Do+A+Barrel+Roll

November 3, 2011 3:45 PM

Do you use Chrome*? Click the links to make Google Do a Barrel Roll, Tilt or change the logo to Ascii Art.

* May work in other browsers too, YMMV

Google also has a bonus inside joke for programmers. It knows about Recursion.

posted by Ad hominem (54 comments total)

Filet a term, search for anagram.
posted by mintymike at 3:47 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Works in Firefox 7.0.1, nothing happening in IE9.
posted by Artw at 3:50 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Barrel roll doesn't work in Safari, but Tilt and Ascii do.

not a programmer, no idea about Recursion
posted by item at 3:51 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Barrel Roll does not work in my Firefox 3.6.x {sad} but a friend showed me. Tilt works, though. Cool.
posted by theora55 at 3:52 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Note, it's really more of an aileron roll (via @danadanger).
posted by Nelson at 3:54 PM on November 3, 2011 [11 favorites]

Works fine in my Safari, 5.1.1. I do have WebGL on, maybe that's it?
posted by floam at 3:57 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

-webkit-transform and -moz-transform being the active ingredients to the tilt and barrel roll it shouldn't be too surprising that IE9 isn't in on the fun, though the ascii art one does work, and viewing source is actually rendered as monospace characters with a few spans for color.
posted by Artw at 3:57 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

OK, if you're not comfortable with the barrel roll misnomer, try Z or R twice (both that and "Do a barrel roll" are a reference to Star Fox 64). And this only works with browsers that support HTML 5. Both facts via Mashable.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:01 PM on November 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, barrel roll does not work on my iPad, but I have not updated iOS recently.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:01 PM on November 3, 2011

/me keeps typing spit money out of my monitor vents, but I don't think that works in FF.
posted by heyho at 4:05 PM on November 3, 2011 [10 favorites]

Hmm, according to this IE9 has it's own prefixed version of transform, I guess they are just snubbing it. http://www.css3files.com/transform/
posted by Artw at 4:06 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is this where we post the funny easter eggs google has been adding to their products lately?

A month ago somebody on Reddit ("wadsworth") noticed that the first 30% of almost all youtube videos are useless fluff. Two weeks later, YouTube added this as a feature. Just tack "&wadsworth=1" to the end of any YouTube URL and it'll do the math for you. e.g.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP6xbbrENAs&wadsworth=1
posted by rouftop at 4:06 PM on November 3, 2011 [9 favorites]

Yeah, Barrel Roll is aMeme.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:06 PM on November 3, 2011

barrel roll works on my iPhone (iOS 5.0.x)
posted by Mad_Carew at 4:08 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Had no idea they added the wadsworth constant to youtube. Clever. And unexpectedly useful.
posted by eyeballkid at 4:09 PM on November 3, 2011 [3 favorites]

/vaguely considers giving usual lecture on how HTML5 isn't really a thing, and how even if it was calling a browser prefixed CSS attribute HTML5 might be a bit much.
posted by Artw at 4:13 PM on November 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

Google also has a bonus inside joke for programmers. It knows about Recursion.

Is the joke about recursion that it asks "did you mean recursion?"

This is nothing to do with programming, this is just the english language.
posted by wilful at 4:14 PM on November 3, 2011 [4 favorites]

This is nothing to do with programming

It has got a bit to do with programming :)
posted by Ad hominem at 4:16 PM on November 3, 2011 [6 favorites]

Do a barrel roll

Why? I can't barrel roll away from who I am.
posted by clearly at 4:16 PM on November 3, 2011 [8 favorites]

I imagine someone is typing in "That's so racist" to see what it'll do.
posted by perhapses at 4:17 PM on November 3, 2011

Apparently Google maybe about to push the envelope on HTML5.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:18 PM on November 3, 2011 [3 favorites]

rouftop: Is this where we post the funny easter eggs google has been adding to their products lately?

A month ago somebody on Reddit ("wadsworth") noticed that the first 30% of almost all youtube videos are useless fluff. Two weeks later, YouTube added this as a feature. Just tack "&wadsworth=1" to the end of any YouTube URL and it'll do the math for you. e.g.

Previously (with a link to the Reddit comment in question, and a bookmarklet from Lifehacker).
posted by filthy light thief at 4:20 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Also, searching "askew" does much the same as "tilt."
posted by nostrich at 4:21 PM on November 3, 2011

clearly: I can't barrel roll away from who I am.

College Humor has really grown from an obnoxious collection of re-hosted clips (they rehosted stuff, didn't they?) into a source for some surprisingly amusing new clips. It's rather like a parallel for people - you eventually leave college, and go onto do something more.

I'll show myself out now.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:23 PM on November 3, 2011 [5 favorites]

heyho: /me keeps typing spit money out of my monitor vents, but I don't think that works in FF.

Yeah, I keep getting bottle caps.


rouftop: Is this where we post the funny easter eggs google has been adding to their products lately?

The cheat sheet (Wikipedia list of Google Easter eggs, across all its products)
posted by filthy light thief at 4:27 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

The dude who runs College Humor originals is Sam Reich, Robert Reich's son.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:28 PM on November 3, 2011

I heard if you search "do a barrel roll" in bing, it shows a clip of google.com doing a barrel roll.
posted by drezdn at 4:43 PM on November 3, 2011 [5 favorites]

not to be a fucking killjoy or anything but i dont know how comfortable i am with the company that holds my docs and shit doing 'lulzey' easter eggs
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 4:48 PM on November 3, 2011

The dude who runs College Humor originals is Sam Reich, Robert Reich's son.

Huh, weird.
posted by stratastar at 4:51 PM on November 3, 2011

Here's the right way to do a barrel roll.
posted by ardgedee at 4:51 PM on November 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

It doesn't work for me with lynx or wget. But it did work for Tex Johnson in a 707.
posted by autopilot at 4:55 PM on November 3, 2011 [4 favorites]

Searching "use the boost to get through" does nothing, unfortunately.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 5:03 PM on November 3, 2011

And this only works with browsers that support HTML 5. Both facts via Mashable.

Not quite true. Animations like this are defined using CSS+JS, not HTML5. They're using vendor specific extensions to demo a not-yet-standardized module of CSS3. Different vendors use different prefixes (i.e. -webkit, -moz, -ie and -o) to signify which implementation they currently support. Once standardized, the prefixes can be dropped.

</pedantic>
posted by rh at 5:49 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ok, how do I untilt? All pages are tilted now. I have the right side of my laptop propped up on a paperback but I can't do that forever.
posted by Grumpy old geek at 5:50 PM on November 3, 2011 [4 favorites]

Tilt works on my android phone :)
posted by dave78981 at 5:57 PM on November 3, 2011

"do a barrel roll" +krystal

rats.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:14 PM on November 3, 2011

This, of course, alludes to you: "not to be a fucking killjoy or anything but i dont know how comfortable i am with the company that holds my docs and shit doing 'lulzey' easter eggs"

You would have absolutely nowhere to put your data, then.
posted by mkb at 6:19 PM on November 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is how you do a roll in a 707.
posted by kiltedtaco at 7:08 PM on November 3, 2011

Untilt by searching for something else.
posted by maryr at 7:42 PM on November 3, 2011

After seeing this here, I found out that the Google engineer who implemented this is a college friend. Nifty.
posted by JiBB at 8:14 PM on November 3, 2011

@mkb maybe like on my hard drive or something?

i am not saying that google should go all Trusted Computing but having the people i trust with crucial personal info spouting 4chan memes is kind of unnerving maybe?
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 8:39 PM on November 3, 2011

Even offline software has Easter Eggs - Windows and Microsoft Office has had them for yonks. It's a common tradition; it doesn't mean the developers aren't working hard on making their programs any good and are wasting time with Easter Eggs. Hell even Metafilter's had some over time.
posted by divabat at 8:54 PM on November 3, 2011

Excel had a flight simulator in it.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 9:17 PM on November 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

I miss "secret about box".
posted by Thorzdad at 3:09 AM on November 4, 2011

How about "Reverse the polarity"?
posted by Rarebit Fiend at 6:34 AM on November 4, 2011

This, of course, alludes to you: having the people i trust with crucial personal info spouting 4chan memes is kind of unnerving maybe?

You might want to avoid looking at this page:

Application Software Easter Eggs - 1246 Eggs
Operating System Easter Eggs - 247 Eggs
Hardware and Electronics Easter Eggs - 199 Eggs
Other Software Easter Eggs - 144 Eggs

Some of them are simply bonus credits of the people who made the program, others are holiday greetings, but if you dig far enough, you'll find a lot of weird things.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:04 AM on November 4, 2011

trustworthy computing initiative- microsoft
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 3:57 PM on November 4, 2011

Besides being a bit of fun, they are showing off what IE can't do. They get people to load up chrome tom check it out, maybe a few stick with it.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:49 PM on November 4, 2011

Except IE can do it, they just chose not to implement it in IE.
posted by Artw at 4:53 PM on November 4, 2011

(The same would also appear to be true for Opera)
posted by Artw at 4:54 PM on November 4, 2011

No argument from me, IE could do it if they implemented it. But that is a distinction lost on the 99%.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:59 PM on November 4, 2011

IE9 did implement it. It's the -ms-transform: rotate() property as documented here. The underlying problem is that CSS3 property names are still not standard, so you have to use different tags for each browser. Google didn't bother to do it for the most common browser on the Internet, presumably out of snideness. More info on how this all works is here.
posted by Nelson at 6:59 AM on November 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

I actually looked up recursion not long ago, and was amused by the response.
posted by theora55 at 12:18 PM on November 6, 2011

"Excel had a flight simulator in it."

What?
posted by Staples at 5:21 PM on November 26, 2011