Timesink-a term used to describe activities that consume a lot of time. Wikipedia
Before the age of Red Bull and Quad processors, people would sit around and read a book, or maybe talk to another human beings, for, oh, more than ten minutes. Now we never have enough time, and yet, we do manage to squeeze in a few things-like the national obsession with Solitaire once it was found on Windows.
Games, Blogs, Social Networks, YouTube, and Image Warehouses are all great Time Sinks. But you already know about them, don’t you? So how about one or two things you might not know about?
Of course, wandering around looking for timesinks, has been a pretty good timesink in itself. But it is fun to look at all the odd stuff that is floating around out there. The StumbleUpon next button is a really great timesink.
Ten Time Sinks
Samorost 2 is an online game that I ran across some time ago, but it is still pretty cool if you haven’t seen it. They have a few other games of a similar nature, if this is not enough of a timesink for you.
Fickr Related Tag browser– this is a pretty cool one. It’s a way to wander through the Photos on Flickr in a semi-organic, semi-random fashion. Which is the hallmark of a great time sink. There is a beginning, but there is no end. Rands is Repose liked this one a couple of years ago.
ASCII-O-Matic-Another blast from the past, taking an image and using the characters on your standard keyboard to make an image. I had one of Spock on my wall when I was in High School. You can upload a tiny image and have it made into an ASCII print as well. It is stall amazing that these look so good.
EntreCard– What do all bloggers need? One more way to waste their time on harebrained schemes to get traffic. Entrecard is that little widget with a 125×125 ad in it and a Drop yours sign on the bottom. What makes it a timesink is that you have to Drop Cards to earn Credits and you end up zipping through dozens of blogs looking for their Entrecard widget. You then have to find a blog to put your ad on, and hope they accept your ad. I guess if you have a fast computer and internet connection this doesn’t take much time, just one more card to drop, and one more, and maybe just one more. . .
Diggitizer-Have a hard time coming up with a good title for your Digg posts? Give Diggitizer a shot, you won’t get a great title, but it can be fun seeing how many times you end up with the words Awesome and Amazing. And who knows, it may inspire a great title, even if it doesn’t give you one.
Killer Quiz-Can you spot the difference between a Serial Killer and Programming Language Inventor? This little test is filled with pictures of people that look like both. Ok, not much of a timesink, only ten questions.
1000 Places to See Before You Die– Well, I can spend some time on my own list and see if it fits well with this list. 1000 Places to See Before You Die, I have always loved the sound of that. I have seen the Grand Canyon and Stonehenge, so I have at least two checked off.
Mr Picassohead– Get in touch with your inner Cubist. Mr Picassohead lets you create your own weird art and post it in their gallery. It is shocking, but there are some really good images here. Most of them are a bit on the childish side, like my own work above. It is fun and there is a surprising amount of variation possible considering the tools offered.
Mystical Ball-I was at a Ren Faire not too long ago and the guy up on stage called on me. He asked me to do some math, and think of a number, he then told me what the number was. He was right. This must be the same trick, and it is just as baffling having a computer program read my mind as it is having a Magician read my mind. It’s can be a bit of a time sink, as you run through numbers and watch the results. See also Ghost Whisperer.
Optical Illusions– There are a lot of sites that feature Optical Illusions of one kind or another. These are great timesinks as you can never be sure what you are seeing and there is kind of a small rush from getting dizzy on the spinning wheels and wobbling effects. We all love altering our reality, if only for a few seconds.
There were also a couple of time wasters that I found that don’t really qualify as timesinks as they are really silly and pointless. The first is Shave Your Yeti-which makes the Lama Song seem highly intelligent. The other silly thing is a set of cubes. Maybe I am just missing something, but this seems totally pointless. Which may make it a good timesink after all.
