Today I learned about "Easter eggs". Not the Easter bunny kind of Easter egg, but the every day kind.
An "Easter egg" is any tidbit that a creator hides in computer software, movies, music, art, books, or even a watch, usually for her/his own amusement. This can be anything from the creator's name or picture, to hidden cartoons, commands, jokes, or animations. Software corporations often frown on "Easter eggs" because they can be left with egg on their face if the eggs are rotten, so if they're found, they're deleted from the next version.
Microsoft reportedly forbid the use of Easter eggs in their software several years ago, but this one works (as of Word 2003), and it's simple enough to make it work, but it's not very amusing. It may not be a real Easter egg, but some sites used it as an example so here goes.
Dummy Text - A simple programming language comes built into Microsoft Word; one Word Basic command can fill a page with dummy type.
- Start a new document in Word.
- Type =rand(x) in which x is a number from 0 to 200. (Like =rand(200).
- Press Enter, and you'll see the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the fence" repeated five times per paragraph in x number of paragraphs.
This might be an "Easter egg": Use the thesaurus in Microsoft to look for synonyms for the word information.
If you have a Wii Fit, watch for "Easter eggs" on April Fool's Day and your birthday.
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory": "Ed Wood" Reference: When Wonka and the others are in the elevator touring rooms, they pass a room with a bunch of pink sheep. Wonka says "I don't want to talk about it." The statement is a reference to "Ed Wood," another Tim Burton film in which Johnny Depp starred as a cross-dresser with a penchant for pink angora — material made from sheep — sweaters.
Now you can go forth and seek your own Easter eggs.
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