Time to take a break from all the geek speak and have some fun with your computer. When programmers and designers create software many times they hide “Easter Eggs” or little programs or jokes within the program – who says a geek doesn’t have a sense of humor? Listed below are some additional easter eggs that I have tried out. Some are ok and some are pretty funny – the most important part is that they let you have a little fun on your computer.

Check out the last set of easter eggs – the link as at the bottom of the article.

Internet Based “Easter Eggs”

The Kitchen Sink

1. Launch Firefox. (versions greater than 2.0)


2. Type "about:kitchensink" (without quotes) in the address bar


3. Click on Go button in address bar or press enter key

Say What?
In address bar go to http://www.google.com/language_tools and hit enter.

This will bring up a list of languages that the Google browser supports – BUT! – look real close at the list and find Elmer Fudd, pig latin, and hacker in the list. Click on one of these to translate the Google search page the that language. Searching has never been so funny!

The sites can be accessed directly at these links:

• http://www.google.com/intl/xx-elmer/


• http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/


• http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

The Reflective Search

1. In your browser go to http://www.google.com


2. In the search box type “elgoog” without the quotes


3. Select the first link from the search results


4. Happy Surfing! Though you might need a mirror!

The Psychic Search

1. Go to http://www.google.com/intl/en/mentalplex/


2. Type in your search phrase and make sure to follow all the directions!

Take a Flight Lesson

1. Open the newest version of Google Earth (needs to be at least 4.2). If you don’t have Google Earth you can download here if you would like - http://earth.google.com/


2. After open hit CTRL-ALT-A or if on a Mac CMD-OPT-A


3. This will launch a full flight simulator – just make sure you don’t crash!

Software “Easter Eggs”

Play Star Wars!
Note: This easter egg requires that you have OpenOffice installed. This is a free office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet and drawing program and it is compatible with MS Office. For more information visit http://www.openoffice.org/

1. Create a new spreadsheet in Calc


2. In an empty cell type “=game()” without the quotes and press enter


3. ”Say what?” will be displayed in the cell and which point type =GAME(“StarWars”) and hit enter


4. The Star Wars game will be started in a new window – happy shooting!

Have a Spot of Tea
(This works in Windows 2000)

1. Right click on desktop and select properties


2. Click on Screen Saver


3. Select 3D Pipes (OpenGL) as your screen saver


4. Click settings


5. Change settings to multiple pipes with Pipe Style set to traditional mixed.


6. Set the resolution to Max


7. Click OK twice to exit

Now when the screen saver is drawing the pipes it will randomly use tea pots as the connector for the pipes. You may have to watch for awhile before you see a tea pot.

Enjoy!