Guilty (online) Pleasures
So I thought I’d disclose some of the ways I kill (or more accurately, massacre) time on the web. When it comes to the web comics I’m going to admit that Yes I have read all of these comics from the beginning and so you can imagine the amount of usable time lost from my life.
I am pleased to announce however that I have been Farmville free for the last two months and I feel no enticement to return. I quit the facebook game habit by slowly blocking the games I was playing until I was left with Farmville, then I set myself the goal of reaching level 50 and then quitting and then promptly (well it took a few weeks) did. Yay!
Games
Echobazaar have recently added Facebook as an alternative to logging in via Twitter but either way it’s non-intrusive (ie it doesn’t spam your feeds or request to do so every other moment (I’m thinking Farmville here) though the option to post a message is nearly always available). I’m not going to do it justice by explaining it but I’ll attempt to do so anyhow. The ultimate aim of the game is simply to Seek your fortune. Everyday you receive 70 actions (bear in mind this gets reset every 24hrs from the time you first logged in so choose a time that fits with your schedule) which you use to accomplish tasks gaining you higher levels of Dangerous, Shadowy, Persuasive and Watchful. The 70 actions you received get doled out to you in the form of a candle made up of 10 actions which refills an action per 7 minutes until it’s back up to 10 actions or until you’ve run out of daily actions. Tasks that you complete sometimes give you items which you can collect to use on later actions or sell to purchase other items. What I like about it is that because of the number of actions restrictions I can play each day without it chewing up all my usable time.
Comics
I’m not going to expound on each of these. I like them all for different reasons and I think everyone has such individual taste that you’re better off just checking them out for yourself. :)
Watching Simon’s Cat is a double delight as not only is it very funny but it also induces my daughter to become almost paralytic with laughter. The only sad thing is it takes time for new skits to appear.
I’ve included this link as it’s a good way to get the small person in our house out of the grumps. The first time I played it was late at night when our daughter should have been fast asleep, I heard a burst of laughter coming from her room and a plaintive plea to play it again. There’s a companion website called Drama button which I feel is self-explanatory.