Dude, Don’t Harsh My Monday Mellow
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 29, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, June 29th, 2009This weeks Monday Demotivators starts out on a light theme, but pretty soon the morning is shot, and it’s all downhill after that.
We received another complaint recently that our Monday Demotivators had strayed from the clever games and puzzles that force one to use their head a little. Don’t you people have anything nice to say? Well, we’re here to please. So go ahead and bang your head, and thanks for your input. But seriously, for those who for whatever reason actually like thinking on a Monday morning, we have Light Bot. Program the moves of the little robot, and click go. The objective is to light up the blue squares. Continuing to keep things light this morning, try Nodes 2, in which you line up lasers before the bomb goes off. That game takes advantage of the fact that rearranging little red lines on computer a screen is MUCH more exciting with an Electrobeat soundtrack. And if you don’t believe us, just try Laser Logic, which doesn’t have an Electrobeat soundtrack. If you’re still awake after that one, we always try to include some form of murder for the more morally degenerate homicidal types amongst you. Today we have Ultimate Assassination 2, which frankly should be called Ultimate Ant-sassination 2; although an amusing game, you feel more like you’re killing little bugs than people. And it’s all downhill from here. To finish Harshing Your Monday Mellow, we have Gnarshmallow. A simple but challenging skiing game that seems to take the little bugs from the last game and put them on a ski slope. Crashtastical, dude. Just don’t blast a dookie.
Monday Morning Meticulously Mapped Out?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 8, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, June 8th, 2009Axis if we care. Our plot to disrupt the day you’ve carefully charted for yourself involves graphic depictions of death, birth, crime, and…Wikipedia?
Do you ever feel overwhelmed with the information and sensory input at your disposal these days? We’re here to help. Overwhelm you more, that is. In our ongoing plot to derail your Monday morning, we’ve touched on fleshmaps, facebook maps, why Ian can’t get a date maps, infographics, flowcharts , and million dollar graphics. So you’d think we’d be done, right? But no. Here we have 50 more examples of ways to visualize data, brought to you by WebDesignerDepot.com. Of all of the examples presented, I probably found TuneGlue the most useful; it visually cross-references musical artists and their work in a very simple interface, with Amazon links. By the way, a lot of those tools in that link made pretty graphs, but were in most cases visualizing things normal people don’t care about. And there’s definitely a flaw in the plan when a graphic actually makes it harder to understand complex information rather than easier. So check out 5,000 years of Middle East history in 90 seconds, or BreathingEarth, where you can watch deaths and births in real time and ponder your emissions. Even better, WorldClock displays everything from oil consumption to US crime stats in real time. And lastly, have you ever wondered what Wikipedia would look like if it were in book form?
If You’re So Rich, Why Aren’t You Smart?
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on June 1, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, June 1st, 2009Science finally explains why chimpanzees are rarely millionaires.
I’m often accused of being intelligent, but trust me, nothing could be further from the truth. I’m clever and persistent, but frankly, so are raccoons. However I am smart enough, for instance, to not waste a lot of time taking Facebook quizzes that tell me what Jesus thinks of me, or whether or not I’m a potato. First of all, I’m just not that narcissistic; secondly, I KNOW I’m not a potato; and perhaps most importantly: don’t you people realize that the NSA scrapes Facebook data daily to build your citizen profile?!? But back to the original question. This week’s Monday morning time-waster is devoted to intelligence testing and wealth, rather than dumb Flash games. Because until I manage to monetize the process of finding all those silly little games to make you late for work on Monday, you’ll just have to go find your own. So. How smart are you? Well, apparently, not as smart as a chimp. But don’t worry. In spite of books that suggest the opposite
It’s Monday. So Let’s Get On The Ball, Okay?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 18, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, May 18th, 2009This week, our Monday morning time-wasters get a new spin. Instead of trying to make you late for work, we’re here to help you get on the ball.
If you’ve come here for our regular monday morning time wasters, get ready, we’re throwing you a little curve ball. Although our intent is usually to prevent you from being on the ball on Monday, today we’ve mustered up the balls to do exactly the opposite. First, do you even know what a curve ball IS? This amazing illusion demonstrates why they appear to break so hard from the batter’s point of view. It also might make you a little dizzy if you haven’t had your coffee yet. As will the game Curve Ball, which is kind of like playing Pong in The Matrix. The game Dyson Ball kind of sucks, but what would you expect from a vaccuum cleaner promo? At least James Dyson had the balls to manufacture a new kind of vaccuum. Avoiding blue balls is the objective of this game, and just to show that we have a pair, here’s Red Ball, a simple physics-based game which, for no reason we can ascertain, “moos” when you fail. Don’t be cowed. We made it to level 11 pretty easily, if you want the password (just hover here). We’ve probably driven most readers away with that last round of puns by now, but please, sphere not. Before you get your balls in a sling with Sling Jumper, you can draw the line with Scriball. And you’ll probably never get to the bottom of things with GyroBall, but if you do, you can bounce back with Bouncy-Ball. See you round!
Simple But Non-Trivial Pursuit
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 11, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, May 11th, 2009Trivial Pursuit is for sissies. This week’s Monday morning time-killers explore whether or not you can handle a NON trivial pursuit. If you can, maybe you can also tell us what the heck it actually means.
Out of over a trillion pages in Google’s index, you had to end up here. Our apologies. Odds are that with that many web pages in existence, a huge number of them will be a banal waste of your time. And that, in fact, is the objective of our Monday Demotivators. This week we’re going to explore simplicity and triviality, which is what you’re probably engaged in if you’re at work right now anyway. The difference is, we don’t pay you! But we’re wasting time. Let’s get rolling. On wasting more of it. The “Eight Queens Puzzle” is a classic example of a “simple but non-trivial” problem. Try arranging 8 queens on a chessboard in such a way that no two queens would be able to attack each other. There are 4,426,165,368 possible arrangements of eight queens on the board, but only 92 solutions. The image at left gets you 3/8 of the way there. Good luck. 3D Logic, a cube-based color pattern puzzle also appears rather simple at first. Things get a little hairy at level 6. Let us know if you get to the level where it tranforms into a 4-dimensional hypercube. We don’t know that it actually does that, but it sounds cool, doesn’t it? If you like your non-trivial simplicity in the form of word puzzles, try this: “A young woman goes to the funeral of her mother. There she meets a man whom she has never met before. She identifies him as the man of her dreams and immediately falls in love. Two days later she kills her sister. Why?” (We’ll post the answer in the comments if anyone asks.) And lastly, if you prefer trivial simplicity, we have some stick people for you. Sure, they’re simple. But when given the choice of killing them or saving their lives, do they still seem trivial? You decide. Hope you have a simple, non-trivial Monday!