Let's start with another cat video, this tme it's of one that plays the piano. It reminded me a bit of Eric Sate; click here.

Commando 2 hs been released, the sequal to possibly th most popular side ways scrolling shooting game of the lastcouple of years. Click here.

I'm not sure PoliticsHome can quite be called "fun" but it is an excellent website for following political news and the poll of UK marginal seats makes surprising reading, click here.

And just in case you missed him; here's the rocket man.

Time & Date is useful little website that tells simple things like what time it is in different parts of the world and how far apart places are, click here.

TellyAds is just what it sounds, a huge archive of ads off the telly, with over 7000 recent and nearly a thousand classic ads in it's archive, click here.

Click here for a video of a very sneaky cat.

Click here for a slideshow of new species of sea life discovered of the coast of Australia.

Tina Fey has come in for a bit of stick from the Republicans for her uncanny impersonation of Sarah Palin, click here to see what got them riled.

Dog House is sliding box game in which you move the rooms of a house seen in "dolls house" view so the a dog can find its way to its dinner, click here.

Worried that the Cern Collider will bring about the end of the world? The click here for an update from hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com or visit Cern's webcams here.

Free alternatives to paid for software can be found here and here.

The Guardian has made it's crosswords free online again! There's the fairly easy Quick, the do-able with a bit of thought cryptic Everyman, the cryptic Prize and the frankly impossible even if you have the answers in front of you, Azed. Some of them have a "solve" button for clues if you get really stuck, they load quickly and have an easy to use interface. Click here.

The David Rumsey Map Collection is an online library of over a 1000 historical maps, which wonderful enough in itself but he's also created a layer for Google Earth which allows you to see old boundaries, roads etc superimposed on the landscape. Click here.

WorldNames just maps the frequency of surnames across the world on a big map by country and region. It was so popular that the server crashed when it was launched last week but seemsto be working now, click here.

Sweden has it's own lake monster an they think they've caught it on film! Click here to read more and on the link in the story for the Swedish site.

Rapid Wars is a Astoroids style space shooter but much more beautiful to look at and the ship is far easier to control, click here.

Football fans are known for their strong opinions, click here to see how some of them responded when the goalkeeper made a bad mistake (warning: graphically rude and may/will offend)(but funny).

Jerry Seinfeld fans who want to see his advert for Microsoft click here (warning: contains Bill Gates).

Finally not one but 10 brain teasing games! Click here for Conceptis Puzzles Picture logic.

Whatever you think of Obama, he crowds like no other politician in my lifetime, Click here to be amazed by the Washington Post's panorama of the stadium in which he made his acceptance speech.

Ever wanted to whiz down one of those airport luggage shoots? Click here.

An albino shark has been spotted of the Galapagos Islands.

Never end is a quick loading maze puzzle in which you can go left, right, jump and rotate the board. It's got a nicely animated running man too. Click here.

To celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth the Times online has published a timeline of his life and the life of his great creation, James Bond. Click here to read it.

I'm not quite sure who made this or why they did it because the website is in Polish or something but I love what they've done. Basically they're co-ordinated lights within a large block of flats, my favourite is "snake," if you've ever played the game check it out. Click here.

Treasure in the dark is a simple game, just walk to the treasure and walk back to the exit, the only problem is that you only have a few seconds to plot your task before the lights go out. Click here and get lost.

I think I've covered laughter lab before, it was the study that surveyed the world to discover it's favourite joke but I checked it again recently and there's a new favourite, click here to read it. (I preferred the old winner, you can find it in second place).

Norway must be a wonderful country, who else would ennoble a penguin? Nils Olav has been an honorary member of the Norwegian Royal Guard since they visited Edinburgh Zoo in 1972. Since then he has worked his way through the ranks, has been reincarnated once and now is now a Colonel-in-Chief. Watch him being knighted here. 

A scrolling map worn on the wrist is just one of the great inventions on display at the British Library Business and Intellectual Property Centre here.

Typeracer is typing trainer that pits you against three other online players as you type out text lifted from books or movie scripts. If you make a mistake the text you type remains on the screen, so correct any mistakes straight away or you'll get a score like "one word per minute" and pop-up messages will appear to confuse you. Click here (there's no need to register).

Political hand gestures and body language is no longer left to chance as they try to reassure us that they're firm but not domineering, open minded but not soft hearted etc. Here's a very nice deconstruction of Hilary Clinton's speaking style.

Germany has been attacked by a giant insect according to Google Earth here.

I love this story of a 100+ year old New Zealand lizard that has refound, erm, love following an minor opperation to remove a cyst in a sensitive area.

Celebrate the Olympics with a series of Miniclip games here.

Or if you prefer mindless shooting, click here. The game only lasts a minute after which you're told how badly you did, weirdly, I got exactly the same score three times in a row.

Just to items this week (Imight post something more tomorrow). Click here to admire the skills of a 13 year old busking with his electric guitar by the seaside and making £70 an in the process.

Childs Play is more difficult than it may sound, especially if you haven't played a text based game before. It puts you into the mind of baby whose home is about to be over run by the local play group and more to the point your nemisis, Zoe, who is intent on aquiring your favourite toy. It works like an interactive story and every so often you have to type in an action, such as "take toy" or "crawl north" (directions are always points on the compass) and it can be a bit frustrating working out which verb to try. Often the clue is in the previous chunk of text and I find "examine (thing)" is often a good one to try when I'm stuck. Click here to play and here if you get stuck.

Emoticons, love'em :¬) or hate them :¬(, one thing we can agree on is that they don't really work because they're on their side, unless that is, you're from Japan. In which case you've got a whole world emoticons that are the right way up (o_O) . Click here to find out what that one means, my favourite's "hands up."

Wacky Uses is a great little website entirely devoted to strange happenings, odd videos and weird facts. Just the sort of thing I post here on Fridays actually. Click here and thanks to Jan for sending in the link.

Liquid Story Binder is useful rather than just fun, it's a word editor for budding authors that allows them to see pages and passages in a single view, to create story boards and to annotate easily but it's only freely available for a few more hours. It's being promoted on Give-away-of-the-day and if you want to carry on using it for free you'll have to copy and keep the registration key for when it's needed. Click here for more. (Haven't tried this, it's been recommended by a friend)

Doctor A Tom is a simple game that is pleasing rather than difficult to play, well, it might get difficult at the very high levels but mostly it's just clicking and watching the results. Click here.

Finally something that will make you cry, a clip of five year old blind piano prodigy taken from a Korean talent show, click here.

Let's start with something that could almost be on the Science page; pogoing robots. For reasons best known to the themselves, probably because it sounded fun, scientists have programmed robots to respond music, specifically to punk. I suspect it's easier to get a robot to jump up and down than, say, waltz. Watch them shake their stuff here.

Fans of US TV trash will be familiar with the name Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and some other rather less successful series. So it's with some trepidation that I post the news that he's created a sort of online musical. Available in three parts for free from the 15th and you can watch the trailer here and read more here.

Meanwhile you can relive your childhood love of Ladybird books and student radicalism with the somewhat over the top and childish spoof "The Ladybird Book of the Policeman" here.

I was a bit unsure about posting this one because I don't really approve of online poker, it's just another way of depriving the gullible of their money IMO and can lead to serious problems for some people. However, unlike most free online poker games, Governor Poker isn't casino promotion and it doesn't give a false impression of your chances, rather it's the first level of a downloadable game. It has a good artificial intelligence, several environments and both cash and tournament style tables. So if you fancy learning how to play Texas Hold'em click here.

Cbeebies "Action Painting" isn't the best online picture creator I've posted, that was Art Pad, but it is quite fun and loads fairly fast. So if you fancy chucking paint around like Jackson Pollock, click here.

Lots of free audio books and stories today, mostly of the detective genre, well, entirely from the detective genre actually. Radio Detective Hour is a long running blog celebrating radio broadcasts of detective classics and there's tons of stuff in the archives which go back to 2005. Click here.

Fans of Douglas Adam's will (might) enjoy the dramatisations of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency entirely enacted by members of it's fan club. Much better than it sounds (as someone said of Wagner), click here.

Beyond the Rave is probably not suitable for everyone, perhaps anyone, as it's a horror movie delivered in 3 minute episodes via website. It's the first of it's kind or the logical conclusion of a long running trend, depending on how you look at it. Click here if you must.

There's a robot bartender doing a touring Britain, starting in Selfridges, London. It's a promotion for a beer but looks fun anyway, click here.

Lastly, a game, Shift 3 is the latest in the series of black and white room progression games that requires you to flip the game occasionally in order to progress. It's tricky, quick loadin and surprisingly atmospheric, click here.

I'd never heard of Frans Masereel until an image search happened to turn up one of his woodcuts. According to the ever reliable Wikipedia, he was a flemish painter and one of the leading woodcut artists of the 20th century and I really liked this slide show of what is considered his masterpeice, "The City." According to the preface there isn't an order to the images, rather they're snapshots of the suddenly expanding city and the effects it has on it's citizens.

Bad Science is a must read for anyone who catches one of those surprising news items in the early morning and wonder if the science behind it is quite what it seems. Written by Ben Goldacre, with contirbutions from many other, it deconstructs them to show that either they're pure hoccum or that the news editor has misunderstood them. It's excellent on the claims made for various alternative therapies and fad diets (search it for Gillian McKeith). Read it here.

Google Streetview has an interesting little site highlighting some of the odder things they've come across as they wander about cataloguing the USA. Click here.

Games: Seek is a simple brain workout, you have a grid of letters and you have to click on the appropriate one as it's match crosses the top of the screen. Starts simply, gets difficult, click here.

Bowja the Ninja 2 is a fun little side scrolling point and click adventure with nice graphics and puzzles, click here.

Pon Pon House is a charming point and click room escape game from Japan and although the format is familier, the execution is lovely and even the music works well. Click here to play.

Ever fancied making your own font? If so Fontstruct is for you. There's no software to download, it's all online and it's very simple to use. Once you've made your font it can be downloaded and installed on your computer. You don't have to make a complete one either, if you just wanted to make enough letters to write your name that's fine. Click here.

PicLens is new way of viewing online images and video from sources like Google and YouTube. It presents them as "wall" or as a slideshow, removing all the extranious details until you want them and allowing you to zoom in on whatever you fancy. Click here.

To celebrate Euro 2008, let's start with the best goal keeping error I've ever seen, click here, it isn't obvous what happens at first but wait for the replay, it's worth it.

I really liked this slide show of a cruise ship being built, it's like a giant kit.

This video of a man totally losing it at work is extraordinary, I just hope no one was seriously hurt (I assume they weren't or it would have been on the news). I thought it might be a fake but this angle has sound and it cleary isn't.

That's enough slideshows and vids, how abut a nice little game? Mr Bounce is typical "bat and burst" ball bouncing game but somehow it' better, I don't know if it's the trajectory line or the graphics but it's really nice to play. Loads quite quickly too, click here.

Does your character reflect your personality? Well take these quick tests and find out!

ArtCulture is website dedicated to, well, art and culture, I was particularly taken with the animated typography page, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. Click here, my favourite is the Pulp Fiction video, which is obviously a bit sweary.

Even more sweariness can be found in the Teeside Tintin YouTube video, one of which you can find here.

Robokill is fun little top down shooter that involves shooting robots and upgrading your weapons, the first 4 levels are free to play, the next ten cost £5 or so, click here.

Deep Chalk on the other hand is more of an exploration or adventure than an ordinary game, with surreal graphics and lots of little secrets to discover, click here.

I discovered a whimsical blog called "where is the moon" this and was particularly taken by this animation called "bill murray looms large."

To celebrate the end the football season the BBC has published of the best chants, click here.

The Daily Mail has a nice page of celebrity/muppet look-alikes here.

Music Catch is a sort of game but mostly it's something to do while you listen to the hypnotic piano soundtrack, click here.

Anyone who's done a bit of photo editing and used the clone brush will be impressed by the work on Pixeloo (click here). It's not so much the end product, he's into to something called "detooning", the recreation of cartoon characters as real people, it's the way he get there. There are several movies of how it was done which are really impressive.

There seem to be lots of people listening to audio books these, even I've listened to one or two, so I was very happy to find a couple online libraries of free work. Click here for sci-fi and here for classics.

Click here for a website dedicated to charts, graphs and visualisations of all sorts of odd stuff.

I really like Tim Flache's photo portfolio website, the pictures are really nice but it's the home page and it's wandering dog that really makes it special, click here. Thanks to forum member Bearsarus for sending it in.

I recommended Deezer's radio service last week, this week I going to be more specific and recommend their French singer station, Chanson freancaise. It's wonderful and you may ind yourself listening for hours to artists you never knew existed. Click here.

The Daily Mail claim this is the world's most intelligent fish and they never lie do they. Anyway, they've got pictures of it playing various sports, so click here.

Two games today, Milo is a variation of the top down box pushing maze game but with fewer boxes and more monsters (click here), while Shirk is basically that fairground favourite which involved guiding a ring along a wire without setting the buzzer off, click here. 

What's happened to Dave's Brain? I've no idea and I've no idea what the point of it's website is either, I just happened across during a web search and felt I had to share. Click here.

I was looking at the Dr Who website today (I'm so sad) and discovered lot's of easy to play online games, most of which load in a reasonable time even on dialup. Test your time and space skills here. 

Deezer (formerly BlogMuzik) has lots of great "radio" stations. No deejays, just streaming music in whatever your favourite genre is. it's a French site so there's quite a bit of French stuff too. Click here.

How good's your geography? Find out here in a game I've posted on the forum!

The Apprentice is almost impossible to watch all the way through without wanting to kill someone, that's why we employ highly trained TV critics but the "best bits" make quite compelling viewing, especially when they're rendered in Lego. Click here to watch the apprentices get fired and even better, hit with frying pans.

The Office of Government Commerce has a new logo and it's perfect for a department who's mission statement is “improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement,” click here.

I've been having fun with Last.fm, an online music website with a huge selection of free tracks and a nice "similar artists" radio feature that does just waht it says on the tin and streams similar music to your browser. Type in the name of your favourite artist here to try. It's a lot like Deezer's (formerly BlogMusik) "Smart Radio" but with a cleaner interface.

The Terminal 5 chaos has spawned some YouTube tribute songs and they're awful but still popular, for examples click here and here.

To make up for that here's a good YT vid, or rather a great song and a terrible video from some Scandinavian TV show of the '70s. Click here for T Rex and Get it On, I mostly like it for, apart from the song, for the completely inexplicable girl on a motorbike and her strange thought bubbles.

We haven't had a good shoot 'em up game for a while, so here's Alien Hive, a completely mindless romp through various levels of something or other that requires you to shoot lots of mindless monsters for no apparent reason.

Remember the doo wop band The Darts? Well they've got a website and on that website there's a jukebox with a dozen of the hits. You don't even have to put any money in, just click here.

Slightly different but still music of a sort, a great little song on YouTube called "Charlie Brooker is right about everything." He's the bloke who presents Screenwipe and writes an acerbic column for the Guardian, both of which disect television. Click here (warrning: contains rudeness).

We're all familier with the "Nigerian" money making scam emails, with subjects ranging from fallen African regimes to Saddam's gold but who'd have thought that Patricia Hewitt would inspire them? Click here to read the email.

The disasters in the Photoshop Disasters aren't always that obvious and sometimes the blog seems to be being a bit picky but anyone who done a bit of photoshopping will enjoy it, click here and prepare to start looking at advertisements more closely.

Garfield without Garfield is a very strange idea for a cartoon but in works for reasons I don't quite understand, click here.

This is just mean, lets look at people with poor taste and laugh at them. And why not? Click here.

On similar theme, Phil Neville's (a footballing person) house is up for salehere.

What can I say about The World's Hardest Game except it's quite difficult but at least it loads quickly. Click here.

Let's start with something really simple; a clock. It's from the BBC and it's one of the many that used to appear on a screen between programmes and at the end of the day's broadcasting. I just really like it, click here.

Growth is a very simple beat generator, the twist is that when you've created your groove, it generates a tree! Click here.

I missed this last week, it's a silly Google Easter game, click here.

iGizmo is a free online gadget magazine, with lot's of reviews, videos and stuff. It works like a .pdf document and is very easy to use. Click here but don't bother to try and sign up, I tried and failed several times.

Let's start with a bit of Google silliness. Open Google's home page, type in "Find Chuck Norris" and click on "I'm feeling lucky."

Click .here for the 60 of the dumbest things said by famous people.

The Internet is now available in handy book form and about time too. Of course it's got a website to advertise the fact which you can find here. My favourite pages were "amasszone.com" and KakBay.

Puzzle Boy is a reworking of the box pushing socoban type ban, except it's much, much harder. Even the getting through the first level takes a lot of effort, so if you want to give your brain a workout click here.

Let's start with a video won the short animation catergory at the British Animation Awards, it reminds me of my old cat, click here.

"Like Fawlty Towers" runs one of the reviews from the UK half of the 2008 Dirtiest Hotels list, which isn't one of the most edifying things in the world but the list is from a website that has some really useful information about hotels and B&Bs all over the UK, including lots in Oban and Glasgow and the US. Well worth checking out if you're looking for a place to stay.

It's that time of year, you can feel it in the air, yes - BBC Springwatch is about to appear on our screens. I thought, why wait? Why not get your own nest box with a webcam in it and so I had a search. Garden Nature has some reasonably priced (under £100) models, recommended by magazines etc and best of all for the purposes of Friday Fun, some great clips of birds nesting last year. Click here to go aahh. (Watch the first clip and lots more become available)

Flies: You thought they were just annoying or at worst a reason to buy Cilit-Bang but no - they're SPYS. For aliens. Reptile Aliens. You can't have enough conspiracy theories and here's another one.

The Radio Times has published a list of TV's top 25 put-downs and here it is.

Which prompted me to go in search of the Old Proffessors who supplied my favourite put-down on YouTube. You can watch four of the sketches here (warning: very pointless, silly and rude).

The Radio Times also has lots of easy (well, easyish) competitions to enter here. (Warning: Be careful to read the contact options at the bottom of the entry form properly, they change from "do want to be contacted" to "don't want to be contacted)

Another map thing: Aardvark has an excellent map maker based on Google maps which you can customise by adding markers with pop-up info boxes. It's entirely free and the results can be saved, linked to and embedded in websites. Although people can access the original and edit it if they try hard enough, they will only generate a new map, they won't alter yours. Click here (I found that it didn't always work properly in Firefox, so use Internet Explorer.

I love this video of a dog attacking a stream of air! Click here (it's only 47 seconds but if your connection is slower than it plays, click on pause and wait for it to load).

Google Maps has a nice walkabout feature for New York here. Just click "Street View" on the yellow man's bubble and click on the white arrows to move around, the controls at top left let you look round and zoom in and out. I'd love to know if there other cities available and how to access it directly from a normal Google map. (Probably a bit slow on dialup)

10 Gnomes is simple game where you pan round a landscape clicking on things, zooming in and rotating round them to find ten gnomes. There's two games available, Roofs and A walk in the park.

The Bookseller has an annual award for the book with the oddest title and you can help choose this years by clicking here.  

Fingers on buzzers for the Reaction Test! Human Benchmark has simple test that measure your reaction time, click here to try it. If you get nowhere near the average, it's probably your mouse.

Fed up with trying to complain about something and getting passed from one unhelpful call center worker to another. Well, why not write to the company boss? You can find a list of their addresses here. 

Phillidelphia soccer fans have everything, passion, songs, a growing support base, a nice pub with a big screen, the one they lack is a team to support. Read more here.

Shot is very simple game that involves flicking black marbles of a sort of pimply cushion, very easy at first, rapidly gets difficult. Click here (quick loading, suitable for dialup).

Fans of TV detective show City of Vice will enjoy "Bow Street Runner", a game based on the show and set in the same grim historical London. It's very atmospheric and well crafted, click here to start detecting.

Another detective series, Ashes to Ashes, inspired me to do search on YouTube for stuff from the '80s, I found this rather disturbing advert for Kinder Eggs.

Lego has already made a great version of the Star War games and there's a Batman series in the pipeline, now it's turned it's square heads to another film franchise, Indiana Jones. Click here for a preview of what's to come.

Gamevial has a new version it's "Fly like a Bird" game, it's now multiplayer and the flight dynamics are much improved. What's amazing is that the whole 3d city downloads in less than 400kb, meaning that even dialupers can enjoy it. Click here.

Love Hearts: This really belongs in Friday Fun but it's Valentines Day tomorrow so here it is. Click here to create your own Love Heart and order a box of chocolates far to late to be of any use.

Vision is one of those intriguing/frustrating point and click room escape games that you either love or hate. This one comes from Japan and is beutifully renedered and just solvable with a little effort and some luck. Click here.

Wikipedia is a wonderful thing and it's got even wonderfuller with the addition of WikiMindMaps. Mind maps are a way of visualising the connections between various aspects of a subject and WMM works in much the same way, type in a search term and it displays the main subject in the center of a web of connections. Click here to try it.

Tailtag is a simple game which you have to create chains of ladybirds, the music is a bit annoying though, click here. 

Anyone watching C5's Extraordinary Animals show? Well here's a highlight reel of one of it's stars, Enstien the talking parrot, doing his stuff on a US talent show. He wasn't the brightest bird, basically it's a trick but it's a good trick. Click here.

National treasure Stephen Fry is surprisingly mad about gadgets for someone who cultivates the air of a fogie and he has a very entertaining column called Dork Talk in the Guardian about them every week. Click here for his thoughts.

Fantastic news X 2! The makers of Samorost have released a new game called Plantage and at first glance it has all the whimsical charm of their previous work, click here.

And, that wasn't enough, there's a new game from the makers of Exmortis, the scarriest game I've ever played, called Goliath (click here). If it's anything like Exmortis, it won't be explicitly violent but will conjure up a feeling of real dread with excellent graphics and music.

Have you seen the Tom Cruise video? If not you can do so here. I don't know what all the fuss is about and found Human Tetris much more entertaining.

Internet speed tests are useful but a bit dull, so I really liked Speedtest.net's. It has an attractive interface and simple but effective graphics as it performs the test. Click here to give it a try and when, if you've got broadband, you've got the result go to the broadband news page and post it on the campaign website linked to at the top of the page. Click here.

This is just childish, I shouldn't be posting it really, you just enter your post code and it generates a list of funny (mostly rude) place names in your area and links to a map showing they're real. Click here.

On a more serious note, are we living in a computer simulation? It's always seemed unlikely to me, I'm sure we'd notice the evidence of previous system crashes but perhaps that's what really killed the dinosaurs. Anyway, the argument that we might well be is pleasingly logical and fairly easy to grasp, click here to question your existence.

Fetch Fido is a charming game with nice graphics that involves getting a little dog in a space suit back to his craft via a series of levels that require you to jump around collecting this and avoiding that. Click here.

I think Captain Paranoid and the Delusions From Venus might be a very old game as it lacks some of the things we now take for granted in a FPS (first person shooter), such as multiple lives or the option to save progress. What's nice about it is that despite loading really fast, meaning you can easily play it on dialup and has a genuine 3d landscape. If you like FPS games click here.

The latest version of Google Earth (click here to get it) not only incorporates Google Sky but has it's own flight simulator! Simply click Ctrl and A at the same time and a dialogue box will appear with options for plane type and starting point, then you'll find yourself on an airfield ready to take off. Once in the air, the plane is controlled with the arrow keys, which I found really difficult but fun none the less. Click here for a preview. Thanks to Charles for the tip and to sgegreen who mentioned it on the Software Update page last week!

Snow Day is a pointless game that just involves kicking a piece of paper into the air to make it snow but the music is really lovely, especially once the game has finished and it's not being spoilt by the effects. It just loops seamlessly and remind me a bit of Erik Satie, click here.

Click here for the latest in medical slang and know your Hasselhoff from your Father Jack.

Lastly and just for Radio 4 PM listeners, here's a map of your fellow listeners.

Not much fun but The Scotsman has relaunched it's website, click here (I preferred the old one but the new has videos, so it must be better).

Best tribute to Robert de Niro since Bananarama's here.

A game, time for a game and it's another from Nitrome, I think I like their graphics - that and they're easy. Snow Drift is a slidy platform game that pits your wits against nothing whatsoever, click here for mindless fun!

And last and defintely least, this offer from an ebay alert of what "my favourite sellers" have to offer.

Fans of the Science News page may enjoy this list of product safety warnings.

Microsoft's Robosanta seems to have been hacked.

Speaking off robots, this roboviolinist is note perfect.

Tipping Point is an unusual point and click puzzle that is quick to play but intriguing none the less, only the very last puzzle has the kind of frustration common in p&p games. Click here to give it a go (may take time to load on dialup but not that long).

Check out this art installation that makes it appear that a crowd of people are standing around underwater. It's very simply done but so effective that even those under feel the need to check the surface. (Also click the "Chris Angel walks on water at the bottom of the page, it's just a magic trick but effective none the less.)

Ever get fed up with other people's mobile phone conversations? The get one of these phone jammers.

Thin Ice is a silly game based on the classic Bomb Boy, all you have to do is skate around to cut holes in the ice and drown the monsters. Quick loading and fun, click here.  

The Stop-IDFraud website isn't usually a barrel of laughs but guess what "week" this HMRC sponsored is promoting at the moment? Wonder if includes any advise about the handling and transportation of data...click here. 

Railz is a wonderful logic game which is simple and surprisingly addictive. All you have to do is create loops of railway track from the tiles provided, sounds easy but teases the brain, click here.

Annika's Odyssey is a Samorost style game in which our hero has to progress through a landscape by solving point and click puzzles, in this case to rescue a toy rabbit. At 3.5mb it takes a while to load but it's charming and worth the effort (I think, Ihaven't actually managed to finish it yet), click here.

I heard a learned professor talking about the effect of music on the brain and pondering on whether animals had a sense of rythm on the radion yesterday. If only he'd gone to YouTube and watched this dancing cockatoo, all his questions would have been answered.

Let's start with a fun web application from MiniClip called Putty Face. You load up a picture from your computer or find a suitable protrait on the web and paste in the link, then distort the face to your heart's content. Very quick on broadband, so it's probably suitable for dialup too, click here.

Excite is spreadsheet game that actually takes place on a spreadsheet. It's one of those puzzles where you use the arrow keys to move a marker to the exit by negotiating a maze of blocks. Easy at first but soon gets difficult. Click here.

Quick Time Virtual Reality is a display space for photographers specialising in panoramas and has some wonderful 360 degree vistas of interesting and beautiful places, as well as tutorials for beginners. Will probably take a while to load the images on dialup though. Click here.

Let's start with a racing game, I love racing games. Crazy Karts is new take on a familiar racing template with great 3D graphics, a series of "lands" to progress through and simple controls. It's easy to get started and hard to finish, click here to start!

lolinator is a, erm, application that rewrites websites so they're absurd, or more absurd in the case of something like Conservapedia. Click here and enter your website of choice.

One of the few things I miss living on an island is squirrels. Why? Because of stuff like this.

And finally, now that you've had time to think about it, here's the Guardian Archive and it's free 24 hour pass.

Just two today but they're really good. First is possibly the best advert I've ever seen on the net, from a French online TV company. It takes a while to load and stutters a bit, so you think it's stopped when it hasn't, so let run for a while. Click here.

3D Tetris is exactly what it says on the tin, a 3D version of the classic packing game. Viewed from top down you can rotate the pieces in any direction while you attempt to fit them into the blocks below and it works far better than you'd expect. Click here.

FF goes artistic this week, starting with a clever interactive website that explains the basics of photography. It's really aimed at the SLR user but the lessons can be applied to digital too and will help you understand some of the more advanced functions of your camera. Click here for Virtual Camera.

The Wooster Collective is a New York based blog that celebrates street art from around world. There's a lot of graffiti but a lot more besides. Click here.

The Secrets of Digital Photography is a podcast (downloadable radio programme) that discusses the finer points of, well, digital photography. It's just concluded the third part of it's series on selling, something a lot of us would like to figure out how to do. Click here to download.

Let's start with something simple, a spot the difference game. Sounds a bit boring but it's not. Each pair of images is animated, beautifully rendered and some of the differences are really hard to spot. Good news is that there are only 12 levels, otherwise you might keep playing for ever. Click here.

Are you predominantly left or right brained? Does the question even make sense? I don't know and to be honest I don't really get this little test. People are supposed to see the image revolving one way or the other but I can't imagine how it's possible to see it revolving any differently to the way I do. But I've shown it to others and some of the do! How is it possible?! Confuse yourself here. 

Game Give Away of the Day is the sister site of the software site I mentioned earlier this week and every day it give away a different game. Now, I'm slightly suspicious of this and suspect they're time limited demos or something but the person who sent me the link (thanks RB), assures me they're not. Even if they are, at worst you'll just have to uninstall them after a while. Click here to see for yourself, today they're giving away "Jets'n'Guns' which is probably just like it sounds but there'll be different one tomorrow that may be more to your taste.

This is almost a Friday Fun item but it's too good to wait til then. Giveaway of the Day does just what it says on tin, as they say. Every day it has new computer program available as a free download, today for instance it has Asterix Password Viewer, a utility that will retrieve those passwords you've been using for so long that you've forgotten them. How does it pay for itself? Simple phsychology, you'll look at today's offering and you'll not be able to stop yourself from checking out yesterday's and the day's before, which now cost money. See for yourself here.

The first one one I have for you this week is actually quite useful and could be a boon if you get fed up with long Google searches. The Good Web Guide is advertising funded, so it's neither entirely unbiased nor really comprehensive but it's still quite good. Click here for their main gardening page, it's as good a place as any.

Roll on, on the other hand, is just pointless fun. It's a version of the classic rolling ball game in which you tilt the track using your arrow keys in order to guide a ball to it's destination. The difference is that it is really beautifully rendered, with the tracks floating in highly detailed domestic environment, making it a pleasure to actually fall off. Click here to get tilting. 

The Cloud Appreciation Society is just that, a society devoted to enjoying clouds and they've just published a very well received book. Happily they've also got website which has all the photos in the book and you can visit it here. Check out the "clouds that look like something" section. 

Jay's Games is one of my favourite game sites and it's running a competition for new game writers at the moment. Today it has long list of entries and some of them are a lot of fun. What's nice is that they're all a bit quirky and none of the ones I've tried take long to load, so they're dial up friendly. Have a go yourself here, my favourite is "The Tall Stump." 

Hotrods takes a bit longer to load, even on a 512k connection but it's worth it if you like racing games. It's a series of hotrod duals along a stretch of highway in which you have weave your way through traffic going in both directions, the graphics are superb for an online game and the sensation of speed compelling. Belt up and go here. 

Just one item this week but it's a good one and if you enjoyed ArtPad you'll love it. iSketch is another online drawing/painting program, so it will take time to load if you're on dialup, with similar intuitive controls as ArtPad but with some extra features and more precision. My favourite function is found in the two buttons above the work area which enable you create images reminiscent of the old Spirograph. Have a go yourself here. There's a community and a very brief login process but you only have to enter a username and you can "practice" without having to join any of the groups.

I loved this video  of life in Iran, it maybe a bit political for some but it will surprise everyone.

Find yourself lost for something to say when commenting on a Flickr picture or when you've been sent an album of holiday pics? Well try Surreal Compliment generator, everytime you refresh the page it produces a new one! Click here.

I couldn't find a stand out game this week, so instead here's a list of hundreds of them, of every genre there is.

Following Scotland's triumph lets take another oppurtunity to feel superior to our French friends, this time in quiz arena, with this poor chap on their version of "who wants to be a millionaire."
Here he is trying to figure which of the following orbit the earth, is the Moon, the Sun, Mars or Venus? I think his wife might know.

Staying with YouTube, click here to watch Robert De Niro give an acting masterclass to Sesame Street's Elmo.

Clix is a "fit shapes into a box" game, looks simple but it's not. Click here to try for yourself, just hold the shapes over the flip and turn buttons to, erm, flip and turn them.

If you fancy something less taxing, try this cute version of the classic game Mah Jong. You my want to turn your speakers off if you find the music a bit hypnotic.

Bruce Spingsteen, a popular musical artist, has released the mp3 version of the first single from his new album as a free download and you can get it in all it's compressed glory here, along with videos of other tracks.

In tribute to Michael Jackson, also known as "the beer hunter", who died this week after a lifetime chronicaling the beveridges of the world, here's a website dedicated to the pubs of Newcastle. Warning: Contains language that wouldn't be out of place in Viz and will put you off ever going to the Toon for a pint.

I've been messing about with photo manipulation for years (see here and here) but I've a long way to go before I'll enter the competitions on this website with any degree of confidence, check out the "edible architecture" and "knots" galleries!

Karma is an odd little game that looks simple but isn't. In order to reach enlightenment you have to drag the cursor from the edge, through a lamp, to the center of the screen. Each turn represents a life and you can't release the mouse or cross any of the paths already there. Sometimes it looks impossible but that just means you have to visit the center first and start a new "life." Hint leave as big a space as possible between the lines at the center. Click here.

I was going to start with a story from Tibet about the Chinese passing a law banning Lamas from reincarnating without permission but when you think about it, it isn't that funny, so instead I'm going to start with one that is, especially if you're aware of the Ninja vs Pirate web wars (google if not). It seems that a single forum user from who knows where has upset the esteemed and venerable Shaolin Temple, famed for it's role in the Kung Fu TV series, by claiming that a Ninja visited it and defeated all the best fighters. They're not happy, read more here. 

Who hasn't fancied being turned into a Simpsons character and wandering the streets of Springfield? Well, probably most of you but seeing what you would look like as one is fun and you can have yourself "Simponised" here.

Art forms I'd never heard of #342 - Egg Carving. Not complicated, you take an egg, empty it and then carve the shell. Without breaking it. Click here for some fine examples (translation of page in French)

Can't have a Friday without some games, so here is a whole site of them. All are "brain training", testing memory, deduction and eye/mouse co-ordination, type games and are pretty straight forward to get started with. Click here.

Grease Monkey is an extension for Firefox that enables you to install scripts (small programs) that change the way websites work. It can really make some websites work so much better, particularly those whose make their code public, such as Flickr. First you need to be using Firefox, if you're not, get it here. Then you need to install Grease Monkey, get it here. Tomorrow I'll post some examples of what it can let you do.

To celebrate the arrival of the peacock butterflies, something I always look forward to, here's a picture I took of one yesterday. The amazing thing about them is, apart from the way they seem willing to pose for the camera, is how sharp they look without anything being done to the picture. Click on the image for it's Flickr page.

Remember that game you used to play at Fares which involved moving a ring along a bendy piece of wire, well now you can play it online! Click here to try your luck. You can't win a teddy though.

Did you see story about the commuting bunny this week? It got into the habit of climbing into car engines and hitching a lift until someone eventually scarred it off. If you did, click here.

We're all familiar with Hot or Not and the "Rate my body part" type website, now get ready for the real thing, just how cute is your kitten? It's just an excuse to look a kittens really, I should be ashamed. Click here.

This is very silly, it's just a repeating video called "Dramatic Chipmunk", clipped from a slightly longer video of Japanese children looking at a chipmunk but for some reason it's very funny, maybe it's the music. There's a link to the full video to it's right. Click here.

If you rather indulge in some quick harmless fun, try Bin Ball Wizard in which the aim is to kick a ball into an office waste bin, use the mouse to aim and the left mouse button for power. Click here.

Remaze is an odd little game that appears very simple at first but soon becomes intriguing. You just have to use the arrow keys to manouvre a white square to a target through a maze you can't get lost in. The twist is that the number of mazes and squares to be moved increases and each press of a key moves all the squares at the same time - fiendish! Click here.

Let's start with a wonderful video of a Dudley Moore parody of Beethoven, will make you think of the great composer in an entirely different way - click here.

Or why not create something for yourself? Notessimo allows you to compose tunes from scratch by dropping instruments from a menu of 150 and then save or share them. It's dead easy to use, not so easy to create music though :¬( Click here.

The iPhone has had one of the most successful launches ever and some people are getting fed up with it in the same way as some resent Harry Potter but it's unusual to see a rant as passionate as this. Warning - contains swearing.

Let's start with something that almost qualifies as news, except it's a bit old for news. Did you know the Argyll & Bute website has a photo gallery that anyone can contribute to? Well they do and it's here, so get snapping and put your island or area on the web!

Who hasn't felt like this?

Like a cross between the Golden Hare and Th Million Dollar webpage, the Golden Jigsaw launched this week. Players have to solve a thousand piece jigsaw in the hope that they'll be the first and the winner of the $1 million prize. Sounds complicated enough but there's more; pieces are only available in small batches and are scattered across the Internet to befound via clues posted on the companies website. The whole thing pays for itself through advertising, the companies hosting the pieces paying for the privieledge. If you fancy having a go click here. 

Flashxed is an imaginative variation on the familiar box pushing game, introducing an element of physics and explosions to liven things up. The idea is simple, get rid of all the coloured balls by making the ones of the same colour colide, sounds easy and the early levels are but things rapidly get more complex and it turns into a bit of a brain teaser. Click here to start dragging.

Wayfaring is mapping website that allows you to construct maps to share with others, they could be as simple as a place to meet or a route for a walk. If you live in a difficult place to find it could be ideal way of showing visitors how to reach you and save you sending them instructions or badly drawn maps. Click here to try it.

Lets start with a brain game and one that will run well over any connection. The object is simple, look at the top right corner, remember the pattern of dots and then replicate them on the board. You can make a few mistakes and clicking on "hint" briefly displays the dot layout for a brief moment. Click here to test yourself with Zyrx.

OK, this is just a stupid story and I'm only including because it contained a line that made me laugh out loud, click here and discover the power of cheese.

This video site isn't just fun, it's actually useful, possibly a first for our little trips around the web (oh no, I forgot the shoelace site). It's sort of like Youtube but instead of teenagers confessing their angst, skateboarding dogs and episodes of Family Guy, people upload videos of them doing practical things. You can learn how to plant, erm, plants, hang a door or baby proof your house in just a few clicks. Click here for Video Jug.

Let's start with something desirable but completely unaffordable without a remortgage, this year's Hasselblad digital SLR camera. The company has always been known for it's high quality products, particularly in larger formats and so they're not going to build something that let's the brand down, even so what they've come up with is something of a surprise. A 39 megapixel with a 48mm sensor that produces images so big that there's portable hard drive to go with it. Read more here and check out the samples page here. 

Life on Mars and the popular return of Dr Who proves that we're a country that just want's to return to the heady days of the '60's and '70's, so why not relive the thrill off vinyl with a trip to Frank's Vinyl Museum? They just don't make stuff like this any more, except for, possibly, Germany. 

Roger Ebert, one of the US's most popular film critics and one half of the duo that virtually patented the the "thumbs up/thumbs down" review, has compiled a handy list of movie cliches or rules, which will come in handy next time your sat in front of a DVD and get the feeling you've seen it all before. Click here to read and possibly bookmark it, as it's quite long.

Bubble wrap popping, we've done before and we'll do it again because it's addictive. Click here to get popping!

First up is a game, it's very simple, you just have to move a ball around a circle and choose the best point to fire it into the middle and make all the stars burst. There aren't any "lives", there's no time limit and there's even some soothing incidental music to help you on your way, which you can turn off if you don't like it. Click here, should work fairly well even on dialup.

I'm pretty happy with my 10 megapixel compact camera and in my wildest dreams I only aspire to a Nikon, so what on earth would I be wanting with a camera capable of capturing a 9.9 Gigabyte image? I mean really? None the less there is one and you can explore a few of the pictures that have been taken with it here and zoom in and in and in and in...etc. The question is, for all their resolution, are the images any good? Don't they look a little flat?

Let's start with a bit of Elvis, or rather an Elvis impersonator, singing Nirvana. Not the most obvious combination but trust me, it works! Click here (if you're on dialup you might want to click on pause while the video loads).

Ever noticed how often news programmes describe something as being twice the size of Wales or the half the height of Nelson's column? Well now there's a handy online convertor that lets you work out the size of any known area, height or weight in terms of well known things, click here to try it yourself.

Urban legends are forever turning up in conversations and even on the news, so it's handy to have a website where you can check out whether that "friend of a friend" story is quite what it seems. Click here and be surprised at how many things you thought were true aren't or perhaps more surprisingly, are. :::

A few days ago we had Microsoft's idea of the "future of computing"™, which was some sort of table top computer thing and it looked very nice but did it really make you go "wow"? Well this might; Photosynth (click here for a Youtube presentation) is another application from Microsoft, or rather acquired by Microsoft, which processes images to an astonishing depth and flexibility. You'll watch the video thinking you've seen so much of this stuff before and then it'll do something like zoom in on what looks like an image of some columns of text and it will turn into an entire, readable, novel. The link may work better in Internet Explorer, I had some trouble with the sound in Firefox. Probably very slow on dialup.

Maps have fascinated me ever since I got my first big atlas and so I was very pleased to come across this

Let's start with just a simple toy, the Pattern Game (click here) a bit like one of web effects that makes a trail appear behind your cursor but instead of just one you can have between one and sixteen (I think). Once the page has loaded, which shouldn't take to long even on dialup, just move your mouse about and watch what happens, click on the circles in bottom left to increase/decrease the number of trails and click to change what the they do.

I love the way the Internet has allowed people with slightly odd obsessions find an audience and I can't think of a better example than Ian's Shoelace Site (click here). Check out the "Tying Shoelaces" section and try Ian's Knot, it is actually a better way to tie a shoelace and it only takes about six months before you can do it without thinking.

I've got a bit obsessed with Flickr over the last couple of days and having fun with some of its extra features, mapping. If you click here you'll get a map of the world which displays images as they are being uploaded and from where (probably requires a broadband connection). While if you click here you get a static map which you can zoom in on and find images taken in the area. Start off on the west coast of Scotland and you might find a few that I've posted of the Isle of Mull!

For anyone who's wondered how a 60 year old Pete Townshend (honestly, that's how you speel it) feels singing a song he wrote over forty years ago should listen to The Zimmers singing "My Generation". The lead singer is 75 and the oldest member of the chorus is 100. Click here.

Sticking to the hip, down with kids, modern music theme, The Infinite Wheel is an online mixer that allows you to create your own track from a huge selection of musical sample. Click here.

People using home banking services are to be given chip and pin devices to plug into their computers for logging into their bank accounts. All the big banks, apart from HSBC, are going to be sending out the devices, for free, over the next six months and I think this is the start of something big. If they're going to want you to use them to access your bank account directly, how long will it be before services, such as PayPal and Amazon, require you to use them when you access it indirectly? I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just asking. Read more here.

The first item this week is for kids but it will provide a moments nostalgia for a lot of adults. PeterRabbit.com (click here) has lots of pages of games and activities based around the books charming illustrations, if your children are young and have read the books, they'll love it.

Rockstar games, makers of Grand Theft Auto amongst others, have made some of their older releases available for free and you can download them here. There's the first two incarnations of GTA, which back then was a top down, 2D, adventure but the best of the bunch is Wildfire, a shootemup involving vehicles battling in a 3D landscape. Click here.

I often advise people taking up digital photography to buy a cheap camera to learn the basics on before committing to spending a lot on a good one. The same could be said for photo editing software, although that's a lot cheaper (I bought the latest version of Ulead PhotoImpact for £19 this week), it's not a bad idea to get a feel for things with a free program. Virtually all, both the paid and the free, have the same basic set of tools and commands and for learning on a free program will help you understand what it is you want when you buy one. Photofiltre (click here) is a French program with lots of pluggins and online tutorials, Image Forge (click here) does much the same, while "The Gimp" (click here) has almost as advanced as the best of the paid for programs. It's an "open source" project, meaning lots of people are contributing to its development but it is quirky. The main difference is that everything, toolbars, pallette, etc, floats free on the screen, there no overall window containing it all. However, if you can get used to that, it's as straight forward to use as any other editor (i.e. not very).

This image (click here) is impossibly cute but I don't think it's a fake, or if it is, it's worth seeing anyway.

There's lots of online cartoons but very few are as engaging or as well written as Scott McCloud's tale of modern romance "The Right Number". Each frame contains the next one in the story, just press the space bar or click on the arrow to zoom in on it. If you have a slow connection, right click on the image and hover on "Quality" to select a lower one. Click here.

First up is a silly website that allows you to create faces from a combination of parts, a bit like a photofit but one that produces a realistic face. So realistic that the one I created, pasted into a background has done quite well on a rating website. Click here to create one (probably requires broadband) and here to rate the one I made earlier (works on any computer).

Not requiring a broadband connection but needing a sense of spacial awareness to complete, is an odd little web game called Building Houses 2. You're given a plan of a 3D object and you have to construct it on a grid of squares which you can rotate at will. The early stages are pretty simple but the latter definitely not! Click here to try. Tip to get you started - cubes don't have to be supported from underneath!

theJazz is a free online radio station that plays mostly modern jazz tracks, interspersed with the occasional word from a djay. It probably works best on broadband but you can also pick it up on Sky telly. Click here to listen.

Remember that radio panel game Twenty Questions? Well now you can hold it in the palm of your hand! The 20Q is about the size of a tennis and by asking a series of questions will guess just about anything you are thinking off. Test out the online version here and buy the toy here.

For otters, holding hands (you may want to turn the sound down), click here.

For proof that new technolgy has always caused confusion click here.

Google maps is a wonderful service and very handy for getting directions from A to B but perhaps a tad impractical when attempting to cross oceans, click here for directions from New York to London, instruction 23 may take a little effort.

Second Life is one of the largest online communities with millions of users and now boosts an economy of it's own, with people buying and selling virtual versions of everything you can find in the real world (and more) but now it has a rival with a bigger environment and more potential players. Click here for First Life.

This will be depressing or inspiring if you fancy yourself as something of a computer artist, it's a speeded up video of someone doing a "painting" of one the "Lost" characters using just their computer. It's quite a big file, so go and make a cup of tea if you're on dialup. Click here.

If this doesn't bring a smile to your face nothing will, click here to see a man sing "Mule train" while using a tea tray to provide percussion (may take a while on dialup, click "pause" and go and make a cuppa while it loads).

If you want something a bit more cerebal, click here for "Games for the Brain". They're more like the kind of things you find in puzzler magazines rather than they web games I usually choose and range from the pretty easy to the quite challenging. Enjoy! 

It's wonderful how the Internet has given people so many ways of expressing themselves, whether by having their own blogs, posting pictures on Flickr or videos on YouTube and now there's somewhere for people who play with their food, or their condiments at least. Ketchup Art is doing its best to bring out their creative side.

Slightly less serious is a list of 59 things discovered under the Freedom of Information Act, click here if you want to know who proposed using trained dolphins to search for Nessie. 

Last weeks eclipse (wasn't it good?!) inspired me to look for images on the Internet and I stumbled across Atopics, a website that specialises in images of earths atmosphere. It doesn't actually have any of eclipses but what it does have are well worth looking seeing. On a completely different search I happened upon something that should be filed under "what I'll by if I win a small lottery", it's a DIY hovercraft that can fly at about six feet , making it a ground effect aircraft but because it doesn't go to high, requires no license. Click here. Meanwhile, a slightly more prosaic form of transport is up for auction on Ebay.

In a change from the trend of recent weeks, this weeks dose of Friday Fun works just as well on dialup as it does on broadband. Ledix is fiendish brainteaser, the aim is simple, to push three boxes onto three stars within a small arena but finding a solution can drive you mad. If you get frustrated you can always post a question on the forum in the Off Topic section or try one of the equally quick to load games listed to the right of Ledix. Fry your brains here.

Both of these probably work best on a broadband connection but are worth waiting for on dialup. The first is a page of the most amazing pavement art, it seems a pity that it's going to last such a short time. Click here for that. Even more ephemeral is the Flickr stream. Flickr is probably the most popular photo hosting site and this page displays large thumbnails of images as they're being loaded. The result is a strangely hypnotic view of the world as it puts itself on display, click here.

Chairs have inspired many artist designers in the last hundred years and you'd have thought there was little left to surprise us, let alone look new, simple and desireable but this is. Click here . I don't have any details about the manufacturer or any precursors to this design, if anyone does email me!

(07.02.07) Like a cross between Pooh, a Tamagotchi and Sim city, the Webkinz teddy is about to appear in the life of your nearest under ten girl (well, maybe boy but probaby not). By day, in fact all the time, it's an ordinary stuffed toy but online it leads a life of its own, living in a virtual world that requires rest, excercise, food and probably most importantly to the manufacturers, toys which cost money. It's one of those ideas we should have seen coming and it's already arrived in the States, so it will probably be next years most desireable Christmas present. You might as well buy one now, to avoid the rush and price hike. Read more here, the video is worth watching too and visit the company website here.

Two - yes two - Friday funs for you today! The first is an alarm clock, I'm not entirely sure it's for real but I hope it is. WHo wouldn't like to woken in the morning by Jeeves, especially as voiced by Steven Fry? Well now you can be, I think, with the Voco Clock, which after a beep alarm, runs through one of fifty of Jeeves's morning greetings. Click here to hear for yourself.

The second is more for broadband or patient dialup users because it's quite a long Youtube film but it's worth it if you've seen that exploding paint advert on the telly, with paint bursting out of a tower block and wondered how it was done. I'd thought it was all done a computer before I saw this.