Gizmodo: easter eggs

Houston, We Got Porn On the Moon

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:40:00 EDT

A pornish cartoon. That's what the surprised astronauts from the Apollo 16 mission found while walking on the Moon. It was in their checklist—mounted on the forearm—but it wasn't the first time that happened:

During the Apollo XII mission, Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr and Lunar Module pilot Alan L. Bean found naked pinups in one of the pages of their checklist. It reportedly made them laugh hysterically while command module pilot Richard F. Gordon, Jr. listened from his orbit around the Moon.

The reason for their surprise was in the fact that—while the main crew prepared them—these Extra-Vehicular Activity checklists were packed before the flight by the mission backup crew. They placed the easter eggs without them knowing it at all.

The drawing here is part of Haise's checklist, whch can be yours if you get $200,000 to $300,000 by July 16. That's when it's going up for auction at Bonhams, in London, UK.

The clip here showing Apollo XII's Conrad and Bean is from the hilarious part 7 of From The Earth to the Moon. If you have never watched the TV miniseries, do it. I can't stress enough how incredibly good they are.

[Daylife—Thanks Genevieve]

The One Thing David Pogue and Unlimited Lives in Contra Have in Common

John Mahoney — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:15:00 EST

The Konami code is a secret branding, a geek stigmata—all it takes is that one brief flash, and you're immediately recognized as one of US. Is it any surprise then, that if you enter that hallowed sequence on DP's new Pogue-o-Matic gadget finder, you get to watch him do a special trick?

Just type in the magic words (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, enter) on the front page, and you will be rewarded. But as Adam points out, an additional 30 seconds of Pogue hamming it up might not juice you the same way as unlimited lives in Contra did back in the day, but our hats are off to you David Pogue, as well as the NYT code monkeys that dreamed this up. [Pogue-O-Matic]

Dead LEGO Minifig Skull Holds Eggs, Easter or Not

Jesus Diaz — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:00:25 EDT

Easter is here. Yes, you all read about it in the Da Vinci Code, that whole thing about that guy who walked over water whose best friend was a giant bunny. Or something like that. Whatever. According to Dan Brown's next book, those two spent the whole week eating more eggs than Cool Hand Luke. Chocolate eggs, boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, eggs benedict, boiled eggs in dead LEGO minifig skulls halved in two? Yes. Anything to scare your younger ones in the morning, match the minifig skull Egg Timer after the jump.

Unfortunately, the $10 two-skulls Egg Cup set is not available directly in the United States. You can buy the minifig head egg timer for $7.99. [LEGO and LEGO via Toylogy]

Amazon Kindle Has Secrets: Faux-GPS Google Maps, Minesweeper, and More

Adam Frucci — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:20:19 EST

So, you ~~wasted some hard-earned money on~~ bought an Amazon Kindle. Good for you! Now that you have one, it's time to exploit the crap out of it. I'm talking, of course, about easter eggs, otherwise known as functionality that should be available to everybody in the first place. Yes, there's Google Maps access with triangulation locating! Minesweeper! A picture viewer! And more!

Accessing the goodies requires fiddling with the firmware, so you've got to at least sort of know what you're doing in that regard, but once you do, you get all sorts of fun shortcut options. It seems strange that some of this stuff would be hidden, such as the faux-GPS Google Maps functionality. There are commands built-in, such as "find nearest gas station," that makes it seem like at some point these features were planned but scrapped for some reason. Oh well, if you really want them you can have them, just follow the link below for the details. [Reversing Everything via Interface]