Easter eggs are little hidden things thrown into movies, TV shows, video games, and similar works. George Lucas did this in Star Wars, working a reference to 1138, part of the title of his first movie, into each of the films. Pixar is well known for this as well. For example, every Pixar movie has included the pizza delivery truck from the original Toy Story.
One of the little joys I get in writing is the ability to add Easter eggs into my books. As much as possible, if I need to reference a number it will be 42. Each book has contained at least one reference to Firefly or Serenity*. The only problem has been that most of my books have been project-based, which has made it difficult at times to have fun with some of the examples. My latest book, Android: Fully Loaded, gave me a unique opportunity to have a lot more fun in the examples and it is thus full of Easter egss. So full, in fact, that I thought I might take a moment and go through and explain them.
The first fun bit in the book is in Figure 4.4 on page 46. I needed to show a number being entered into the phone’s dialer, but obviously I could not use a number that might violate someone’s privacy. I considered using a 555 number like they do in movies, but I’m not generally a fan of those, so instead I used a real number: the White House.
Pages 102 and 103 have the first Serenity references that made it into the book. (I actually had one earlier on, but the screen shot got cut in the editing process.) Figures 8.1 and 8.2 show importing the movie’s soundtrack into iTunes.
In Figure 8.6 on Page 107, I’m listening to “I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner, the first song my wife and I danced to at our wedding. Another reference to the song is in Figure 8.8 on Page 108. In Figure 8.7, I’m setting my ringtone to the “Bad Horse Chorus” from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, another favorite of mine. I did actually use “Bad Horse Chorus” as my ringtone for a long time, until switching, while writing the book, to my current ringtone, the theme from the children’s show “Wonder Pets”. I use it now because the lyrics are very appropriate (“The phone! The phone is ringing!”) and because it makes my kids laugh every time my phone rings. The custom ringtone for when my wife calls is, as you might have guessed, “I Want To Know What Love Is”.
Page 113 shows Figure 8.13, in which I’m adding a podcast to Google Listen. The podcast in question is the one from AndroidCentral.com, a site run by my cousin and the book’s tech editor, Phil Nickinson.
Figure 9.1 on page 117 shows the headquarters of Wiley Publishing in Indianapolis, IN. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit them late in the production of the book, and thought a shot of their building nicely appropriate for the book. The building is shown again in Figure 9.2 on the next page, and it’s longitude and latitude are in Figure 9.7 on page 124. Figure 9.1 also shows a couple of pictures of my son playing soccer, and Firefly/Serenity reference #2: look closely on the books shown in the picture to the right and you’ll see my collection of Serenity ornaments. You can find a bunch of pictures of the kids in Figure 9.8 on page 124, as well as closer-up pictures of them in Figures 9.9, 9.10, 9.11 and 9.12. My daughter, by the way, wasn’t too pleased that she was, in her words, “all fuzzy” in that last shot; as my next book is going to be about photographs, I’ll be able to make it up to her.
She appears again in Figures 10.1, 10.2 and 10.5 on pages 131 and 133, this time in the first frame of a video I shot of her while reading. The movie in Figure 10.13 on page 138 is Casablanca, my wife’s favorite. Figure 10.14 is probably the most obvious geek reference in the book.
Chapter 12 let me get a bit meta in the book. In Figure 12.4 on page 158, I’m looking at a draft of the book’s first chapter. Figure 12.6 on the next page shows some text from that very chapter, which I did actually write on the phone (you can see the text on the previous page.) The PowerPoint presentation in Figure 12.5 is from an ActionScript class I teach at the Art Institute of California, Sacramento. For the eBook to show in Figure 12.8 on page 161, I actually struggled a bit. I have an electronic copy of my Flash Catalyst Bible that I had planned to use, but in the end I went with the opening page of my all-time favorite, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Figure 12. 10 shows a page from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, a book I really will get around to reading some day.
Figure 14.6 on page 186 combines two pop-culture references. My shopping list includes Duff Beer, which will be recognized by any fan of the Simpsons. The other two items are Firefly/Serenity references: Fruit Oaty Bars feature prominently in the movie, while strawberries play an important role in the first episode of the series. On the next page, notice the amount of the bill I’m supposedly paying.
Figure 14.12 on page 191 was a late addition to the book, but one I was glad to work in: it shows the final score of the final game of the 2010 baseball regular season in which the San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, clinching the Western Division title. The shot shows that their next game would be played against the Atlanta Braves, the beginning of the play-offs. Of course, the Giants would go on to win not only the playoffs, but the World Series. Figure 14.13 is shows, of course, several of my other books.
* I had the hardest time coming up with a way to work a Firefly/Serenity reference into the Flash Catalyst Bible. Finally, late in the process, I found a place to do it, but unfortunately the screenshot that contains the reference got cropped. It’s still there and visible if you download the practice files, but does not actually appear in the text.
