Kenno
April 11th, 2009, 12:16 AM
Let me first explain how this started. Surfing around, I stumbled upon a few cool Gnome Easter Eggs:
GEGLs from outer space (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131281&pageNumber=3) and
free the fish (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131281&pageNumber=2) (for an alternative way to unleash the fish, see this blog post (http://www.linuxtutorialblog.com/post/gnome-easter-egg-free-the-fish)).
Problem is, there didn't seem any way to get rid of Wanda other than restarting gnome-panel (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=675111&p=4185631), which I didn't want to risk at the point (even though it's fairly harmless). So I started digging through the gnome-panel source code. There doesn't seem any code in place to stop the fish from re-appearing, but when it goes off-screen, its graphics get unloaded from memory, so when it wants to come back, it has to reload them from disk. Knowing this, one can simply disable it with
cd /usr/share/gnome-panel/pixmaps
sudo mv wanda.png wanda.png.killed
and re-enable it with
cd /usr/share/gnome-panel/pixmaps
sudo mv wanda.png.killed wanda.png
Don't worry about making the panel crash by doing this; the code does check for the file's existence and simply goes back to "dormant state" if it doesn't find it.
Now comes the interesting part: figuring this out required digging through the gnome-panel "easter egg" code, which brought two more easter eggs to light:
right-click on the panel, choose "properties", then right-click on the empty area at the right of the "Background" tab three times...
whenever you get an error message (for instance, you can provoke one by pressing ALT-F2 and giving it a nonexistent application name such as "foo"), hold CTRL and type "FEAR". The box with the error message will become "afraid" of your mouse cursor. :lol:
I haven't found these two easter eggs described on a website before, so they may be "novel". Happy easter. And next time a colleague leaves their console unlocked, you know what to do... :biggrin:
GEGLs from outer space (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131281&pageNumber=3) and
free the fish (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131281&pageNumber=2) (for an alternative way to unleash the fish, see this blog post (http://www.linuxtutorialblog.com/post/gnome-easter-egg-free-the-fish)).
Problem is, there didn't seem any way to get rid of Wanda other than restarting gnome-panel (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=675111&p=4185631), which I didn't want to risk at the point (even though it's fairly harmless). So I started digging through the gnome-panel source code. There doesn't seem any code in place to stop the fish from re-appearing, but when it goes off-screen, its graphics get unloaded from memory, so when it wants to come back, it has to reload them from disk. Knowing this, one can simply disable it with
cd /usr/share/gnome-panel/pixmaps
sudo mv wanda.png wanda.png.killed
and re-enable it with
cd /usr/share/gnome-panel/pixmaps
sudo mv wanda.png.killed wanda.png
Don't worry about making the panel crash by doing this; the code does check for the file's existence and simply goes back to "dormant state" if it doesn't find it.
Now comes the interesting part: figuring this out required digging through the gnome-panel "easter egg" code, which brought two more easter eggs to light:
right-click on the panel, choose "properties", then right-click on the empty area at the right of the "Background" tab three times...
whenever you get an error message (for instance, you can provoke one by pressing ALT-F2 and giving it a nonexistent application name such as "foo"), hold CTRL and type "FEAR". The box with the error message will become "afraid" of your mouse cursor. :lol:
I haven't found these two easter eggs described on a website before, so they may be "novel". Happy easter. And next time a colleague leaves their console unlocked, you know what to do... :biggrin: