I seem to have lost the ability to just browse the web. Aside from work-related ones and when I’m looking for something in particular, I generally only visit about half a dozen sites a day and I’ve got most of them in my live bookmarks. I OCD-style check the bookmarks quite a lot but when they’ve not updating, I can’t absentmindedly read Wikipedia or whatever like I used to. I find myself with a lot of dead five minutes where I don’t want to work but the thought of leaving the laptop world is scary (and also impossible due to the presence of multiple cats).

And that’s where my top ten quick and free (as in beer and freedom) games come in. They’re mostly simple puzzle games and I originally called this post “my top ten timewasting games” but John told me off – and he’s right. They’re not really timewasting because I use them in an almost meditative way: my conscious gets distracted by the pretty colours and my subconscious either enjoys the rest or goes to work thinking about lots of random things. Numerous bits of writing I’ve done over the last few months – including the general idea for this blog posting – were mentally drafted during some game play. That’s one of the reasons I’m posting this list – they help me a lot and they’re fun, and I want to give them a shout-out.

I play all these games on Ubuntu, hence the free as in beer and freedom thing. It rocks and so do they.

Anyway, on with the top ten:
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