Falling Sand

Its almost finals so that means it is time to study, yeah? No, that means its time to procrastinate more. Jeez. Today I'm going to share with you another game. This might be the best one I have shared with you so far this semester, it is that good. Its called Hell of Sand Falling and is one of the most creative games I have every played. There is really no set goal, no points to be earned, no levels to complete. The game is basically a sandbox. Except the sand falls. And some of it isn't sand. You are given a whole array of things to play around with and experiment with. For example, you can plant some plants (green sand) in water and watch it spread, consuming all the water it touches. Then you can light it on fire with the fire tool. Or you can build a container with a wall for oil and then combine it with nitro and blow the whole thing up. Yeah, it sounds a little simple and childish, but its definately addicting. This is another website that really drives home the best thing about the internet. I know I mentioned that idea in an earlier post. That is, the internet is so diverse. Anyone can put up anything. It is great because it lets such creative things like this game be placed somewhere that everyone can enjoy it. And a lot of this really cool stuff is free, which is even better. Anyway, check it out if you have nothing better to do.

Free security

In my opinion, I don't like to have my computer filled with spyware and the like, as you might of guessed by an earlier post (which reminds me to do a scan soon). Anyway, I found a compilation of what are supposedly the best freeware utilities. Not only does the list contain security utilities, it also examines the best free web browser (firefox), the best free ftp client and so on. It also lists free antivirus, antispam, and antispyware programs. The best thing about this list is that it is continually updated. It is also written by a tech support type, so he is knowledgable about the subject. The programs are definatly useful, as well. I use several of them including firefox and the AVG programs. I'm satisfied with everything. I know the school provides anitvirus for free, and that windows defender is on most windows machines for free as well. However, I find that a layered defense is the best thing. Windows Defender, for example, is a good program. Its easy to use and catches a lot of spyware. However, it doesn't catch everything so I also use spybot search and destroy and the AVG program. Each succesive program and scan often digs up something new that the other utility had not caught. That is why this list is great, there is a lot of knowledge right there and and a lot of programs that can make your computer run better.

More Music

Today I'm focusing on another music centric website where you can play selected music. Called radio blog club, the site is similar to pandora in that it allows you to listen to music that you want to listen to. Basically you can just search for whatever song you want to hear, and it'll pop up. Click and listen. I found that the player is a little quirky, however, and if you wish to personalize things a little bit you need to make an account. Sometimes it can be hard to find the song that you are looking for, the search feature seems slightly unspecific. However, there are forums that accompany the site and include an extensive FAQ. From looking over this faq briefly, it seems that one of the biggest draws of radioblog club is that it has the capability to be added to a website of your own, complete with you own playlist. As far as straight music listening goes, I would not advise using this, pandora is better. However, if you are looking for a specific song that you don't want to pay for this is useful. Also, it seems to offer itself as a possibly very useful tool for website building or spicing up your myspace.

Video

Pretty much everyone who reads this has probably heard of YouTube. The video uploading site is very popular, allowing any user to upload pretty much anything. In my opinion, YouTube is alright. I find its amazing quantity of video to be a bit too much to handle, and I find it's layout to be a bit annoying to navigate. The video site I prefer to use is iFilm. I actually have found that very few people I know use this site, the vast majority are YouTube users. I guess I enjoy being different? What I am sure I enjoy is iFlim. It's layout and organization is far cleaner than youtube. iFilm makes it easy to find what you are looking for right away, whereas YouTube requires a bit of exploration. iFilm also uses a del.icio.us-esque tag cloud feature, making it even easier to find popular videos. The selection of video's is intuitively organized, allowing the user to find quality stuff. There isn't a lot in the way of the "I just made this video in my dormroom and we think its really funny hahahaha lets put it on youtube hahaha" sort of vid, which I think makes the site even better. It gives you access to quality video. If you are into watching stuff on your computer, I would definately check out ifilm.

Balls!

Time for another game. It might be becoming obvious that I spend too much time playing stupid crap on the internet than doing work. And I love to spread the procrastination, lucky for you. Today I found another cool browser based game to whittle away at the hours. Its called Balls, and its great. The object of the game is to keep your white ball inside the box at the center of the screen. Sounds fairly simple so far. To make it a bit harder there are about eight black balls that move around the screen. They go slow at first but soon pick up the pace, bouncing off of eachother and the borders of the game. The are dangerous because they also bounce off your little white ball, sending it flying perilously close to the edge of the central box. This is not a good thing, you will wrestle to control your little ball with the arrow keys, trying to avoid the black balls while remaining within the boundries. Its fun stuff. If you have something better to do, play Balls instead.

Polls!

I recently found a site where you can set up polls or view results of other polls. The place is called Vizu. I think its really cool that these polls can be made and gathered in one place for people to fill out or just look at for the fun of it, which is what I have been doing. The major strength of this website is the ability it gives to the average person to set up and look at these polls. They can be on whatever you want. The most popular poll at this moment is about Artificial Intelligence, and what people think about it. The majority of people say they aren't afraid of what AI itself will do, but what humans will do with it. The amazing part is that about 6500 people have voted in this poll. Obviously this isn't a huge number when you consider the number of people that use the internet, but it is still a big number, especially for a poll. Thats kind f a funny poll, but there do exist polls on more serious topics. Who do you want to be the next President? The majority of people according to this poll want McCain to be the next President. Things like that poll have a few flaws, which highlight the flaws of the site in general.

The first flaw is that the majority of polls people take the time to respond to are not on what I would consider interesting or important subjects. Most of them are entertainment or sports related, making it hard to find popular polls that are related to something serious. The second flaw I found when considering writing about this site was the reliability. The results are not tamper proof. I found a poll that had been sabotauged, a program written to vote for one particular result hundreds of times per hour.

Overall this site is not fantastic, but the concept is great. There are a few rare jewels within the poll results, but overall I found many of the polls to be of little concern to myself. It is worth taking a look at and poking around, though.

Sightseeing

I am in love. With google earth. This program is FANTASTIC, and if you don't have it you should. Google earh is a program that allows you to stream satalite imagery on your computer of basically any location on the earth's surface. It is like Google Maps, but cooler. With google earth, you can see anything a satellite can see. Besides this, there are all sorts of community and informational additions, such as the location of the nearest gas station or pictures of the grand canyon. However, this entry is not about google earth alone. Rather, it is about another blog: Google Sightseeing. It is awesome. Google sightseeing is a blog that compilates all the wierd or interesting things that people have spotted on google earth images, such as fighter jets, or a giant fence in the australian outback. This site is great because it is regularly updated, and exposes all sorts of wierd things you might not otherwise be able to come across. The only downside is that it takes the fun out of finding wierd stuff yourself, but I don't know of anyone who would have the time to find all this stuff on their own. If you have google earth this site is fun to play with, if you don't have google earth this site is still cool because it has such interesting content.

Spot the difference

More procrastination. Spot the difference is another webgame that I came across over the course of wasting time and having nothing better to do. This is a really cool game, but whoever came up with it has way to much time on their hands. The point is to find the differences in a given situation as fast as possible. The given situation is two pictures, either of a real thing, or sets of dominoes, or flowers, or random objects, you get the point. The two images are placed side by side at first, and you have to compare them to determine the differences. As you get up to higher levels they get more complicated, or move around the screen. It is cool because it reminds me to some extent of Where's Waldo? which was always a good time. The game does get a little repetitive as you keep going, I havn't oficially beat it but I have played for some time. While it does get boring after a while, I would recommend it as a fun diversion for a little bit.

Timelines

As an IR major, history is a big part of what my studies focus on. Today I came across a pretty cool site that has something to do with history, though it is more of a general overview than a source of specific information. Timelines is a really cool site that contains..guess. Yeah, timelines. I found this to be quite the interesting source of information. According to the page, it contains hundreds of history related timelines. Want to know about when certain things happened related to the Tuetonic Knights? They have that. What about the Irish-British conflict? Thats there too. Or maybe you wanted to know that Russia's first McDonalds opened in February of 1990? There is clearly a large variety of information right here at your fingertips. The one disappointing aspect of the site is that there is not a lot of information about specific events. If you wanted to learn specific information besides events related to the second crusade, you would have to do that research on your own. That said, the downside isn't that horrendus. In addition to the information presented I have already pointed out, the content is searchable. If you are looking to find out when a specific event happened, you can search for it, making the site more useful. If you are interested in history, or when certain things happened, this site is worth checking out.

TV!

So today I'm going to point you in the direction of another nice timewaster of a website. Alloftv.net is a website where you can basically watch TV on your computer. As of today; alloftv.net contains 514 shows and 12290 episodes. But who cares? If I want to watch TV, I can just turn on my TV, right? Well, yeah, but not all these shows are going to be on. My favorite part of alloftv is that is has some great old shows that you won't find on TV. Remember "Are you afraid of the dark"? It is on the website, free for you to watch. Or the X-Files, or Legends of the Hidden Temple. Some really cool old shows make it worth checking out. There are also new shows, so if you missed last week's episode of Lost (assuming there was an episode last week, I don't know I don't watch it) there is a good chance it is up on alloftv. The legality of all this could be questioned, is it piracy, etc. Well, I would answer that by comparing it to Pandora. Pandora is not piracy because you cannot download the songs to your computer. Likewise, you can't download the shows from alloftv. The owners of the website cover themselves further by pointing out that none of the shows are hosted directly by them, so they are not at fault for the content that they link to.

As I see it, the pros:

• LOTS of shows and episodes
• Really cool old shows not on TV
• New shows that you missed episodes of
• No downloading -> no waiting
• Right on the computer -> watch TV anywhere you can get online
• Few Ads
  

Cons:

• Sometimes there are missing episodes of a series, or only a few episodes, not always in chronological order

Overall this is a great website, I guess part of the Web 2.0 concept. The new york times actually mentioned it. Definately check this website out for a good time.

Maps

I'm a little bit of a map nerd, I guess. That is, I like maps. I like old maps, new maps, interesting maps, you get the point. So I was pretty excited when I came across this blog: strange maps. Strange maps is a fun site in that it is a blog where the owner posts pictures/scans of all sorts of maps that he has come across. For a lot of people, the internet isn't about reading a lot, so the fact that all these pictures are present makes the blog fun. All you have to do is scroll down and look at cool pictures. Or, if you are like me and don't mind reading, you can reaad all the information the author of the blog provides for the various maps. As of 5 April there were 99 maps. Many of these are historical, some are general interest. The author gives a good ammount of information about each map, which makes it especially interesting of you are curious about some of these maps. The maps include :

• Where and how evolution is taught in the US
• What side and where people drive in the world
• The Island of California

Overall, this blog is pretty neat. Worth a look if you have nothing better to do.

Funny stuff

So its been a little while, but I'm back. Life getting in the way of writing this, silly huh.

Today I am going to focus on something that some people might not be amused by, but that I was. A little warning, this is not a game, so it actually does require a little reading, and a little thought. No distractions today. Its about the P-P-P-PowerBook. The artical describes serves as a warning to anyone who uses eBay, either for good or for ill.

The good; the guy who writes the article wanted to sell his friend's laptop on the popular auction website. Not an unreasonable purpose. He went through the process of setting up the auction and eventually got a buyer.

The bad: The buyer was not sincere. The seller was savvy enough to figure out that the buyer was trying to use a scam to get the powerbook for free.

The funny: Through a long series of teamwork and technical knowledge put to use, the seller and his internet-bb buddies put together a scheme to trick the scammer and punish him for trying to pull something like he did. The resulting plot and execution is nothing short of ingeniously amusing.

This article is definately worth a look. It highlights the pitfalls of a website such as eBay (presence of scammers) but also tells the story of hilairious hijinks to get back at the scammer.