By: Tech Savvy
Scenario. It’s 10 p.m.. The middle of the week. You’ve just completed that lingering problem set and, from this point forward, you’ve got no foreseeable work due until Monday. You roll a fat one, or pour a stiff one, or both (you are a college student after all), and as you sink into the world of inebriation a terrible thought runs through your head. ‘What am I going to do now?’ Your eyes go wide and your mouth goes dry as you realize not only do all your friends still have work to finish…but there ain’t stuff on TV either. So what are you going to do? You’re not going to stalk Facebook again, I’ll tell you that. Let’s dip into my stash of the best of the best for audacious applications and wasted webbing. Welcome to ‘Inebriated Computing 101.’
As you begin your plunge face-first into getting wasted and exploring what your machine has to offer, it is extremely important to take necessary precautions. No, I’m not telling you to back-up your computer, you should be doing that regularly anyway. I’m talking about Mail Goggles, a great failsafe found in Google’s Gmail Labs. After enabling and setting up Mail Goggles you will no longer have to worry about sending out that embarrassing crunked rant to your ex, because Mail Goggles forces you to solve math equations before that e-mail goes out. Addition, subtraction, exponents and order of operations, it’s all there to make sure that Trashed You is road-blocked and that only Sober You sends things out. Tomorrow’s looking pretty good.
Now that we’re using protection, it’s up to you how to proceed. Choose your own adventure.
Sites
Wimp.com is my go-to laugh-out-loud-hilarious and/or blow-your-mind video clip site. It’s like someone scrubbed YouTube for all the good stuff and brought it here, where they are links and dated. It can only be described as page after page of awesomeness. Don’t be discouraged by the ‘View Prior Month’ link, as traveling back in time will not affect the present or future. Wimp itself is SFW, but neither Wimp nor myself can vouch for the videos or sites linked by Wimp. I’d tell you to lock your door, but I know it’s already locked. Put some pants on.
Scanwiches.com, and to a lesser extent Scanwich.com, is the fusion of two of the most well-respected arts. This is where food and porn truly culminate into the most beautiful of high-quality images and cross-sections scanned by Zeus himself. It’s like ThisIsWhyYourFat.com only it’s not nauseating and you don’t feel ashamed. So I guess it’s not exactly like porn. Regardless, forget what I said in the paragraph above, take your pants back off and break out the mustard.
Then there’s Super Crossover Bros. over at ExplodingRabbit.com (it’s under Games). If you haven’t figured out already from my love for emulators, there isn’t much else that rocks my world as hard as SCBs does. It’s a Flash-based Super Mario 1 fan boy homebrew that allows you to play not just as Mario, but also as a whole host of classic Nintendo characters including Samus, Link, and Megaman. Designer Jay Pavlina goes one further, implementing special moves for each character related to their original game. However, the best part isn’t even playing the game, rather, its watching Jay’s ‘Playing My Own Game’ videos that are side-splittingly funny. He’s got a dirty mouth, but he’s adorable in his own right.
Apps
Author’s note: PC users will have to forgive me here, the extent of my Windows usage occurs at work, where I am certainly not inebriated. When I do use Windows at home, it’s simply to run a [k] in a virtual machine. Please comment with your own fun apps, or if you’ve got 7, just snap your windows to the left and right and up and down, I hear that’s pretty neat.
SoundStream (pcheese.net/software/soundstream/) has very quickly become my favorite screen saver on my Mac. That’s because it’s interactive. Soundstream features a slew of highly customizable settings that allow you to reconfigure the screen saver on a whim. But the best part is when you start the screen saver, turn off the lights, and start making noise. Shout a little. Shout a lot. Soundstream reacts and pulses along with the input. While you probably doesn’t do a whole lot of ‘screen saving’ there’s nothing wrong with turning on a little Dark Side of the Moon and watching your computer sync up to the music. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore. For those of you not on a Mac, there’s Electric Sheep (community.electricsheep.org), a screensaver that provides you with the most tripped out visuals you’ve ever seen or provides the blueprint for your flashbacks to the most tripped out visuals you’ve ever seen. When you see a visual you like, hit the ‘Up’ arrow and ES will find more like that one. Conversely, if you see one you despise (I’m not a fan of the browns), hit ‘Down’ and there will be less like it in the future. Everything’s coming up Millhouse.
Garageband (free with your Mac) is not just for the musically talented. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can put together an original rap song in Garageband. Set up your drums, then your bass, then loop the stuff out of it. Proceed to open your second forty and smoke a fatty and just let loose and ribbity-rhyme diggity-dog. If I can do it, having grown up on Vanilla Ice, anyone can do it. Save the outtakes for later, trust me. Or, while you’re at it, try Mixxx (mixxx.org) another multi-platform DJ app. Search around Google and it’s easy enough to find instrumentals or acapella versions of rap songs or radio hits to make your own mash-ups. If you’re really talented and have studied the ‘Making Smack My Bitch Up’ video (totally should have listed this up top, it’s found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI), you can use samples and create something great. Or something awful. The program gets pretty complicated, hell, even I haven’t really figured it out, but try your luck! Hell, it’s still only 7 p.m. and you’re not going anywhere.
And again, I could go on and on about the games you can play. Did you know that old Windows 3.5 games still run? In fact they run really, really fast. So many games like this are findable and free on Google. Think of your favorite game from the past and go get it! Scorched Earth 1.5 is still amazing, Captain Comic is as hard as ever, and Koji The Frog, a Mac-app-gone-dead-turned-klooged-Windows-app, will always reign supreme of classic games. While it’s certainly no Steam, it’s free and full of nostalgia. Relive your innocent youth, while celebrating your sketchy adulthood.
So what’re you going to do next time you’re alone and inebriated? Spend another night organizing iTunes music? Spend too much money on crap you don’t need from woot.com? I say, find something new to sink your teeth into. Whoa there, figuratively speaking, I mean.
