Neil's News

Class Clown

4 April 2008

Last month I was responsible for creating 'Cliply' and burying him into the source code as an easter egg. It's a little scary that it only took three days for people to find him. I'll have to hide the next one deeper.

Many people noticed the D&D reference in the Cliply code and appreciated our tip-of-the hat to the late Gary Gygax^[?]. Although I'd like to take credit for it, the tribute was actually coincidental. I checked in that code several days before Gary passed away.

This week I followed up with the Google Docs April Fools prank most of your saw: the paper airplane. My favourite comment was TechCrunch which stated "This is strange even for Google."

One of the difficulties with the plane was internationalisation. The US and its satellite states use 8.5x11" paper, whereas the rest of the world uses the superior A4 format. Thus I had to design the plane so that it was agnostic as to the size and shape of the paper it was printed on. Hence the lack of a pointed nose. Another consideration was the 40 different languages which this would launch in. Hence the pictorial instructions.

Can't wait till Halloween.

And in case you think that it is all fun and games around here, tune in on Tuesday...

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