Fugdale’s Funhouse

Nutshell: For all those office workers who ever wanted to do “IT”, I dedicate this video to you.

Review: A hilarous and poignant video depicting a candid looks at office workers who have gone off the deep end largely due to nagging routines and outdated equipment. While the actions of the people in this video obviously come out of sheer frustration with their jobs, they represent what many many people in the world feel about the world we seem forced to live in. When you watch these angry, trapped people destroy their computers and attack other co-workers you want to cheer for them. Notice how the people around the office in the background usually react with shock, but then just return to what they were doing as if events like this were bound to happen and as if they must preserve their jobs at all costs. Too bad all the workers couldn’t be that frustrated all at the same time. There may be a revolt in corporate America.

As someone who is facing the prospect of returning to an office environment for work, I find this video a haunting warning. You see, I rarely feel like throwing my guitar across the room. Maybe I should consider a Bohemian lifestyle.

Nutshell: Send a holiday greeting to friends and family with you as the star.

Review: Office Max generally wouldn’t be the name you think of first for holiday humor, but they have developed a really neat holiday web application that allows you to upload up to 4 different face photos of yourself or others and create a little animated musical greeting with them. The greeting consists of 1-4 dancing elves and some lively music. If you upload photos with interesting facial expressions, the results are hilarious.

You can also use your cell phone and the instructions provided to record a holiday greeting which will play during the animation. Your voice will get transformed into a high pitched elf voice along with an animated moving mouth which will make your recall Saddam Hussein from South Park.

After you’ve scaled and edited your photos with the intuitive online tools and completed your animation, you can send it along to your friends and family. The one downside is the somewhat long load time, but it’s worth the wait. If you enjoy the concept, but not the holidays, you also have the option of creating a “Scrooge Yourself” animation.

Object: Solve each jigsaw which consists of no image and just white pieces.

Review: You will either love this game or hate it. There are hundreds of different online jigsaw puzzles and this one doesn’t have much to offer the genre other than the challenge of putting together progressively harder jigsaw puzzles which are completely blank. The first puzzle consists of about 12 pieces and it super easy to complete, with each new puzzle the board stays the same size, but the number of pieces increases and the size of the pieces decreases.

As you get to the 10 x 12 puzzles or higher, it becomes harder and harder to see when pieces line up correctly. So you may have to try pieces in different places to finally complete the puzzle. Some people on the comment board for this game obviously find the task tedious, boring or a strain on their eyes. Others find it a fascinating time-killer. I think the game has a definite appeal for those who like to solve jigsaw puzzles just to solve them and who aren’t mainly concerned with completing a final image.

Each jigsaw game online features different mechanics. This one doesn’t rotate any pieces, so the puzzles will always orient the pieces in the correct direction. You can arrange and stack the pieces outside of the solving area, but all pieces start out laid out in a grid, so you can easily see all of them. Additionally, any piece will automatically snap into place on the board even if it doesn’t fit with the adjacent piece. This makes it a bit more difficult to solve the puzzles, as you may assume two pieces fit together when they actually don’t. Most of the time you can tell when pieces don’t quite line up because of the gaps and thicker edge lines. However on the smaller puzzles, you might have to really squint your eyes to figure out which pieces don’t match. Finally, one disappointing aspect of the game lies in the fact that you can’t move completed sections as a unit, so you have to painstakingly move each piece one at a time to adjust a section.

I docked this game points mostly because the majority of players won’t have much patience to continue with this game past the first few levels. But, I enjoyed playing through it for a while. The game offers enough of a challenge and seemingly doesn’t have an end to the number of levels it includes. Eventually the pieces will get so small you can no longer solve it. Luckily, the game will save your progress as long as you always play in the same browser, so when you’ve had your fill, you will be able to pick up later where you left off.