A torrent downloading at speeds to make a V.34 modem scoff; an authentication email take ages to arrive; being on hold to an inept company because of inept service — tedious time-wasters, them all.
Chances are you can related.
We’ve all, at some point, been sat at our computers having to wait for something.
Contrary to what our conditioned reflexes may suggest, no amount of tutting, sighing or finger drumming will make things happen faster.
This is why we tend to doodle on paper, (try to) sing or hum, scowl out the window, or —albeit as a means of last resort— begrudgingly go and do the washing up.
But there is a more entertaining way to pass time (lower stress levels after hearing you’re “…16th in the queue; your call is important to us; a customer agent will be with you as soon as they are contractually obliged to be, and not a second sooner.”
Install one of the following University of Procrastination™ approved boredom-buster games instead.
Picsaw
“Woof. Woof. Woof.”
That’ll be the noise of my next-door-neighbour’s dog. Day-in, day out, rain, shine, or snow. It’s there. I find it hard to work through any non-rhythmic noise (dog, dripping tap, shrieking) especially when I’m midway through a coffee-wobble.
Which, like that dog, does tend to occur day-in, day out, rain, shine, or snow…
I sometimes turn to the little (if literal) puzzle game Picsaw to restore my clapped-out concentration. It focuses my attention.
Once the barking startups I open Picsaw, load in a blurry snap of Fido’s ill-focused snout (acquired using a combination of fence-climbing dexterity, a meaty cat treat on string, and my smartphone) and re-assemble Monsieur Doge piece by little piece.
It helps – something called science says puzzles are a great workout for the brain.
For added difficulty, feed Picsaw a picture with a less obvious pattern to it. A photo of a clear sky, a close-up shot of animal fur, a plate of spaghetti O’s you snapped last night to post on Instagram.
sudo apt install picsaw
Tanglet
Tanglet is a single-player version of the popular word-game Boggle.
The goal is simple: create as many words as humanly possible by forming connections between adjacent letters shown.
Letters can joined horizontally, vertically, or diagonally in any direction. So long as the letters are next to each other and the word you’re spelling is a word is at least 3 letters in length, you can score points.
With 7 different game modes, each varying in difficulty, Tanglet can cater to anyone. It also keeps track of your stats as you play, helping coax out the inner-competitive within as try and best your own best score.
Nothing is more time-sappingly-worthy than beating yourself.
To toggle with Tanglet just apt install it from the repos on all supposed Ubuntu releases:
sudo apt install tanglet
Gweled
Any gaming platform worth its salt will have at least one match-three game of join-the-bleedin’-coloured-things-to-score-some-futile-points type offering – even the Sinclair ZX Spectrum has one (themed around vegetables not jewels)!
Take a quick look at the top games on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, etc and all of them show that trivial little colour-matching games are in hot demand.
The free, open-source game Gweled scratches that match-3 gaming itch nicely on Ubuntu.
Alongside traditional gameplay (keep playing until there are no possible moves left) Gweled offers two additional modes:
- Timed Mode – Achieve the best score in a given time
- Endless Mode – Never-ending game that doesn’t log your score
Fancy mining it for fun? Gweled is available in the Ubuntu archives:
sudo apt install gweled
OMG! Words!
What did the blanket say to the bed? I got you covered!
Did you laugh? No? Excellent! It means I can guarantee you will get more fun out of final last item in this list: the award-winning[citation needed] OMG! Words! game.
It’s a typing-game-with-a-twist and very simple to play: type the words on screen as fast – and correctly – as you can. Words you fail to type correctly before they hit the bottom of the screen, the sooner the game is over!
But what’s cool is that all of the words which appear in the game comes from articles published on this site. Yes, you too can now type all of the bizarre British vernacular I litter the pages with filling you with a melliferous delight.
Things aren’t overly easy. If you type too well too soon the visage of (now former) OMG! Ubuntu! editor Benjamin Humphrey slides across the screen to scramble each word it touches.
But Joey (er, me) – I’m on your side: my face bandies across to unscramble any word.
Short of a green bird icon dropping in (if you don’t get that reference, congrats on having avoided our comment section), OMG! Words! is a faithful distillation of this blog’s irreverence, lurid colour scheme, and infamous typos.
Combining fun with usefulness, OMG! Words! is also a great way to just practicing typing.
For now, the game only works on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or earlier, and you’ll need to download the DEB installer to install it manually since it’s not currently available in the Ubuntu Software Center.
Over to you: what is you favourite five-minute boredom-busting game?