remember, you probably have better things to do.

Time Waster: Find the Differences

You may have tried this one before. When you click on the link below, you'll see two nearly identical pictures. There are supposedly three differences; I can only find two. If you can find three, you are part of a very small group of elite people (and please, let me know where the third one is). Try it out:

http://members.home.nl/saen/Special/Zoeken.swf

Oh, and uh, sorry beforehand.

Time Waster: Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

You think it's easy, but how well can you tell them apart??

Time Waster: Reverse

This is amazingly challenging. I wish I could flip my monitor....[source]

Time Waster: Bouncee Lady

Move the people holding the elastic for more bounce....[source]