Geekery

3 Worthwile Ways to Waste Time

Posted on 03. Nov, 2009 by Jake in Unusual

My recent post, 3 Reasons Why The Internet Is Depressing, may create the impression that, since I have been rallying against stupid internet memes (like the Numa Numa kid and lolcats) or, worse yet, disgusting ones, I am the type of person who spends all of his time online doing important things like conducting stem-cell research or reading up on quantum physics. Not so. Sometimes I just waste time like everybody else, but there are some ways to do so which don’t involve revelling in human idiocy, and here are some of my favourites:

The Tone Matrix:

This nifty little online flash music making device is a sinewave synthesiser invented by the Andre Michelle laboratory. The synth is based on an AudioTools engine and is triggered by an ordinary 16step sequencer. Each triggered step causes a force on the underlaying wave-map. Or, tranlated into non-geek, you press different squares and in the process create interesting combinations of sounds when you play with it. It’s addictive.

Fake news:

Ok, so America’s best made up news source, The Onion, is a site most people have already heard of, but it remains one of the funniest places on the net to waste some time at.

If you want some real information rather than satire, their side-project, a site on movies, music, books, games and tv, The AV Club is excellent too.

And, for a more local flavour there’s our own answer to The Onion, Hayibo, a site with the slogan ‘breaking news. Into little pieces’ which describes itself as ‘South Africa’s second best source of made up news after the SABC’. Through intensive detective work I have discovered that the site is the brainchild of author Tom Eaton and, um, some other guys.

Online Tetris
Anyone who follows this blog, and who read the Geek God post on Tetris inventer Alexey Pajitnov will have guessed that I am a fan of the world’s most addictive puzzle game. Tetris Friends is an incredibly evil waster of time for any Tetris player. One registers and gets a profile and then competes against other people online in a bunch of different Tetris-related games, each of which offers a fresh twist on the original. I started off as a Beginner, and I’m now ranked as Elite (rank 14 out of 20).

What do you get if you get to rank 20, the highest rank? A giant loser sign tattooed on your forehead, that’s what. Anyone who wants to mess with this site should know that no amount of Tetris-brilliance will gain them the admiration of the opposite sex. You have been warned.

And a whole bunch of others are listed below. Don’t come crying to me when you miss every deadline you have in the next year. I took about fourteen hours to write this little blog post, because I took breaks inbetween to ‘test’ these sites:

http://mashable.com/2007/09/08/5000-resources-to-do-just-about-anything-online

http://thisissand.com/

http://www.unkno.com/

http://www.juliasneedledesigns.com/Air%20Force%20Test%20Game.htm

http://www.jamsbio.com/games/jamsMatchSolo

http://www.miniglobz.com/games/twinspin2_en.html

Tags: AudioTools, Av Club, Cell C, fake news, geek, geekery, Hayibo, tetris, The Onion, Tone Matrix