Pro tip: Play games with your spreadsheet program

Will — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000

OpenOffice.org is a decent replacement for Excel, but let's face it, it's kind of boring.

To spice things up a little bit, go to cell A1 and put in the value

=GAME("StarWars")

Then hit Enter. You'll get this

Pick your ship, dismiss the message (or read it if you can read German)

Then try to shoot down the ships. You use the mouse to aim and fire.

Okay, so the game's not all that good, but it could probably kill a lunch break if you really stretched it out.

Oh, and the game is cross-platform, too.

Pro tip: Play Minesweeper with your package manager

Will — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:34:36 +0000

If you use Linux at all, you're familiar with the concept of a package manager. It's the program that your system uses to keep track of most everything installed on your system, and allows you to add, remove, and change them around.

But, they can sometimes be used to kill time.

If your operating system is based on Debian, like Ubunto or some such, then your package manager is APT. If your package manager is APT, then you can use a frontend called aptitude to manage your programs installed on your computer.

Nothing too exciting, right? But, if you get bored, you can press CTRL+T to open the menu, where you see the option "Play Minesweeper", so you then press P and get:

You can use the arrow keys to move your cursor around and Enter to test a square for a mine. I don't really know any more of the controls since I am actually pretty bad at Minesweeper...

But, it's good for a short distraction while you're doing boring sysadmin stuff.

Pro Tip of the Day - linux

Pro tip: Play games with your spreadsheet program

Pro tip: Play Minesweeper with your package manager