Cross-platform, open source flight sim

Flight sims used to be a popular sub-genre of video gaming. Still are in some parts. And while there are still plenty of choices, I think it's pretty cool there are some spiffy open-source projects carrying the torch. Enter FlightGear

Fly a bunch of Cessnas, a few military aircraft, the space shuttle, or a UFO among other aircraft. And you can leisurely fly around a whopping 20,000 airports— the entire world on 3 DVD's. The graphics are good if not inspiring, but a looked decent nonetheless on my paltry 32 MB VRAM ATI card... Joystick control is a bit spotty, but the documentation gives you complete instructions on getting your input devices to work.

You can't beat the price at free, and the app runs on Mac, PC, Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX, and Solaris. What's exciting about this (and most open-source projects) is the ability to tweak and experiment. Most internal game settings and even controls are manipulated through XML files. There are built in hooks for networking. So you could remotely control the flight engine through a networked script. Why? I'll let you figure that one out.

Funny Farm - Web-based puzzle

This one is seriously hurting my head. Funny Farm is a web-based puzzle game that's been making the rounds recently. It's kind of a big game of word association. You start out on a mostly blank board that has one box labeled "On the farm" and a few blank boxes connected to it. The blank boxes conceal words that are related to the words connected to it, and guessing a word reveals it and more connected boxes. In this way, you fill out an ever-growing network of words. Some will give you access to other parts of the map, until you get to the far corners of the map, which give you clues to a larger riddle. Funny Farm will completely boggle your mind, and is at once extremely frustrating and very rewarding. It also has a handy collaboration feature whereby if you click on "Save game," it will give you a URL that contains your progress (encrypted, of course), and you can share the URL with your friends, whereupon all of the words you have uncovered will be merged with their game. I highly recommend teaming up with your friends if you want to solve Funny Farm in its entirety.

Official Seal Generator

This is probably a time-waster, but also pretty functional, so we'll let it squeeze by without the "time waster" label. Hey, it's Sunday, right?

The Official Seal Generator gives you an easy-to-use web interface with a bunch of built-in imagery to allow you to create a very official looking seal for your website, like this gorgeous one on the top. Of course, I'm sure you'll choose more attractive colors with more a appropriate image... ;-) All you have to do to create your own official seal is choose the style of border, the various colors, an image for the center and type in your text. Voila, a very official-looking seal for your site.

Make your own error messages

Have you ever wanted to screw with a co-worker or friend? Okay, let me rephrase that. This site is for when you want to screw with a co-worker or friend. It's a website that allows you to enter information for the title bar, window text, and buttons, and it generates an image that you can then download - like the example above. Unfortunately, the dialog boxes that it generates aren't accurate enough to fool anyone that knows Windows even reasonably well.

Speaking about error messages, here's a funny story I found on the internet:

"This is probably the best ever practical joke I played on a friend. A buddy of mine that I went to school with was "the source" - he was the guy that hung out in IRC rooms and newsgroups and managed to get all the latest cracked software. Of course, I'd never recommend running cracked software, but this was a simpler stupider time. He was also the guy that enjoyed finding all the latest "hacking" scripts, and running them against his friends. If I had a dollar for every time he remotely bluescreened my Win98 box, I'd probably have about $30. Still, it was annoying.

Anyhow, this friend's claim to fame was that he hadn't paid for any software on his system, including Windows. One day when I was visiting him, I waited until he went out for a smoke, and I slipped a floppy into his drive with a simple .reg file on it. Then I quickly double clicked the .reg file, clicked OK, and stuffed my floppy back in my pocket.

The .reg file was a simple registry entry that added a dialog box during logon to Windows - he was running NT Server if I remember correctly. My dialog box popped up with the following:
Title: Illicit Software Alert
Body: Illegal software has been detected on this system. Press OK to remove.

Now the great thing about Windows logon dialogs is that you only get one button: the OK button.

My buddy literally fell off his chair backwards. He was terrified. He couldn't bring himself to click OK, and he couldn't get into Windows without doing so. I wish I'd been better able to contain my laughter, because it didn't take him long to figure out that he was being had."

For all of you that spent some time to read the joke. Here's some information about the registry entry you'll want to mess with in order to try this trick on your friends

[Start] [Run] [Regedit] Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon Modify/Create the Value Name [LegalNoticeCaption] according to the Value Data listed below. Data Type: REG_SZ [String Value] // Value Name: LegalNoticeCaption Value Data for LegalNoticeCaption: [Type the Caption for the Dialog Box] Modify/Create the Value Name [LegalNoticeText] according to the Value Data listed below. Data Type: REG_SZ [String Value] // Value Name: LegalNoticeText Value Data for LegalNoticeText: [Type the Data for the Legal Notice] Exit Registry and Reboot

Don't click it

Here is an interesting site that is very different in terms of its user interface. The weird thing is that the site itself does not want you to click on it (after the first time). The entire interface is created in flash and simply lets the mouse-over do all the walking. While I don't think it will catch on in a big way, in is clever, well-done, and like a prototype car, is a good proof of concept. It is hard to not click the site, since everything we do online is based on clicks, but it is possible. I almost don't mind the dontclick.it interface, but it must be an incredibly time-consuming way to build a web interface, and it makes you feel as though you don't have quite so much control over what happens on the page, which is a bit disconcerting. I would tell you to go check it out, but then you would have to click on the link, so that defeats the whole purpose. Oh well.

JacksonPollock.org - be an abstract painter !

Always dreamed of being an abstract expressionist painter, but hate the idea of getting all that messy paint all over yourself? Well, fret no more! Now, thanks to JacksonPollock.org, you can be a Flash-based abstract expressionist painter! Don't you think if Jackson Pollock were alive today, he'd take advantage of the technology available to him?

Admittedly, JacksonPollock.org is a bit disconcerting at first. The site loads as a blank window, so you're confused to begin with. (Although you won't be, dear readers, since I've given you the heads up.) When you move your cursor anywhere within the browser window, a streak of "paint" is splashed across your virtual canvas. Each time you click, the paint changes color. And you don't have the luxury of picking up your "brush" and deciding where to place it next; oh no, that wouldn't be abstract enough.

Potentially, this can provide hours of amusement and artistic exploration. Just look at the masterpiece I created:

Isn't it worth more than the Blue Poles which is $2,000,000 ?!!!