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Archive for the 'Hump Day' Tag

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Personalize your own church sign

September 19th, 2008, 2:16 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

Someone sent me this image this week and I thought it would be a fun way to end the work week:

Make it yourself by going to churchsigngenerator.com

Did you miss Gadgetress this week? Here’s what I blogged about:

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Funniest joke wins $2,500

June 18th, 2008, 1:26 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterIn honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

Everyone could use more laughter in their lives. Joke site Comic Wonder wants to help with that. The site has over 200,000 audio jokes for your listening pleasure.

A joke’s not a joke until it’s toldBut if you’re more of a jokester, the site encourages people to tell the joke yourself — and possibly win $2,500 if you’re selected as Comic Wonder of the Year. Weekly winners receive a Comic Wonder hat and $50 cash.

The 7-month-old site stresses that hearing a joke is much funnier than reading a joke. To compete, create an account, hit the “Call Me” button, and when Comic Wonder calls your number, tell them your joke. But if you’re not a very good joke teller, you can submit a joke to its “Joke Limbo” area so someone else can tell it. And win the cash.

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Create your own beast of boredom

June 11th, 2008, 8:14 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterIn honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

You can create your own beast at BeastBlender.com, a site run by the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. This flash-based blender offers body parts from an alligator, cockatoo, lemur and other creatures. I call my creation a “Allerhicomumode.” Scary, yes?

An allerhicomumode from Beast Blender

Past Hump Day timewasters:

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If OCRegister fought OCWeekly, who would win?

June 4th, 2008, 1:00 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterIn honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

GoogleFight!Sorry, I’ve lost track of time in recent weeks and then I found myself picking fights at GoogleFight, a site that pits two sides against one another based on Google matches. It’s the perfect HDT!

Pick two people, two teams, two words and fight, fight fight!! The OCRegister trounced the OCWeekly by nearly 1,800 percent, based on Google hits. I guess that’s to be expected, considering that the weekly is smaller than the shrinking Register.

OCRegister vs. LA Times

Compared to the LATimes.com, the Reg is only down by 33 percent. Are we really that prolific on the Web? Must be all of our blogs.

Fight fight Google fight!Anyway… GoogleFight is my latest time waster and yes, I’ve wasted too much time picking fights with other media companies and writing this post.

Try it yourself and type in your own competitors. And check out its top fights, recent fights and funny fights, like Google vs. waste of time. Guess who wins that round?

Past time wasters:
Solve the virtual Rubik’s Cube
A laugh a minute: New Yorker cartoons
Guess the Google game
The Infinite Cat Project

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Solve the virtual Rubik’s Cube

May 14th, 2008, 12:13 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterIn honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

Have you ever solved the Rubik’s Cube? Here’s your chance waste time at your desk, thanks to 27Bobs.com. The actor-turned-software architect said he developed the Rubik’s animation to ‘experiment with parent/child relationships and user interaction on multiple planes and axis.”

If that’s too much to think about, just waste time on this already:

Rubik’s Cube from 27Bobs.com Rubik’s Cube from 27Bobs.com

If you’re stumped or have to get back to work again, he also offers a cheat, which automatically solves the cube. Have fun!

Past HumpDay Time Wasters:

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A laugh a minute: New Yorker cartoons

May 7th, 2008, 1:12 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterIn honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I pretty much only read the cartoons in the New Yorker. The stories are good but soooo long and who has time? Sometimes, I don’t even have enough time to read the cartoons!New Yorker cartoons

An easy way to get my New Yorker cartoon fix is to tune in to its Cartoon Channel online (free registration required). You pick the topic (animals, law, medical, business, etc..) and in a small window, a new cartoon refreshes every 30 seconds. I called this post ‘A laugh a minute’ because I’d say that only about half the cartoons are outright funny.

A tip from my mother-in-law who loves the funny pages: For those who want to waste more time, check out the animated New Yorker cartoons. These are short 15-second animations of existing New Yorker cartoons, including the memorable ‘Tastes like Chicken’ with diners staring at legless frog rolling out of the restaurant in a wheelchair. A sign in the background says “Try our frogs’ legs.” RingTales, which offers the animated cartoons, recently launched the same service for Dilbert.

New Yorker animated cartoons

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Guess the Google game

April 30th, 2008, 1:01 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterIn honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

I’m still tense from playing this time waster called “Guess the Google,” from New Zealand digital designer Grant Robinson. It’s a timed, flash-animated game where you see 20 images from Google and you guess what the search was.

At first, I found it impossible. But then I realized that I just needed to guess the simplest answer. Such as ‘pets’ for the image below. I swear I didn’t play for more than, urm, a 30 minutes. By the time I called it quits, I made it into the top 10 scores for the day. Woo hoo!

Guess the Google by Grant Robinson

You get 20 points for the right answer and up to 20 points if you can guess the answer within 20 seconds. Keep in mind, you have to type the exact answer — no typos or other forms of the word.

Some cheats (don’t look if you want a real challenge):

Read the rest of this entry »

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Lenovo pokes fun at MacBook Air

April 29th, 2008, 3:22 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

Just spotted this and had to share:

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

Ha ha… I wonder what iGirl has to say?

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The Infinite Cat Project

April 23rd, 2008, 1:01 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterIn honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

The Infinite Cat Project: A cat looking at another cat looking at another cat looking at another cat looking at another cat looking at another cat looking at another cat… Do I need to go on?

The Infinite Cat project

You can even add your own cat — just follow the rules.

And if you’re really trying to waste time, check out The Infinite Cat’s games page.

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Learn to type sideways

April 16th, 2008, 1:00 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterIn honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

I wrote about how to send an upside-down e-mail a few weeks ago and then I ran into the sideway screen. Hit the Ctrl+Alt keys and then either the left or right arrow. Your screen’s orientation will rotate sideways. You can likewise hit Ctrl+Alt and the down arrow and your screen flips upside down. The Ctrl+Alt and the up arrow key rights everything.

Flip your screen sideways

In the back of my mind, I knew about this Windows trick. But it wasn’t until Widget, my 5-month old, had her way with my laptop that I remembered it existed. I resorted to Google to find the cure and stumbled upon Eric T’s Internet Duct Tape, a tech blog. His post has 174 comments and quite a few are from people mention their kid did this.

Eric goes on to say that this feature was built into the Windows XP Tablet PC edition where flipping the screen is a useful feature. But Intel added the same feature to its video card drivers so if you want to disable it, you’ll need to get into the card’s menu.

But why disable it? I say try it on an unsuspecting colleague and stand back and watch the results. Maybe I should call this prank day?

(Attention Mac users: Widget doesn’t want to leave you out. She figured out VoiceOver, Mac’s screen reader. It’s Command+F5.)

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Gimme back my letters!

April 9th, 2008, 1:00 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterWhere’s my letters?In honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

I mentioned this on my blog way back when, but it’s a classic that I feel new readers should be exposed to: Just Letters Developed by Flashcomguru, this Flash distraction lets you rearrange retro alphabet refrigerator magnets. Fun fun, right?

But there’s more.

It lets other people join in on the fun at the same time. They’ll steal your letters, they’ll write corny phrases. Oh wait — that was you?

When I first blogged about this years ago, my Register colleagues had a mad time spelling out OCRegister (captured on right). If you’re able to manage something clever, send it my way to share with readers.

One parental warning: Lots of potty mouths in the room.

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Send an upside-down e-mail

April 2nd, 2008, 4:00 pm by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

icontimewasterYes, Hump Day Timewasters are the total opposite of the new focus of this blog but hey, I hear people love it. And I am very grateful to iGirl for maintaining this blog in my absence. So, in honor of iGirl, here’s another installment of our weekly endeavor to make you laugh, have fun and in all cases waste time.

Freak friends out and send them an upside-down e-mail. Sites like Flip, by Reverse Fad Productions, turn anything you type upside down. Just cut and paste the reverse text into an e-mail and you’re sure to get a ‘How’d you do that?’ response.

op oʇ ʎsɐǝ sı sɹǝʇʇǝl uʍop-ǝpısdn

It uses Unicode, the computer “language” that assigns a number for every character. But beware, upside-down lettering doesn’t work with everything. Some e-mail and instant messaging programs I tried resulted in gibberish. But it does work in Lotus:

Upsidedown letters

To waste even more time, visit the Hump Day archive.

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