Time on your hands?
You’re in luck. Killing time is an ancient art-form that probably predates time itself. While our prehistoric ancestors were probably pretty busy killing woolly mammoths, making fire, and bashing rocks together to make tools, somewhere along the line they had enough free time to invent the wheel, develop a language, and draw pictures on cave walls, and we’re all a lot better off for it.
Why were playing cards invented, or chess boards for that matter? Once upon a time, a trip from London to New York took about two months by sailing ship, with nothing to do to pass the time but suck on limes and watch the horizon – without books, games, musical instruments and the odd funeral at sea, they might not have made it to the new world with their sanity intact.
Even now, in a world where you’re probably never really much farther than 250 metres from a TV screen, it’s still a challenge to kill time.
Let’s face it, not even the most diligent office worker can spend every second of every day at their desk working – except for me that is.
There’s also nothing good on television when you’re at home, and not even a professor of literature can spend every minute of the day reading a book.
Myself, I have two guitars, a Playstation 2, a collection of books to read, a table hockey table, art supplies, a huge bin full of random sporting equipment, a bike, a snowboard, a gym membership, and all kinds other time consuming knick-knacks, and I still find myself with time to kill.
More and more I find myself turning to the Internet to fill these holes.
The sheer volume and variety of time consuming devices on the Web would take you a lifetime to get through, and there really is something for everybody. If you consider playing games a waste of time, then you can do a crossword or solve puzzles. You can watch videos, listen to music, and read odd lists and articles compiled by people with even more time on their hands than you have.
The slogan for this site is "When you have nothing better to do," and it can be a little misleading. There are so many cool links on this site, that you’re going to want to spend time here even when you have something to do. You can read movie reviews, play eSpin the Bottle with other bored people, play video games, get your horoscope, solve crossword puzzles, listen to Bored Radio, read jokes, and design a Bored.com Web site.
Some of the featured links you can visit include CyberFireworks.com, where you can create your own fireworks show; CreateBands.com, where you can create your own band and hear it play online; Stupid Videos, where you can watch people hurting and embarrassing themselves in very stupid ways; read the longest list of oxymorons (words and phrases that contradict themselves) at Oxymoronlist.com; fight to save your favourite television shows from cancellation at SaveMyShow.com; watch sport-related accidents at Maximum Exposure; settle bets at the Guinness Book of World Records; watch George W. Bush get jiggy with it at DancingBush.com; play Guess the TV Show, Movie, Dictator and Sit-Com character with the computer; make your own animated movie or film at DigitalFilms.com; analyze your dreams at FreakyDreams.com; watch video parodies at VideoParodies.com; play with virtual bubble wrap; read the history of rocket cars; bet people they won’t do things at iBetYouWill.com–and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
www.shockwave.com
It takes about five minutes to download Macromedia’s Shockwave Player with a high-speed connection, but the payoff is literally thousands of hours of entertainment.
There is a game section with hundreds of small titles that you can demo for free, a section where you can create puzzles and personalized e-mails, and an incredible film and cartoon section to enjoy.
www.ifilm.com
What better way to fill those gaps in time than short films?
IFilm has a huge database of short films, animations, spoofs, clips, trailers and more that is constantly updated.
Past viewers also review every film, which can save you time in looking for something good to watch.
www.funtrivia.com
At last count, this site had links to more than 30,000 (!) different quizes in a wide range of categories: Animals, Brain Teasers, Celebrities, Entertainment, For Children, General, Geography, History, Hobbies, Humanities, Literature, Movies, Music, People, Religion, Science/Technology, Seasonal, Sports, Television, and World.
You can play against friends in multi-player mode, and can sign up for an account that will rank you and challenge you according to your abilities.
http://www.dreamt.org/d-man/timekill.html
This is the Digital Man’s links to various Internet Time Killers, including "The Big Button That Doesn’t Do Anything," Mirsky’s Worst of the Web, Paul’s Useless Pages, David Letterman’s Top Ten Lists, and other gems.
