Unit deconverter - make your units less useful!
Take a perfectly useful standardised measurement of length, weight, speed or time, and convert to something far less useful (but much more fun).
Tags: fun
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Post Haste
Look, it’s Friday—were you really going to get any work done today anyway?
CSS: A New Kind Of JavaScript | HeydonWorks
A bold proposal by Heydon to make the process of styling on the web less painful and more scalable. I think it’s got legs, but do we really need another three-letter initialism?
We waste far too much time writing and maintaining styles with JavaScript, and I think it’s time for a change. Which is why it’s my pleasure to announce an emerging web standard called CSS.
American-on-American Action Abroad: Sorry For Travel Writing At You
I have been to Brighton, and seen the summer here, and have concluded that Britons must never be permitted to have summer again. It was as hot and wet as God’s lungs, and there was a man playing the banjo on a beach with no sand. A seagull screamed at me with the voice of a human baby.
ASCIIFlow Infinity
Is it a graphic design tool? Is it a text editor? Is it just good fun?
Insult Generator
Testing the theory that putting the word “total”, “complete”, or “absolute” in front of any noun automatically makes for an excellent insult.
Horrific Soccer Injuries
The horror …the horror.
The Official NoPhone Store
Like a nicotine patch for your phone hand.
I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
I started a Twitter account, and fell into a world of good, dumb, weird jokes, links to new sites and interesting ideas. It was such an excellent place to waste time that I almost didn’t notice that the blogs and link-sharing sites I’d once spent hours on had become less and less viable. Where once we’d had a rich ecosystem of extremely stupid and funny sites on which we might procrastinate, we now had only Twitter and Facebook.
And then, one day, I think in 2013, Twitter and Facebook were not really very fun anymore. And worse, the fun things they had supplanted were never coming back. Forums were depopulated; blogs were shut down. Twitter, one agent of their death, became completely worthless: a water-drop-torture feed of performative outrage, self-promotion, and discussion of Twitter itself. Facebook had become, well … you’ve been on Facebook.
I Used The Web For A Day With JavaScript Turned Off — Smashing Magazine
Following on from Charlie’s experiment last year, Chris Ashton has been assessing which sites rely on JavaScript, and which sites use it in a more defensive, resilient way. Some interesting results in here.
A good core experience is indicative of a well-structured web page, which, in turn, is usually a good sign for SEO and for accessibility. It’s usually a well designed web page, as the designer and developer have spent time and effort thinking about what’s truly core to the experience. Progressive enhancement means more robust experiences, with fewer bugs in production and fewer individual browser quirks, because we’re letting the platform do the job rather than trying to write it all from scratch.
The Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds
The latest explainer/game from Nicky Case is an absolutely brilliant interactive piece on small world networks.
will/slacktyping: i’m typing when you’re typing
A plugin for Slack that will make it look like you’re typing whenever someone else is typing. It isn’t annoying at all.
Eclipse
A delightful bit of creative JavaScript from Cameron.
Geometry Wars
Graham is recreating the (beautiful and addictive) Geometry Wars in canvas.
Best played with a twin-stick controller (or WASD + Arrow keys as a fallback)
If you’re on Windows, XBONE or XB360 controllers are the easiest to use. On Mac, a PS4 Dualshock 4 or wired 360 controller (with a downloadable driver) works well.
Really Bad Design Exercises || Matthew Ström: designer & developer
This is a fun—and useful—way of improving the interview process. The Rubik’s Cube examples brought a smile to my face.
Constellations
A fun game with pins and string in canvas.
Hack for the craic: David McKeown on making hackathons fun for everyone
A great write-up of Science Hack Day Dublin—the 6th iteration is coming up next month.
What struck me about this hackathon is that the only end goal is for people to have a bit of fun and make stuff. There’s no flashy big-ticket prize and no commercial agenda. They’re not looking for start-up pitches or scalable business plans, and there’s no Dragons’ Den interrogation. Just good old-fashioned, high-tech making and mingling.
Cub n Pup - puzzle game demo
A deceptively simple but thoroughly addictive little in-browser puzzle game.
(It would be neat if this were turned into an offline-first progressive web app; it’s already keeping everything locally.)
Battleship Solitaire: Mindless Podcast Companion
Once I got the hang of this game, I found it incredibly addictive. I would describe it as mindless fun, but I think it’s more like mindful fun: it has the same zen contemplative peacefulness as Sudoku. I can certainly see how it makes for a good activity while listening to podcasts.
Note: click once for water; double-click for ships. And don’t blame me if you lose hours of time to this game.