Johnny Castaway - Common Activities

To occupy his time, Johnny engages in various regular activities:

Sleeping - Johnny has frequent snoozes, although he is sometimes tied up by pirates, while he is asleep. (Thanks to Preben Wolff, who sent me the picture on 2 Oct 1997.)

Lighting a fire - Johnny, lights a fire. As Kevin Routley pointed out on 8 Feb 2000, he either lights the fire after 2 - 4 attempts at rubbing sticks, or gives up in disgust, only to have the fire 'spontaneously' light with a little poof. Once lit, he sometimes just sits in front of the fire, but usually he cooks what he has caught, often a green fish, but when he's really hungry, he also eats an old boot.

When he eats the small octopus, it clings to the front of his face (like the facehugger in Alien), but he manages to get it down. (Thanks to Matti Hirvonen for the Alien creature identification.)

Jogging - He changes into his tracksuit behind his tree, and jogs round the island.
Eating coconuts from the tree Again there are a number of variations. In all of them he shakes the tree to dislodge a coconut, but then: The coconut falls on his foot The coconut bounces into the sea On 8 Feb 2000 Kevin Routley pointed out when they bounce, they bounce hard and over to the right, or less hard and twice over to the left.
The coconut rolls round the island and he catches it. As Kevin Klueh pointed out on 26 Sep 1997 I think that JC must be stranded on Devil's Island. When that coconut falls off the tree and rolls around, JC's head does a complete 360. I think a priest should come along and exorcise him!
If he is successful in getting his coconut, he bashes it against the tree to break the shell, and then sits down and eats it.

Making sand castles

To help pass the time, Johnny builds a sand castle. Normally, it immediately starts to crumble, and Johnny jumps on it in rage, but sometimes a tiny pirate galleon arrives - see the pirates page.

Building a raft
When the program is first installed, there is a partly-built raft at one side of the island, and you see Johnny working frantically at it from time to time. Over a few days, this grows to a completed raft, but, as John Bennett noted on 16 Oct 1996:
Following my recent lock-up with JC, I decided to switch to another screen saver for a few minutes and then went back into JC. Oh dear! The raft is now back to its original length.
and in reply, Dave Brown confirmed
I find that the raft sets itself to its original length from time to time.

Sending an SOS in a bottle

Sometimes, Johnny writes out an SOS and puts it in a bottle, which he throws in the sea. This often washes back on his island, but it is sometimes found.

He usually has a thinks balloon with "SOS" in it, but sometimes he thinks of a pretty girl
On 23 Sep 1997 Eric Evans suggested that what actually happened is that Johnny got a note FROM the lady on land and he was reading about her.

And on 1 Jan 1997 John Bennett reported:
When Johnny sent his SOS in the bottle, the balloon over his head had a little replica image of him standing on the island.
On 23 Sep 1997 Eric Evans said that he believes that JC is describing his situation on the note instead of just writing S.O.S.