I was looking up some old commercials at for a recent Life of Riley post, and ran into this strange game ad from a time when Saturday morning cartoons kept the kids attention, the gas crisis kept the parents attention, and busting balls was a family pastime.

The more you look back at the 70′s, the less surprising it is that people thought bell bottoms were cool.

Ballbuster: A Game For The Whole Family

(It’s a real 1970′s commercial, and is completely work safe.)

Some of the people that have been stopping in to check out my quest for every beard type have mentioned that they are incapable of ever knowing the macho feeling that comes with wearing a full beard. For those folks, there is now a flash application called Mustachr that allows you to add over 90 types of facial hair to any photo. The only drawback is that you need an account to save anything, but there’s nothing stopping you from using [Alt] PrintScreen to copy and paste your creation into your favorite art program.

Need Proof of Awesomeness?

This was me as a kid. If I had any idea what kind of ass kicking comes with plaid shirts, thick glasses, and lunch bags with my name on them, I might’ve posted a Mustachr-ized picture on my Myspace page that looked so ultra-badass that it would’ve deterred a lot of scraps in the school yard.

Oh yea. When I was a kid, there was no Myspace. Hell, Prodigy wasn’t even though of yet. GI Joe had a beard and pong was blowing everybody’s minds with the sheer awesomeness of two lines and a bouncing square. We had no internet, and no Mustachr. If I did though, you can bet that I would have added a few pics like these:

This is week 17 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 112): Fascination

Drove my sister to the airport and went for a long walk with #1GF! where we contemplated one of the bank owned crap holes that is on the market in town. We could probably make it into something nice, but it looks like it would be a fair amount of work.

On the way home, we stopped into Fascination, a sort of golden era gambling hall that’s always filled with old ladies. #1GF! walked in first, so I was obligated to follow. I walked up to the guy on an elevated platform and said that we’d like to play and if he could explain the rules.

Kubb is a fun yard game for 2-12 players that is similar to horseshoes or bocce that I first played while traveling in Sweden. The game can take anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours to play and usually involves a fair amount of taunting no matter what continent you’re on. Having uneven teams does not necessarily offer an advantage, making it a great outdoor game for cookouts or beach parties.

This is lucky week 13 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 84)

Figured out who the girl was who died in the house we saw a couple of weeks back. Got creeped out when we found pictures of her bloody clothes and toe tag on the web. Went to look at some houses. Watched a decent movie, and I read a snarky book on business until bed.

A couple of days ago, when I wrote I wrote about the flash game-a-thon that turned #1GF! into a competitive maniac, I was so burned out from playing so many games that I completely forgot to link to the some of the good ones. Since I’ll be off tomorrow, and this post is surely going to burn #1GF!’s muffin, I leave you the results of the first annual Flash Game Big Battle. If you beat the scores, you put them in the comments.

Bounceout: This is a the simplest, and one of the oldest, “match 3″ games that #1GF! has been solidly beating me at for years. It made a comeback for this competition.
Result: #1GF!: Way, way, more than 10,566, Me: 10,566

Super Collapse!: This is one of the granddaddies of “match 3″ games, at which #1GF! usually mauls me. This time, the tables were turned. I think the only thing better than the nerve wracking ticking, is the explosion sounds.
Result: Me: 224,000, #1GF!: Lower than 224,000

Panic Box: All you have to do is use your mouse to keep the little black square in the big blue square while the game distracts you. This game makes me mad, and makes #1GF! into a competitive fireball.
Result: #1GF!: 50, Me: 34

Fast Food: You are this crazy looking rabbit that has to make fast food orders. You have to pour soda, cheese, salsa, and chocolate on the appropriate food items as they roll by on the counter. This started off really easy, but ended up causing a lot of laughs and frustration as the orders got harder. I’d have to say that this ended up being a favorite of the competition.
Results: Me: 1660, #1GF!: 910)

Papa’s Pizza: You’re the pizza maker at Papa’s Pizza. Your only job is to make the pizzas as the orders come in. The faster you make them, the longer you stay in business. It’s simple, but I love listening to the guy grumble out the orders.
Result: Me: 203, #1GF!: less than 203

Jewel Miner: In this “match 3″ puzzle variation, the goal is to make matches that destroy all of the background tiles on the board. Do that before the claim jumpers drill into your mine, and you move on to the next level. #1GF! didn’t really like this one for some reason.
Result: Me: 140735, #1GF!: (lower score not recorded.)

Zulu Gems: This is sort of a combination between Tetris and Bejeweled.
Result: Me: 2500, #1GF!: (lower score not recorded.)

Tropix: This is another variation on the “match 3″ puzzle game. I got to level 2-6 before I was bored shitless and handing the mouse to #1GF!, who had the opposite reaction and played until I made her move on.
Result: An unscored, mind-numbing tie

So, as you can see, the final score was 1 tie, 5 wins for me, and 2 wins for #1GF!, making me the clear video game and PC game champion of the apartment. [Cue fanfare]

Whether you’re in or out of work today, you’re probably still too stuffed to attempt anything requiring any effort. Here’s 5 games to keep you busy while you digest…

DoubleJeu: Balance 1 ball while keeping another in the air.

Screwball: Match up the colored balls before they smash into you.

Slam Pong: Pong… TO THE EXTREME!

Crazy Chess: Stop the pawns from crossing the chess board with your one measly rook.

Picto: Just click the symbol that hasn’t been on the screen before. It really should be simple, right?

The grid below contains samples taken from over 50 songs from various styles, most of which should be relatively easy to identify for people who have had access to a radio at some point over the last 30 years. Your job, when you have a few free minutes, is to see how many that you can identify.

The catch? The samples are all drums.

Instructions

Clicking on will play the sample. Clicking on will give you the answer. If you were right, click anywhere in the box to turn it green. If you were wrong, click anywhere in the box to turn it red.

Scoring

When you’re done, marking all the colors, click “Score Me” at the bottom to display your score. Because you’re self-scoring, what you call a correct answer is up to you. It can be as strict as whether you know both the title and the artist, or simply whether you can hum a couple of notes. Have fun with it.

Score Me

It should be noted that while I am really, really handy with Perl, I wrote this all in . Because I’m really, really rusty in , you may have noticed a complete lack of posts over the last two weeks while I put this bitch together. It was partly because of the , but mostly because WordPress doesn’t really like to play with without some arm wrestling. I would like to have written it in Flash, but I was stopped by both the $400 entry fee and the fact that I’d probably still be working on it. As always, the only reason that I do this crap is so #1GF! and you might have some fun.

Games

Letter Lasso: It’s a simple “Seek n’ Find” word game, but the time pressure really gets to me.

Quick Stack: You match the colors and stack the blocks.

Quarkz: It’s like Othello, but with a little more strategy. You have to actually read the directions on this one.

3D Superball: Click a ball against a white box to get points. I think I got 26 before getting bored.

Video

Metal By Numbers: Oh man. This is one of those videos that metalheads understand. It makes fun of the nu metal/metalcore movement while Scott Ian moshes around. COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE! (found via Notes of Chaos)

Bike Jousting News Cast: I write 4 billion posts over 4 years, and I’m not the first Dyer to get on TV for being a weirdo. I’m breaking out the Spock shirt and heading for the roof to catch me some famous.

Just because I know that you like to screw around…

Video Beatboxing (video): I’m a sucker for beatboxing, and Lasse Gjertsen serves up a pretty cool video beatbox. (via fazed)

Orbox B (game): One of those flash logic games that I like to hack around with while waiting for my CDs to rip. I got to level 20 (tgb517) out of 30 before giving up. (via fazed)

Hit the Golf Ball (game) …as far as you can in 10 seconds. This si surprisingly simple, and surprisingly addictive even for a person who fucking hates golf. My top 3 were 11941, 11896, & 11054. (via in4mador)

Bullet Time (game): Simple reaction time game. Once the gun is fired, you click to dodge. High of 10503 with a one time R/T of .174. (via linkdumper)

Ice Block Buster: This game wears mighty thin, mighty fast, but losing is so much fun. Just punch your way through the ice walls or laugh when you don’t. (via Kontraband)

Shapeshifter (game): I don’t really dig this one too much, but it’s one of those Tetris-style games that #1GF! might like it, so it made the list. (via in4mador)

I had mentioned these at work and promised to post them…

Work-safe Videos

Brokeback to the Future (YouTube)
The Empire BrokeBack (YouTube)
MadTV’s Brokeback Mountain 2: The Cowgirls (PistolWimp)

Games

Avoision2 (via fazed). It’s like Ball Toucher (previous post), but with bugs. #1GF! will never beat the high of 786 because she get’s too itchy.

Three puzzle games to eat those spare moments:

Splash Back (level 13)

Magnetism (level A12)

White Chamber (escaped)

And 1 paranoia inducing, but poorly named game:

Ball toucher (15,000 or so)

Trounce my best and drop them in the comments…