Downtime: Things to do when you don't really have anything to do. Useful and fun ideas.

Downtime

for inbetween assignments

Why not surprise someone dear and send him/her a little note. My list of 250 ways to say "I love you" might just give you the right inspiration.

Talking of which, I have also collected a number of very lovely, heart warming stories.

I can only encourage you to join Amnesty International in its fight for human rights world wide. You can use some of your spare time to save victims from torture and death. And if you do not have the time, a donation is always welcomed.

Of course you might consider a cheap holiday.

The Tourbus sends you weekly one e-mail pointing you to interesting sites. I can highly recommend it.

The Lexical Freenet allows you to search for relationships between words and concepts that might never have occurred to you before.

Have you ever heard sayings like "getting four square meals a day" or "mind your beeswax" and wondered where these sayings came from? Well, Joanne Todd Rabun has created a page called "Ye Olde English Sayings" that attempts to explain the origins of many of the Old English (or is that "Olde English?") sayings we take for granted. (quoted from Tourbus)

If you enjoy little games, you might like to subscribe to the Today's Game service. It delivers a new game to your email inbox every day. And it is free. They have Shoot'em ups, games for multiplayers, puzzles, arcade games and brain teasers.

Finally! It's about time! See the Illustrated Guide to Breaking Your Computer. And if you are also convinced that Microsoft is not the best OS on this world, laugh at these jokes.

Ever feel that you are out of control?

Click here to control a robot in Australia.

On the left you can admire a picture of my successful attempt of placing one brick on top of the other. :-)

Are you often on the move? You can get a unique email address that never has to change again, with iname. You can even access all your e-mails from any internet computer in the world. And the cost: nil/njet/nix/zilch.

Or for a very moderate fee, you can get a film-related e-mail address, i.e. you@focus-puller.co.uk, you@film-maker.co.uk, you@ cinematography.net. You can also put your CV online.

You can have a look at ASCII paintings - copies of famous painting, done only with characters available on the keyboard. I very much liked The Scream by Edvard Munch.

Do you want to lead a healthier life style? How about starting with organic food, delivered right to your door steps?

Special Section
Build & Improve Your Own Homepage

Geocities offers you free web space. Loads of people (including yours truly) have already joined. Like in a real city, Geocities is divided into different neighbourhood - but here you choose yours depending on your interests. They put an ad in a separate window, which refreshes itself at random intervals. Also a little logo will be added at the bottom right of every page.

Xoom also offers a free homepage. Their advantage is that you get a shorter and easier to memorize address. Plus, they let you chose in which way you want their advertisements displayed.

If you want to build a commercial web site, Hypermart offers space for your needs.

If you want to have a homepage without advertisement, try martweiss.com. You can also ask for help in designing your page/s. I also offer web page design for the media industy.

Loads of other freebies for the homepage builder are offered at Netfreebies. Starting from nice backgrounds, fancy e-mail addresses up to your (almost) own web site. Like yourname.cjb.net (try http://mart.cjb.net). And it is all free.

If you want to add javascripts and CGI to your pages, internet.com has loads of free ones on offer.