As is the case in modern society, at some point during holiday gatherings of family and friends, someone is going to get on the Internet and start goofing around. Oftentimes this manifests itself as antisocial behavior, such as checking ones private email or Facebook page, and other folks aren’t allowed to watch. There are, however, some interesting and silly computer activities that people of all ages can gather around the monitor and enjoy. Here are a few of my favorites.
Here’s a little trick that uses Notepad, the basic word processor that comes with Windows. 1.) Go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/Notepad and open an empty notepad file. 2.) Type “Bush hid the facts” (without the quotes). 3.) Save it as whatever you want. 4.) Close it, and re-open it. See the interesting result? I can’t read Chinese, so I wonder what the saved file really says. I’ve been told that this trick has been “fixed” in Windows Vista, so you may need to try it on a computer that uses Windows 2000 or XP.
For your next trick, open Microsoft Word and type “=rand (200, 99)” (without the quotes) and then press ENTER. Why do you see what you see?
These are manifestations of what have come to be known as “Easter Eggs,” and have been hidden away by programmers since the dawn of Microsoft time. Microsoft keeps trying to clean them up, and programmers keep sneaking them back in. Earlier versions of Microsoft programs, such as Word, were loaded with Easter Eggs and other quirky behavior. In Word 97, if you typed in phrases such as “I’d like to see Bill Gates dead,” or, “I’d like to see Bill Clinton resign,” highlighted the text and ran the Thesaurus function, the Thesaurus would respond with, “I’ll drink to that.”
Exploiting a new breakthrough in computer technology, here’s a website that shows how you can take digital pictures with your computer’s monitor. Visit bored.com/monitorcamera.
The good folks at Google are constantly striving to make their search technology available to all computer users, no matter what language they may speak. As such, you can now conduct Google searches in Star Trek Klingon, as well as Warner Brothers Elmer Fudd. My favorite is Pig Latin, which can be found at google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/.
Believe it or not, you can actually download the entire Internet. If you’ve got a few free minutes, visit w3schools.com/downloadwww.htm. It’s worth a look; you can bail out if you don’t have the next few thousand years free.
There’s a really cool example of a card trick at loftcam.com/trick.html. An explanation of how this simple trick works is at entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question187.htm.
Kids and adults alike will get a laugh out of Poke the Penguin. “Poke the Penguin,” you say? Sure, give it a try at albinoblacksheep.com/flash/pokepenguin. Click on the poking hand and have fun. Don’t stop after the first round of poking, though. Keep clicking the “Poke Again” button for even more laughs. You’ll need the Flash Player plugin to make Poke the Penguin work, but your computer probably already has this feature. If not, go ahead and install it; it’s safe.
I always get some serious laughs at thesilly.com. Click on the “Pics” tab and you won’t be disappointed. Ignore the ads and just click on the regular links.
Finally, you can shave the Abominable Snowman. Visit shavemyyeti.com for this bit of silliness. Hold down the left mouse button while moving your mouse, and give him a clean and complete shave. Then, give him some clothes to wear in the freezing tundra and you’ll be rewarded with a really cute song and dance routine. Good, clean, wholesome and goofy fun. Keep in mind that none of the website links listed above should have dashes in the middle or periods at the end. Enjoy. Merry Christmas.