Do you like eastereggs?

[Arvon]

I found this on the web:




Eggs and Computers
The connection between technology and oology

Anu Garg, Special to SF Gate Saturday, March 30, 2002

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Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That's somewhat like asking which came first, zero or one, the two kinds of bits that make up the data in our software. Just as an egg turns into a chicken and a chicken produces an egg, a zero bit, when flipped, results in a one, and a one results in a zero. And that's just one way computers are connected to oology, the world of eggs.

Let's eggsamine some others.

This Easter, if you wish to go Easter-egg hunting, you don't need to go outside. You can do it from the comfort of your ergonomically correct chair in the warmth of your computer's heat-eggsuding Pentium chip while being lit by the glow of your computer monitor. "Easter eggs," in software parlance, are sundry fun things hidden inside software. The sole purpose in life for these Easter eggs is to amuse. Press a particular combination of keys and mouse clicks and one of many kinds of Easter eggs -- harmless and entertaining, intentionally hidden by the software's author -- manifest themselves: They can be a list of credits, a trick in a game, an animation or a melodious jingle. All for fun.

Here is a simple Easter egg in Microsoft Word 2000. Open a new document, type "=rand( )" without the quotes and hit Enter, and you'll see the following sentence -- which, incidentally, includes all letters of the English alphabet -- written multiple times: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

Here's how to find an Easter egg hidden in the "Minesweeper" game that comes with Windows:
* Open "Minesweeper" (Start / Programs / Accessories / Games / Minesweeper)
* Type "xyzzy."
* Press the left Shift key.
* Begin playing while keeping an eye on the top left pixel on your computer screen. That pixel will change color based on whether your mouse pointer is over an innocuous cell or one containing a bomb.

Congratulate yourself for being an eggstra-ordinary "Minesweeper" player!

Enthusiasts have discovered these treats in everything from Microsoft Word to computer games to Web browsers to Web sites. Speaking of Web-site Easter eggs, there is one right in this story. Eggstra credit if you can you find it.

Easter eggs are one way for eggheads to have a little fun, play a joke or display credits, and they aren't limited to software, either. Movies, books, Web sites, music, art: Any work is fair game. There are even Web sites, such as eggheaven2000.com and www.eggscentral.com, devoted to hunting, sharing and compiling these Easter eggs.

Speaking of eggheads, why do we use that term when we refer to brainiacs and, by extension, to folks who work with computers? The word was first used to refer to an intellectual in 1918. A large forehead or head conveys the idea of a large brain, so it's no surprise we call such folks "eggheads." Imagine an egg standing on its little end, the big end representing the big brain!

And that leads us to the big-endians and the little-endians. Based on how a computer system stores, reads and writes data, it can be called "big-endian" or "little-endian." We humans, by the way, are big-endians. When we read or write a number -- 538, for example -- we say "Five hundred and thirty eight," not "Eight and thirty and five hundred."

But where did the terms "big-endian" and "little-endian" come from? In his famous journey to many eggzotic lands, Dr. Lemuel Gulliver happens on an island whose inhabitants endlessly spend their time debating which end of a boiled egg to open. Little-endians prefer starting with the little end, and big-endians defend their method of going to the big end first.

According to a passage in Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," "the Emperor ... published an Edict, commanding all his Subjects, upon great Penaltys, to break the smaller End of their Eggs. The People so highly resented this Law, that our Histories tell us there have been six Rebellions raised on that account; wherein one Emperor lost his Life, and another his Crown."

Today we use the same terminology when we talk about how a computer stores the bits in a byte. Various computing systems choose different ways of storing data in bytes, resulting in holy wars among proponents of the two schemes, just as in the land Gulliver visited.

Talk about eggsaggerating little things! The boundary between fact and fiction is slim, indeed, if we consider how we get carried away about things of little consequence in our civilized world.

Whichever way you open them, have an eggsceptional day hunting Easter eggs!

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Anu Garg (anu@wordsmith.org) is the founder of Wordsmith.org, an online community of more than 500,000 word lovers in some 200 countries, now in its ninth year.

[Reeka]

I'm old-fashioned. I dyed one dozen eggs yesterday with dye, vinegar and cold water.

*hugs*

[Glorfindel]

Lol Reeka!

Im not too fond of those sort of easter eggs.... but I do luv chocie ones [img]smile.gif[/img] ......mmmmmm.....chocolate......

[Lavindathar]

Just choccy for me!

[Sazerac]

Originally posted by Reeka: I'm old-fashioned. I dyed one dozen eggs yesterday with dye, vinegar and cold water. *hugs*

I did, too, Reeka...except I think we did three dozen. [img]tongue.gif[/img] Later, we'll have deviled eggs and egg salad.

Cheers,

[LennonCook]

THe site doesnnt work :'(

[Pangur Ban]

My partner likes to break up all her choccy Easter eggs and put the pieces in a storage container. Yesterday we went for a day trip - she bought her "choccy box" along but left it in the car when we went to lunch.

Several hours later ...

The sun moved, the car was no longer in the shade ... result? A box full of liquid chocolate.

We put the box in the fridge when we got home. Now she has a solid ( and I mean VERY solid ) lump of chocolate about the size of a housebrick !!

I think we could use it as a new form of armour. It has resisted all attempts to break it, so far.

( I think we are going to have to remelt it down into smaller pieces .... )

[Glorfindel]

Originally posted by Reeka: I'm old-fashioned. I dyed one dozen eggs yesterday with dye, vinegar and cold water. *hugs*

Is it hard to paint eggs Reeka??

[Arvon]

Originally posted by LennonCook: THe site doesnnt work :'(

Wierd??? I tried them both. I even bookmarked them. or http://eggheaven2000.com/or http://www.eggscentral.com/.

[ 04-01-2002, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Arvon ]

[LennonCook]

Originally posted by Arvon: quote: Originally posted by LennonCook: THe site doesnnt work :'(

Wierd??? I tried them both. I even bookmarked them. http://eggheaven2000.com/or http://www.eggscentral.com/.[/QUOTE] Ok, they both work now... neither did before... im willing to blame telstra. [img]tongue.gif[/img]