Smoking is widely considered to be one of the hardest "bad habits" to kick. Way more so than turning your underwear inside out and wearing it a second time.
If you're having trouble quitting, why not download CostOfSmoking for a massive dose of reality. It's an ugly, quickly assembled program (it looks like a packaged MS Access database) that will leave you absolutely gobsmacked. If you don't smoke and never have, this program will make you damn glad.
A quick run based on a ten-year, one-and-a-half pack a day habit at the current $12 a pack (oh, Canada!) pricing yielded the ungodly sum of $114,594. If that's not enough to convince someone that their habit is putting a serious dent in their potential savings, we don't know what is.
Try it yourself and see! We decided to run numbers on our average coffee habit - just to make sure we're in good shape - and was relieved to find out that our java vice came in at a much more reasonable $1,146.
When we were kids, the best thing about getting a package in the mail was the bubble wrap that came in the box. Now that we're a bit older, and we can appreciate everything else that comes along with the bubble wrap, it doesn't mean we don't still get a kick out of finding every last little bubble to pop. Now, if you want to get your hands on some bubble wrap, you don't have to wait until your next package arrives. Any time you feel the itch to pop, just go here.
Pop the virtual bubbles at the click of a mouse, or go into Manic Mode, and just have at it, swinging your mouse all over the screen. We do feel we ought to warn you though, when you click the "Fresh Sheet" button, watch out for the recording. You'll want to keep your volume turned down because it doesn't sound like it has anything to do with an innocent sheet of bubble wrap. You'll see what we mean.
We know the novelty of this will probably wear off pretty quickly, so it might not qualify for more than 5 minutes worth of wasting time, but it definitely deserves a mention.
The Several Journeys of Reemus is a Flash game that is somewhat reminiscent of the 90's Lucasarts games like Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, and Sam and Max. SJoR has a minimalist point-and-click interface that lacks the obvious verbs like "Use," "Look," and "Pick Up."
The plot is centered around Reemus and his cute, yet melancholy purple-bear sidekick Liam. Reemus, an insect exterminator, is summoned by the local innkeeper to rid his establishment of ants before the prince and his bride-to-be arrive. The objective is to get Reemus and Liam out of each puzzle space, and that is accomplished by interacting with the environment to find a way out.
The game is a bit brief, but the puzzles are entertaining and rather trippy. There are two endings, and original music accompanies the game.
Developed by Pet Tomato the object of the game is simple. Get your character from door to door. It's just the way that he gets there is rather um... how should we put this... gas-tastic.
While you can certainly jump, in order to reach the heights required to get to each level you'll have to expend you inner powers. Of course there is a limit to this and you can't very well expect an infinite supply, so use it wisely. As you progress, the levels get harder and enemies try to block your way from reaching your goal.
We've haven't been able to get very far in the game, so we'll need to work on our fourth meal to increase our strength.
Kitten Cannon addresses one of mankind's most primal urges; firing small fluffy animals out of a cannon.
The goal is simple really; shoot the kitten out of the cannon as far as possible. You can adjust the aim and velocity of the cannon, but the real distance is obtained when poor fluffy lands on a pile of explosives, or is trampolined into a balloon-bomb. Watch out for the Venus Cat-traps and death spikes that will stop fluffy DEAD in her tracks.
Some may think that there is a trivial amount of strategy involved in firing a Kitten from a cannon. Obviously they haven't reached 2,164 ft!
Time wasting is fun, especially when things need to get done. For that purpose BioLabs: Outbreak! is perfect, because it offers the player a fairly repetitive task that is interesting enough that you can keep doing it instead of what you should actually be doing. That, coupled with a very forgiving learning curve, allows you to really take your time with it and get the most out of your time wasting investment.
The concept is simple: there is an outbreak of some sort (inside a purple rectangle of all places) and you must administer an antidote to contain and kill off all the elements of the outbreak. But there is a catch, of course. The quantity of antidote is limited and the outbreak continues to grow in size as you progress through the levels. You contain the outbreak by growing bubbles of antidote and surrounding the individual cells with those bubbles. If during the antidote-bubble-growing-process the antidote makes contact with the outbreak, the bubble breaks and wastes precious antidote. So, it is important to exercise caution when growing bubbles, especially in the later stages.
And that's about as deep BioLabs: Outbreak! gets, which is probably good since you really don't want to spend too much time with any one time waster. In the end, BioLabs: Outbreak! will have wasted a good bit of your day and will let you enjoy the hectic catch-up session that follows your time wasting exploits.
Some days when you're sitting at your desk at work, don't you just wish that you had a different job? Something a little more exciting, and maybe a bit dangerous? Something that makes you feel alive... Like maybe being an assassin!
If you're looking to get a little fix of being an assassin without actually having to, you know, kill people, check out Sleepless Assassin, a Flash-based side scrolling action game. While it looks and handles much like many other games that are of a similar style, Sleepless Assassin has one very cool trick up its sleeve.
When it comes time to shoot enemies, your character has a bow and arrow. Since the default view is fairly close up, the screen pulls back to give you a wider view when you click to draw the bow. You can then aim, and an arc is shown to give you an idea of your arrow's flight path. This allows for some "trick shots" where you can kill enemies that can't see you, as well as giving you a quick way to get the lay of the land.
In terms of the fun factor of the game as a time waster, with (very) little practice you can be good enough to have a good time with this little gem.
If you need a minute to relax from some stress at work, Music Catchis the game for you. The idea behind the game is pretty simple: catch the flying shapes while some relaxing piano music plays.
Most of the shapes in the game are blue and teal in color. In addition to the blue and teal shapes there are yellow shapes that you can collect that make your man larger and multiply your score, red shapes that take away the bonus you earned with the yellow, and purple shapes that give you "Purple Power" which sucks in everything around you.
The whole thing is pretty simple. There's only one level that takes about 5 minutes to play. With top scores over a million point however, it can be just as addictive as it is relaxing.
SuperTuxKart is a cross-platform version of the popular Nintendo racing game Super Mario Kart, with a few key differences. Instead of Mario characters, it stars the beloved Linux mascot, Tux the Penguin, and some of his friends. The racing takes place on all-new tracks, either as a one-off race or a series. Up to 4 human players can join in, and up to 10 racers can be on the track at once, including computer drones.
SuperTuxKart is almost as fun as Mario Kart, but it has a couple of drawbacks. The multiplayer mode is a little tough to work out without a network play option, the splitscreen view and sharing of the keyboard reduces the fun-factor significantly. There are also some frustrating corners you can get stuck in on some of the tracks, and the game slows down a bit with all 10 racers in play. However, the plusses outweigh the minuses, and SuperTuxKart is actually a lot smoother and more visually appealing than playing Mario Kart on an emulator.
Today's time waster is MotherLoad - the time waster that lets you excavate your time away. You are an operator of a digging vehicle on Mars, being one of the brave few that dares dig in this hostile environment. The game's objective is simple: dig your way to riches and upgrade your digging vessel as you sell the collected ore on your way to the hidden treasures deep within Mars.
The game has fantastically intuitive controls, which - although being merely the arrow keys - can really be sensed when the digger moves exactly as expected. This not only allows you to get into the time wasting action quickly, but comes in handy as your digging vessel is rather fragile and needs to be cared for if you want to survive multiple trips below the surface.
In order to make any progress in the game, getting upgrades is crucial. Your vessel's fuel range as well as the cargo space that holds the excavated ore is very limited, besides the fact that the beginning drill is awfully inefficient. But, as you make progress and hit certain depths, say 1,000 feet, you will get bonuses from your employers which should help with getting these upgrades more quickly. Once you have some good gear on your excavator, you'll be able to start hitting deeper depths where the ore becomes progressively more valuable.
But be warned, after having pulled in your first few loads and made some basic upgrades, MotherLoad becomes incredibly addicting. Remember to waste time responsibly.
On some days, the urge to waste time is just a little stronger than others. If it happens to be one of those days for you today, you are in luck, because Blobular will not only help you waste your time, but also make you slightly nauseous.
The game starts innocently enough: Blobular, a blob out and about in the world, needs to get back home to Blobsville. To start you off on your journey, you pick how Blobular looks (his/her/its eyes and body color) and then enter a world of collectible items and foes. Each level has a given number of items you need to collect in order to pass it while running against the clock and avoiding enemies.
But here's the catch: you move your blob by spinning the world around and letting gravity pull the blob around. Although this is slightly disorienting (and slightly nauseating), once you get adjusted this time waster has some potential. As you collect more items (say mushrooms), your blob begins to grow and won't fit through smaller gaps anymore. You can then split your blob apart into smaller blobs that can fit through these gaps, and merge again whenever you please.
Continue until you have finished the game, are done wasting time, or can't continue due to nausea from all the spinning. Don't say we didn't warn you.
Have you ever felt like a really colorful, but inexplicably ticked off tiki-head chained against your will to another tiki-head? Did it upset you that the only way you could get through your tiki existence was to work with the head to which you were chained, like it or not? If so, stay far away from Knuckleheads, today's Time Waster. We don't want you to get flashbacks.
If the idea of manuevering little heads on chains around an arcade world reminiscient of those of your childhood (but with better graphics), Knuckleheads might be the escape from the month end paperwork you were looking for.
The idea is to move your heads forward while hitting as many desirable targets (little star capsules, to start with) as you possibly can. Using your keyboard, the left and right arrows move your heads backward and forward, and the up and down arrows allow you to lengthen and shorten your chain. The game gets progressively trickier, calling upon your coordination and patience to hit correctly colored monsters with the matching head, avoid spikes, and adhere to some really unsavory sounding sticky blocks.
A minute to learn, a lifetime to master? Yeah, well, maybe not. Nevertheless, Knuckleheads is entertaining, and even when you've pretty well mastered it, there's something really pleasing about the squash of a tiny grimacing head against a sticky block.
Recently we've noticed more and more two-dimensional games incorporating use of both the keyboard and mouse, much in the same way that first person shooters do. The latest to catch our eye is Dirk Valentine and the Fortress of Steam, a side-scrolling game in which you play the part of the hero, Dirk. Your goal is infiltrate Lord Battenberg's steam fortress, and destroy it.
The control scheme includes the typical movement buttons including jump, but then you use the mouse for aiming your weapon. Dirk is equipped with a chain shooter that kills enemies, but it also allows him to build short bridges out of the chain between specific types of platforms.
The gameplay is solid, and the look of the game has a sort of quasi-steampunk feel. Rather than giving you a training mode or page of instructions, the game's creator has instead decided to train you as you go. You can stop at specific points to get more information, making the learning curve very comfortable yet giving the game the ability to introduce more depth as you continue.
If you're looking for a five minute distraction from your regular work, Dirk Valentine is not a good choice for you. This game appears to have hours of content. But if you're looking for something a little more engaging that you can come back to again and again, check it out.
Quick, what do the twenty images above have in common? If you guessed they're all images pulled from Google Images, you guessed right. But that's not the answer we're looking for. The correct answer is Windows. And now you pretty much know how to play Guess the Google.
The game picks a random word, performs a Google Image search, and then gives you the results. You have 20 seconds to figure out the original search query. The faster you figure it out, the more points you get. The game is simple, but surprisingly addictive.
Smoking is widely considered to be one of the hardest "bad habits" to kick. Way more so than turning your underwear inside out and wearing it a second time.
The Several Journeys of Reemus
So a tipster sent this new site to us, 
Have you ever felt like a really colorful, but inexplicably ticked off tiki-head chained against your will to another tiki-head? Did it upset you that the only way you could get through your tiki existence was to work with the head to which you were chained, like it or not? If so, 
