Hapland is more like Hard Land 
Hey you wild and crazy flash fans out there. Here's a little treat for you this Friday. It's called Hapland and it's a very cool point-and-click game where the object is to light two torches by getting your guys into two doors. It sounds simple, and there really isn't that much to click on, but it's damn hard. To tell the truth, I tried it for like 45 minutes and got so frustrated that I had to do a little cheating. But that's just me. I know you are better at these things than I am, so I'm sure it won't have to come to that, but if it does, drop me a comment and I'll show you where to get the walkthrough. But anyway, hope you enjoy and remember, timing is everything. (via Screenhead)

Inhuman abilities to get high 
So, while at work, I came across some mind-boggling statistics. Did you know that there are people who smoke, on average, the equivalent of 131 joints a week? I didn't, but according to a new study about how marijuana use affects blood flow to the brain they do. This study broke people into three levels of marijuana users:

• Light users, who smoked the equivalent of 11 joints a week
• Moderate users, who smoked about 44 joints a week
• Heavy users, who smoked the equivalent of 131 joints a week on average

And they discovered that pot can decrease the flow of blood to your brain and make you dumber. But, unless you are in the Bob Marley range, the effects are reversible, and quite quickly if you stop. But I am still hung-up on these numbers... and I know a person who wrote about the study, so I looked into the specifics. In the heavy users group, the amount of pot smoked ranged from 80 joints a week to 350 joints a week. 350 joints a week! That's 50 joints a day! That's a joint every 20 minutes from 7am to midnight. And how many stoners do we know that get up at 7am? huh? That's right, and how is anybody who's smoking a joint every 20 minutes for 17 straight hours going to be able to raise the funds to support such a habit? I don't know. The statistics are mind-blowing. And I thought you should all be aware of the Herculean feats accomplished by pot heads. I mean, nobody can call that guy lazy, or unmotivated, that is a serious, full-time, no-nonsense kind of life. I can see the M&M's M-Azing bar commercial now... mmmm... and that candy bar would really hit the spot after 350 joints.

Puzzle Hacking 
There is a growing trend on the Web these days to try and take advantage of all that the medium has to offer and all of the subtleties that can be examined while "playing a game." The first experience I had with this was with Not Pr0n, that bills itself as, "The hardest riddle available on the internet." As far as I'm concerned, it probably is. It is ridiculously challenging and you need to employ every resource available to you, from google, to HTML source codes, to Photoshop, and anything else at your disposal. It's addictive and frustrating, but genuinely creative. I then ran into another game that was similar in structure, called Image Puzzle!, and aptly so. In this variation, you have to try and find the hidden code within the picture employing photoshop and wits. Neither of these first two did I manage to finish. Mainly because there are so many levels and I just haven't had the time, but they are also pretty damn hard. And, finally, today I stumbled across Riddle Challenge, which is only 5 levels long and not impossibly difficult. There are some tricks and difficulties to overcome, but all in all, a good, fun game. But now with all of these crazy puzzles coming out of the woodwork, I'm declaring this a genuine trend in online gaming... Puzzle Hacking I think is a good name for the genre. So without further ado, let me present to you my very first Puzzle Hacking award, which I achieved with no cheating, help, or outside involvement: So, enjoy these games, I'll see if I can find more, and I'm sorry for my bad, bad, blogging behavior. I will try to be better in the future.