Here’s another guide-the-ball-through-a-maze game called Trackballs. There’s a version for Windows and Linux. The Windows version is about 25 MB.

Time to fire up your neurons and try some brain-stimulating games! Here are 4 to get you started:

1) Simon memory game: Just like the old electronic game; I had one just like this when I was a kid! You can download the Flash game by following this link, right click on the Simon game and do a “Save As…” from the pop-up menu. You need to make sure you have a Flash player installed. You can also play online: http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/games/new4/simon.swf. You can also try another version out at Cyclog Software called Simon32

2) Suduko: From the PortableApps web site. This is a really great version!

3) Sokoban: Here’s an addictive 3D puzzle game that should keep you occupied for some time. You have to push the boxes on to the stars with the ball. Simple concept, hard to do and loads of fun!

4) Puzzle Game Collection by Simon Tatham: This is a great collection of 27 little puzzles. They run on Windows, Unix and Mac.

Lost Labyrinth is a role-playing game for Windows and Linux that’s just over 6 MB and portable!

The game is available in German, English and Spanish and is set to German by default. The graphics are pretty neat and the game supports 1 to 4 players.

Screenshots can be found here.

I came across this application today that allows you to covert a Windows CHM file (help files and ebooks) to HTML: CHM Decoder

This little utility is useful if you like reading ebooks on your Palm or PocketPC as it takes the CHM file and converts it to a whole bunch of HTML files. It’s portable, very easy to use and only 510 KB!

Convert is a very handy conversion application for Windows that you can carry around on your flash drive. It’s also quite small at 548 KB!

It converts just about anything and if you find something missing, you can even add your own conversions.

Typhoon 2001 is loads of fun! Based on the Tempest arcade game, the object of the game is to move your spaceship along the outer edges of the playing field and shoot at the bad guys. This remake is so well done, you just have to try it out for yourself! You can see some screenshots at the author’s web site and here’s one from me:

Remember this game from Windows 3.1? You can download good old SkiFree, both the old version and a newer 32-bit version, from the creator’s web site and learn the history of the game too.

Head on over to Cheatbook to learn some game tricks like how to avoid getting eaten by the nasty Yeti (hint: speeding up the game play by pressing the ‘F’ key will allow you to outrun him. He comes in at 2100 metres so keep your finger on the F key at around 2000 meters because he moves in really fast!). The site explains all three game modes, controls for both mouse and keyboard and explains all the objects within the game and how to deal with them.

I’ve been using ToDoList by AbstractSpoon for a couple of week’s now and already consider it to be an indispensable tool to manage my tasks. You can break down tasks into several levels of sub-tasks and also use it for time tracking. While it doesn’t have extensive reports, it does come with the ability to export to CSV, HTML, Text and XML so that you can make your own.

Each project has its own file but ToDoList has a multi-tabbed interface that allows you to open all your projects at the same time. For each task within a project, you can add notes (with rich text formatting).

A great portable organizer/time tracker at only 1.50 MB!

A game for everyone this weekend – Windows, Linux and Mac users – called Neverball.

The game reminds me of Skyroads but with a ball instead of a spaceship. You have to tilt the platforms or roads and guide the ball along. It has really nice graphics, too. The Windows version is a hefty 30 MB but there is also a mini-putt golf game included in the download.

It has 75 levels so that should keep us busy over the long weekend. And if that isn’t enough, the mini-putt game has 62 levels!

Note that for Windows users, the game requires that the .NET framework is installed on the computer.

Spacejock Software offers a whole bunch of free software that can be run from your flash drive when you download and install the separate Pendrive Runtimes. An explanation of how to install the apps to your flash drive can be found in the site’s download section.

So what kind of apps can you find here? A very wide variety! A Launcher, ebook reader, text to speech player, MP3 player, timer, book maker, reminder program, tracker for lent items and a novel writing app to help you write a novel. And that’s just a partial list of the applications available! For a complete list, visit Spacejock.