Sorry this took so long, I was in the middle of my exams and I kept putting it off. But like I say, procrastination makes perfect.

As some of you will know, Earth – and in fact the rest of the Solar System – is present in Spore as an easter egg. I’m not going to provide you with the details on how to get there, as there are plenty of instructions and videos already. The star (our Sun) is named Sol, which is the Latin word for sun. The planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are included, and can be terraformed and colonised with like any other planet in the game. The Moon, Titan and Ganymede are also there. No other moons are, however, as there are too many of them. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, being gas giants, cannot be interacted with and are simply there for show. Pluto is not included, probably because of its title as a dwarf planet.

Anyway, I found it. It was actually just a few clicks away from my Home Planet the whole time.

Mercury

Nothing much there. It has a big crater on it, but otherwise is just a dry, hot planet when you get there.

Venus

Unlike its real life counterpart, which has a very thick atmosphere, the Spore Venus is simply a hot planet with a high atmosphere level since the designers couldn’t make it into a gas giant type planet. It actually has water on its surface at first, which in real life would be impossible with its current conditions due to the extreme global warming caused by its atmosphere. Other than these unrealistic features, there’s not much else on it.

Earth

When you find Earth, you get the “Manifest Destiny” achievement. If you destroy it with a Planet Buster, you get the “Oh The Humanity!” achievement. Those factors themselves make it a pretty important planet. It has all the continents, and a few geographic landmarks (but not many). However, it is only T1, and often doesn’t even have a completed biosphere (in my game it was missing a herbivore and a carnivore). Terraforming it to T3 gives it an ugly pinkish-brown colour, so you should probably leave it as it is. Since the planet had to be scaled down, placing a colony often screws up the map. I placed my colony on Antarctica. I kinda messed up the coasts, but other than that everything remained unaffected. Besides, no one really cares about Antarctica… You can also safely place one over Russia.

My Antarctic colony:

Map of Earth:

My hologram scout standing on Ireland:

The Moon

The Moon has a few craters and a very flat landscape (which can cause a bit of flooding during terraforming). If you use a Planet Buster on Earth and don’t intend to revert to a previous save after you get the achievement, then be prepared to lose The Moon as well, since it gets destroyed along with it.

A T3 Moon with Earth in the background:

Mars

Mars on Spore, in my opinion, is pretty realistic. It has some landmarks such as Olympus Mons, but doesn’t have as many craters as it should. It’s also at the right temperature (it just lacks an atmosphere) on Spore, while in real life it should be colder. I used the Staff of Life on it (more about that in a later post) because it seemed fitting. It’s gone kinda pink now, but I don’t want to colour it in green because the green land colouring tool doesn’t look natural to me.

Terraformed Mars:

Ganymede:

Ganymede is the only moon that orbits Jupiter which appears in Spore. Not much else to say.

Titan:

Titan is the only moon orbiting Saturn in Spore. Again, not a lot here other than the weird purple terrain colour.

As you can see, the Sol system has a lot of planets in comparison to other solar systems in the game. I still havent terraformed all of them, but that’s because I haven’t even opened Spore for two weeks. Good luck finding Earth yourselves! If you have a ton of cash and an Interstellar Drive 5, you’ll have no problem getting there. Rushing back to save it every time pirates attack is another story, however…

Pictures yay!

My next Spore post (whenever I get around to writing it) will be about the Galactic Centre.

Don’t hold your breath, though.

-legoless

For all of you who know me, to look at that is, know that I am no anorexic. I have struggled with losing weight and keeping any weight loss off my scales. My most successful diet was about 3 or 4 years ago when I first tried the Atkins diet. I managed to lose about 4 stone over a period of about 18 months and to keep the gains I had made. The killer was Easter – I thought I would try some chocolate thinking I could have just one easter egg – but that was self deceptive thinking and some years later, have never got back to those heady, light weight days since.

I now do need to lose weight. The doc’s on my case and I’ve set myself a target of getting my risk factor number down from 14% to 10%. For those of you who are too young to know or worry about “risk factors”, it’s some kind of weighted average ratio based on Cholesterol, Blood Pressure and Weight. The first two are under control, the last is not.

I feel bad periodically about not going to the gym but the doc said that you can achieve the same degree of aerobic exercise by walking quickly as by running. So I do. I walk nearly as fast as a postman is supposed to and so do the dogs, much to their disappointment. They’ve now got their Sniffing and Peeing down to a fine art. There’s only 1 thing they can’t do quickly but I’m not going to go there!

We went through to Livingston today to the McArthur Glen Designer Outlets to do some Christmas shopping and as usual I settled into a comfy chair in Costa, with my double espresso con panna, and my iPod. I was listening to Queen’s A Day at the Races.

I overheard a thin gentleman asking for two skinny lattes and two pieces of cake. What exactly was the point about the skinny latte? Cutting down on the fat in the milk is no doubt a worthy thing to do but to replace it at the same time with a super healthy piece of cake (not!) makes no sense whatsoever.

You’re either on a diet or you’re not.

JohnF

PS I am following Atkins again – it’s the only one that seems to work for me so I CAN have cream with my coffee.

Today, I was in my Yahoo Mail account and clicked to create a new message. I type in who I’m sending it to and for whatever reason, my mouse hovered of the Subject button long enough for an info bubble to say “Subject-O-Matique.”

I go ahead and click it. To my surprise, I find a random subject appeared:

So, the Subject-O-Matique is an easter egg Yahoo put into its E-Mail software. Apparantly, it’s been around for a while. Nevertheless, for your amusement, here’s a little list of what the Subject-O-Matique spits up:

• Law firm of Herringbone, Leather & Tweed
• Do you suffer from uncontrollable falling down?
• A hip-hop MC performs with improvised rhyme and the spoken word, typically over a thumping beat.
• KAR 120C where are you?
• Wake me up when it’s time to go to sleep
• Your earrings would make a great fishing lure!
• Shaolin Golden Palm!
• Re: Test Results
• cycling over melons
• Rupert and mummy bear go by train with Bill on holiday again.
• ASAP’s Fables
• To replace the normal colonic flora.
• Sender wishes to recall message
• Que pachuca con toluca! (I actually don’t think this translates into anything.)
• Thank god and Greyhound she’s gone

This was a fun easter egg to find. New subjects always seem to appear, so check it out when your entertainment is slim.

Just realised that Maps icon on the iPhone is an actual map of Apple HQ.

While on that, the lines of TextEdit ain’t no lorem ipsum. Go ahead, have a click.

Love the attention to details—that design decisions are made with purpose and logical reason.

On s’en rappelle tous avec émotions : quelle joie nous ressentions lorsque les revues spécialisées divulguaient les codes secrets des jeux vidéo. Ces combinaisons de touches invraisemblables permettaient de tricher en toute impunité et profiter des jeux en profondeur.

Sans réussir à le prouver, je pense que l’apparition des cheating codes faisaient partie de la stratégie des éditeurs de jeux. Ils participaient à la notoriété et au plaisir ressenti de certains opus, parfois trop difficiles ou quasi impossible à exploiter dans leur intégralité.

Mon ami Alex m’expliquait que seul 20% des joueurs avancent vraiment dans les jeux, les autres restent souvent bloqués au début (cela ne pose pas nécessairement problème, un jeu comme GTA se jouent autant au premier niveau que dans les niveaux avancés…). Un code permet simplement de débloquer une situation, continuer à jouer et éventuellement devenir fidèle à une sage (GTA, Fifa, Final Fantasy…)

Au passage, je serais curieux de tomber sur une étude démontrant l’impact des vies dans les jeux vidéo. Elles ont vraisemblablement contribué à angoisser les joueurs vis-à-vis de la mort > “si je peux mourir et ressusciter ad lib dans un monde virtuel, notre impossibilité à “gagner des vies” et à les dépenser dans la vraie vie dramatise profondément mon rapport à la faucheuse”. Mais c’est un autre débat…

La mythologie des codes a la dent dure. Certains développeurs et nerds continuent à les faire vivre à travers des petits secrets intégrés aux programmes, aux sites web ou aux jeux vidéo.

On trouve par exemple le Konami Code sur certains sites (essayez au moins celui-ci grâce à la page WP ci-avant qui donne une liste des sites dotés de cette fonction).

Il existe en outre des easter eggs sur certains sites. “L’oeuf de Pâques” s’inscrit dans la même lignée que la Konami Code (à quelques nuances près). Il débloque des bonus ou des fonctions cachées.

Exemple dans Doom :

Exemple dans Excel (oui oui!) :

Que nous apprennent les Konami Codes ou Easter Eggs? Que lorsque les gens/consommateurs/clients ont l’occasion de creuser un lien avec un produit ou un service via une petite manip réservée aux fans, l’interaction devient magique.

On devrait évidemment y penser plus souvent pour les marques, qui réussissent dans les meilleurs cas à dialoguer, parfois créer des expériences, rarement faire participer les gens.

L’agence Goodbye Silverstein and Partners y a pensé. Le dernier opus de la fabuleuse campagne américaine Got Milk? est totalement fou.

Visant à valoriser le lait auprès des jeunes, l’agence a eu la bonne idée d’intégrer un Konami Code à sa campagne : il offre un mini jeu rigolo. L’intérêt n’est pas dans le jeu en lui même mais dans la relation que le syndicat du lait US créé avec ses clients.

Offrir l’opportunité de découvrir quelque chose est formidable, presque mystique.

Quelle marque vous a fait découvrir quelque chose récemment?

Le sel dans les céréales ne compte pas…

Today is the day I find the perfect dress..
Fingers crossed!

Then it is an early train to Wales in the morning for GJ birthday fun times..
I like trains..
Not in a geeky way.

I just like trains

Hello Kitty Easter Egg Picture by pbrigitte zombuki on Flickr
Very Talented Lady with amazing Necklaces

I just found out by playing around that the proofreading tool on WordPress also works in HTML editor mode. I tried it. It didn’t work (or it took longer than I waited) but that was the least of my worries.

Self-destructing... hopefully not my post

HTML mode has a rather nasty tendency to strip out breaks between paragraphs (among messing up other things). Guess what? The visual editor didn’t add them back.

I worried but then I remembered I could use WordPress’s integrated diff viewer to restore from yesterday. I tried to find the last sane version, but me being idiotic me, I chose to compare the same revision to itself.

And something very strange happened (see screenshots). My post was self-destructing and I was thrown into the Matrix.

The Matrix has you... (it goes on like this)

I may have been about to lose my post but that led me to this which otherwise wouldn’t have been here to brighten my day. Think of the positives in life.

The fact that I’m using IE is not one of them.

      Back in August I had the pleasure of playing two nights in Portland Oregon.   I had never been there before and really didn’t have a fucking clue about the area.  Being from Maryland, the only thing I knew about Portland is that it has a lot of trees, a lot of hills, and was also used as a concentration camp for Japanese people during World War II. When I got in town I had about an hour to kill so I walked around the downtown and Chinatown area. They have a plethora of homeless people. I’m not talking about one or two that you may usually see in yourtown USA, im talking every 6-10 steps someone is like “yo! give me a dollar”. This one dude asked me twice in a 5 minute time span. The best part is when he tripped on the curve and his syringe fell out of his front shirt pocket. Amazing! He laughed and was like “whoops! can’t forget that” We chuckled and went our separate ways. Friday Night I was playing at East Infection in Chinatown with DJ Izm. I had mixed feelings about the place hanging out early because  the crowd came off as a little douchey. The opening DJ was keeping it pretty mainstream. By the time I went on, the crowd thinned out a little bit but I have to say I had fun playing there and by the end of my set, it was mostly Club music. Afterwards Izm and I went to a dope Taco truck spot across the street. So far I was taking a liking to Portland. The second night was too much fun. I played the Crown Room with Izm and Nathan A.K.A. Easter Egg. I had a blast playing there and the both held it down very nicely. I also have the timing of a stroke. I went outside to smoke a cigarette and plan after hour activities with some dare I say “fans” out front and a multi player melee battle brawl went on inside in which I found out Izm took a pool stick and hit a standing RBI triple over someone’s back. I came back in and everyone is breathing heavy with their hands on their knees and blood on their knuckles and im like “you guys pack up yet? got an after party to DJ” We skipped the after hours joint to go to the Mecca of donut shops called Voodoo donuts. I got the famous Bacon Maple donut. The man at the counter said that I was the first person in the history of Voodoo Donuts to ask for extra bacon. Fuckin right son.

1: The Day The Listeners Came – DJ Frane
2: My Girl Dub – Tyler Tastemaker Blend -The Temptations*
3: Whatever You Like – T.I. – Disco Tech Remix
4: Tear The Club Up pt2 – Diamond K – Izm Club Edit
5: Yes – lil wayne feat. pharrell williams – Izm Club edit
6: Juke that Girl – Gant-Man – Greenmoney remix
7: Ssion – Clown – Tactic Remix*
8: Stanky Legg – GS Boys- Easter Egg’s Edit*
9: Okay! Whats up! – Emynd
10: Great DJ- Ting Tings – Calvin Harris Remix – Izm mash
11: Doors open beat – Dollar Will, Too Short and friends
12: Come to Me Break – Dennis Blaze
13: Break Ya Neck beat – Busta Rhymes
14: Gotta Get It beat – Juvenile
15: Diamond Girl Club Interlude – Stevie B – Izm edit
16: Baltimore Lesson – Chavy Boys x Uncle Jesse
17: Animal – Miike Snow
18: Encore- Dukeyman
19: Party Walk – Mullyman
20: I Poke her Face loop- Admix.3
21: PSA beat- Jay-Z – Doc Adam Edit*
22: Venus Vs Mars snip – Jay-Z – Izm Edit
23: Aint I Remix – Young Dro & T.I. – Izm edit
24: Bump and Sniff Vip – Tactic feat Brik Mason*
25: Insane in the Brain beat – Cypress Hill
26: We a Jerk Remix – New Boyz- Trustus edit
27: Sound Clash – Z-trip blend feat Dawn Penn (you dont love me)
28: Champion Blend – Buju Banton
29: Might like you Better beat – Amanda Blank- Rusko Remix
30: Hotel Room Service – Pitbull – DJ B-Stee Remix
31: Work Me – Sammy Bannanas
32: Juice Box – Pitbull – DJ Class
33: Choose Your Side – La Coka Nostra feat Bun B
34: Bone Cha Got beat – Diamond K
35: In the Morning – Junior Boys – Izm Club Edit
36: We Bad Remix- DJ Sega
37: Keep Movin – Doo Dew Kids
38: I get Money – 50 Cent- DJ Tamiel mix
39: The Kids Hot Instrumental – ATM
40: Mother Sea – Bat for Lashes – DJ Izm Club Blend
41: Move – MIMS – DJ Slugo Remix
42: Changes Acapella – Tupac
43: Notorious Thugs – Notorious B.I.G verse – Bone Thugs
44: Right Now (B-More) – DJ Clent
45: Shawty Come Juke Me – Mista Wish/Married to the Game
46: Half a Brick – Gucci Mane – DJ Clent Juke Mix
47: Freakn’ You – DJ Spinn
48: Heart Cooks Brain – Modest Mouse – DJ Izm’s Freakn blend

For more info, music, and other stuff from Dj Izm, visit his page at http://www.myspace.com/mosjeph

On Facebook™ chat, while I was chatting with one of my friends (Jay), he pop me out to shock with a rare emoticons that is a shark. Then I ask him a little  tips on that and I manage to complete (Maybe yet) the easter egg in the Facebook™ chat. Here it goes:

Complete list:

To make your chat text to be bolded:  insert * symbol in the front and the back of your text

Example: *Hello*  and it will showed as Hello in Facebook™ Chat

Animal Emoticons:

<(") : Penguins

(^^^): Shark

I just searched for the emoticons which revealed the complete list, including the :putnam: icon which some say is an icon of Chris Putnam, a Facebook engineer.

Hahaha. Make fun out of it. That’s all for this time for the tehtarek easter egg!

Fun timing isn’t it?  If you were up late last night click here to read what happened to your Mac.  Does it seem that Apple always has some Easter Egg or surprise we don’t know about?  Courtesy of http://dougitdesign.com

If you add the code “?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42” (without quotes) to the end of any URL that is a PHP page, you will see a funny pictures or server information.

These are the four QUERY strings you can add to the end of a PHP web page to view a (somewhat) hidden image or web page:

(1) ?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42- Easter Egg

(2) ?=PHPE9568F34-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42- PHP Logo

(3) ?=PHPE9568F35-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42- Zend Logo

(4) ?=PHPB8B5F2A0-3C92-11d3-A3A9-4C7B08C10000- PHP Credits

How to prevent this

If the PHP directive expose_php is set to be “off” in php.ini, then the PHP eggs will not show, but it is “on” by default, and many webhosting servers do not change it. If you see such a URL in your website logs, it may be because someone is trying to determine if your server is running PHP and attempting to discover weaknesses in your system. By setting expose_php = off in the php.ini configuration file, you will reduce the amount of information available to them. If the PHP easteregg is active (the URL shows the image), then scanning the website with Nitko web server scanner will give the warning message, “PHP reveals potentially sensitive information via certain HTTP requests which contain specific QUERY strings.”

You can not make changes to ini file in shared server

We can overcome this problem with htaccess file. Here is the code for ristricting easter eggs.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^=PHPB8B5F2A0-3C92-11d3-A3A9-4C7B08C10000
RewriteCond $1 !^error\.html$
RewriteRule (.*) /error.html? [L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^=PHPE9568F34-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42
RewriteCond $1 !^error\.html$
RewriteRule (.*) /error.html? [L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^=PHPE9568F35-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42
RewriteCond $1 !^error\.html$
RewriteRule (.*) /error.html? [L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42
RewriteCond $1 !^error\.html$
RewriteRule (.*) /error.html? [L]

If you add above content to htaccess file, your problem will be solved

If you haven’t heard the news, you may be a bit confused by the above screenshot, which I captured on my laptop mere minutes ago.

Word that the Globe and Mail website had a functioning Konami code easter egg popped up on my twitterscape via BlogTO this afternoon. The blog was actually retweeting one Mathew Wingram’s who apparently broke the discovery. As it so happens however, Mr. Wingram (who’s tweet is sarcastically confused) is the Communities Editor at The Globe. Cheeky, to say the least.

For those who are not video game nerds, the infamous Konami code (up,up,down,down,left,right,b,a,start) was originally a way to get yourself 30 lives in the original Nintendo game Contra (and subsequent Konami games). Since Contra went on to become one of the most popular video game franchises of all time, the code has garnered its own pop-culture significance; knowledge of its existence being a bit of geek cache. Bands have named themselves after the code, and The Globe isn’t even the first major news website to feature it on their main page. Hell, even Facebook got in the fun.

What strikes me is the pure viral marketing genius this little joke has produced as nerds across the internet (including me) have quietly added +6 cool points to The Globe for this sanctioned bit of awesome 8-bit faux-hackery.

In a time when newspapers are aching to be relevant, this just shows that having your finger on the pulse of pop-culture and internet savvy possible customers will be increasingly just as — if not more — important than producing Pulitzer prize winning journalism. Even more notable about this perhaps is how evident The Globe has embraced technology, going from arguably the most stodgy Canadian broadsheet to the most digitally relevant of them all in a matter of years.

Welcome to the world of online branding, Globe and Mail. I once thought you’d never get here, and you might be by yourself for a while.

To try this yourself: go to www.globeandmail.com

• Once the main page stops loading, use your keyboard direction keys to enter up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a (the letters b and a).
• A box will appear, and you can close it. Then press shift+space on your keyboard
• In the console, type the word “contra” (no quotes).

Åben facebook, og gør følgende:

tryk to gange på pil op
tryk to gange på pil ned
tryk på pil til venstre
tryk på pil til højre
tryk på pil til venstre
tryk på pil til højre
tryk på b
tryk på a
tryk på enter

Prøv derefter at scrolle ned, pludselig ville din skærm se anderledes ud. Effekten kommer oprindeligt fra Konami, og er en taste kombination.

Skulle gerne ligne denne, hvis du har gjort det rigtigt:

Questa poi…

There’s an Easter egg in the Bus Pirate firmware. Type ‘+’ in the Bus Pirate terminal to see the current configuration bits for your PIC and some ASCII art. Now that we’ve announced it, we’ll change the key and message in the next firmware update.

Send us your ASCII art, it might be included in Bus Pirate firmware v2.3. An ASCII art generator might be helpful.