I’m writing this as a personal favor to anyone working on decoding the IT Crowd Series 3 DVD Easter Eggs. There’s a lot of incorrect info going around, and although I have no interest in the hidden messages myself, I feel I should point out a few important things.

Firstly, my website www.reynholm.co.uk has NOTHING to do with the DVD. It’s a personal fansite, it’s been around for several years and I have no affiliation with Channel 4 or the IT Crowd. Please don’t email me asking for the password to the intranet, it’s easy to find. In fact I believe it’s on the Wikipedia page. And most of the sequences of numbers on the site (the password file, etc) have no meaning. Either way, nothing on my website will help you with the Series 3 DVD.

Secondly, and this is the most important one, all the IT Crowd sites are hosted on the same web server.

The IP address is 89.16.172.246

If you visit the IP address on it’s own, you get a blank placeholder site that says “The cake is a lie” and “Coming soon…”. http://89.16.172.246/

Here’s a list of the sites that I could find sitting on that server:
http://www.hokerspoker.com
http://www.itsveryblue.com
http://www.friendface.co.uk/
http://www.fiendface.com/ (Yes, FIENDface, without an ‘R’)
http://www.ilovewillies.com/
http://www.howlonghaveyougot.com/
http://www.bluffball.com/
http://www.bluffball.co.uk/
http://www.cuke.me/
http://www.cuke.co.uk/
http://www.reynholmindustries.co.uk/
http://www.ilovewillies.com/
http://www.itcrowd.com/

As with all these sites, if you go to a page that doesn’t exist you’ll get the standard “Coming soon…” and “Cake is a lie” error page. The same thing will happen if you replace “www” with something else. “Coming soon…” should be interpreted as actually meaning “Page Not Found”. I can pretty much guarantee that http://fakefakefake.bluffball.com/ is not just “coming soon”.

I hope this helps, it’s just basic knowledge to anyone who has ever run a web server or setup DNS

If anyone was watching The IT Crowd last week, you would remember the whole plot revolved around a Facebook style website called “Friendface”.

Well there is a real official website at www.friendface.co.uk!

Except when you load the site you get a Reynholm Industries error message (I had nothing to do with this, I assure you!)

Well I’ve had nothing better to do tonight, so I  deciphered the blurry text on the page for everyone who was curious what it says. This is genuine, I did this by matching the symbols to where they appeared in the rest of the paragraph. The little upside down V with a dot above it is an ‘A’, and so on.

Here you go:

The text from www.friendface.co.uk, deciphered!

Update: I just found out that someone else beat me by 4 hours, it’s on Graham Linehan’s blog

Still, we’re both happy that someone else could confirm we got it right

Just in case anyone’s wondering where the IT Crowd items on Zazzle are from, here are the originals from Series 3 episode 3:

Original:

Zazzle:

Original:

Zazzle:

Original:

Zazzle:

Buy them from here: http://www.zazzle.com/reynholm/

I’ve just done a major update of www.reynholm.co.uk

There’s now a new “secret” page and an Office Supplies store (near-exact replicas of props on the TV show, all artwork recreated by hand).

And I’ve updated the color scheme too, to fit more with the show’s look.

Feedback welcome!

(I may be updating some of the intranet wallpapers soon too, stay tuned)

Also very happy to see that the staff ID Cards in the intranet are nearly identical to the ones featured in the latest episode of the show.

This is a very entertaining set of artwork about coffee:

Coffee – Niemann Opinion Art Blog – Abstract City – NYTimes.com.

Surprisingly close to my own story, although a few months I gave up my 3-5 coffees per day habit and switched to tea. I might have 1-2 coffees a month now, it’s a hard habit to kick.

I’m trying to get myself drinking green tea more, it’s not exactly pleasant but I’m slowly getting used to the taste. Amazing how much of a different the right water temperature makes!

New Atari Ghost Busters Video Game Trailer. Shipping in June 2009. Featuring the voices of Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and more. Best trailer so far!

digg story

Ghostbusters Logo

Source

“This is big, Peter, this is very big. There is definitely something here.”

Master Replicas is pleased to announce its forthcoming line of prop replicas based on Columbia Pictures’ hugely popular film franchise, Ghostbusters.

“We are extremely excited to be able to enter the Ghostbusters paranormal world”, explains CEO Michael Cookson “If you’ve always dreamed owning an officially licensed “unlicensed nuclear accelerator” or are just looking for innovative collectibles that will remind you of the legendary antics of Ray, Egon, Peter and Winston, the Master Replicas range will offer a wealth of choices.”

Working closely with Sony Pictures Consumer Products, Master Replicas will work its magic to ensure authenticity and accuracy. Master Replicas initial Ghostbusters product range will include authentic limited edition prop replicas as well as a few “surprises” just in time for the 25th anniversary of this pop-culture property.

The “keymaster” and “gatekeeper” are conspiring to release the first wave of products in May 2009. For a complete listing of products and a few “sneak peek” images, please visit us at http://www.masterreplicas.com/ on Halloween (October 31st) 2008.

Visit http://www.masterreplicas.com/ or http://www.5552368.com/ for further information and updates.

The Ectomobile (ECTO-1) from the movie Ghostbusters was falling apart. Years of damage, rain, rust and tourists had taken it’s toll on the car. This is how it looked a few years back at the Sony Backlot:

More photos – http://www.gbfans.com/equipment/reference/18/

Last year both the ECTO-1 and ECTO-1A were sent to an auto-restoration company, pulled apart and restored from the ground up:

More photos – http://www.gbfans.com/equipment/reference/30/

The restoration is now complete! The car looks even better than it did back in the 1980’s:

See more photos of the finished car here – http://www.gbfans.com/equipment/reference/31/

And finally here is a video of the car in action:

More videos here – http://www.gbfans.com/fans/aj-quick/videos/

Source: GBFans

UPDATE: Digg this story!

A series of Monty Python clips all involving the infamous “Gumby” character(s)

Well 2 days ago my copy of the great series “The IT Crowd series 2″ arrived on DVD from the UK (Region 2 DVD).

Series 1 had a whole bunch of cool geeky features, however series 2 has gone above and beyond this time.

When you select “l33t” subtitles and watch episode 1, you see this:

The subtitles are actually a base64 encoded file! This is the same format used for attachments in emails.

Hidden Files
Episode 1 – “EasterEgg1.jpg”
Episode 2 – “Barber.z5″
Episode 3 – “EggDump”
Episode 4 – Not a file, but some programming code (see below)
Episode 5 – “EasterEgg3.part.2″
Episode 6 – Not a file, it is some kind of encoded light pattern in the bottom of the screen.

Programming Code (Episode 4)
Episode 4 contains the following programming code:

10	REM > Sophie's Choice

20	MODE 0

30	*LOAD EggDump ffff3000

40	ENVELOPE 1, 3, 1, -1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 30, -10, 0, -40, 127, 80

50	PROCPLAY2

60	END

70	DEF PROCPLAY2

80	RESTORE 290

90	REPEAT

100	A = 1

110	READ C, N$, D

120	P = 37 + INSTR("A BC D EF G", LEFT$(N$,1)) * 4

130	N2$ = MID$(N$, 2, 1)

140	IF N2$ = "#" THEN P = P + 4

Etc…
It appears to be in BASIC language, a game called “Sophie’s Choice”.

The JPEG image in episode 1 will probably reveal more though.

The main problem with DVD Subtitles is that they are not text, they are images. The only way to convert them to plain text is to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The best program I’ve seen to do this is SubRip, however this unfortunately truncates the subtitles and only translates the first 8 or so lines.
Currently I’m using a program called Avidemux, it’s the only one I’ve found (out of about ten) that works. The drawback is that although it’s accurate, it also takes much longer to train the OCR.

I’ve written a base64 decoder with PHP, so far I’ve only extracted enough of the subtitles to know that the JPEG photo was taken with an Olympus Digital Camera E-10 at 11:15pm on May 4th 2007.

Update: Part 2 Continues here