Posts tagged ‘secrets’
Disney Movie Secrets
By Kaye Nemec
Disney movies like The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and Aladdin are popular among kids and adults around the world. Their characters continue to come to life as Halloween costumes and at birthday parties and their hit songs are easily recognized (perhaps unwilling to admit it, most of us could probably sing at least one completely from memory).
But perhaps something that most Disney movie fans don’t know is that several of the movies have hidden secrets scattered throughout. If you do not own a copy of these movies, clips of the secrets can be found on You Tube. Several of the hidden secrets are not G rated and are not appropriate for Disney films and, therefore, not listed here.
The Little Mermaid
- When King Triton enters the stadium to watch Aerial sing, the camera views him from behind. If you look in the bottom left corner of the screen, in the audience, you will find Goofy, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.
The Lion King
- Some people claim that when Simba lays down on the rock ledge at the end of the movie and dust flies out from underneath him the particles form the word “SEX” in the sky. Others claim this is a shout out to the special effects team that worked on the movie and it actually spells SFX.
Beauty and the Beast
- As Gaston is being thrown from the ledge at the end of the movie skulls replace his pupils.
Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Belle, Pumbaa and Alladin’s carpet make cameo appearances.
Snow White
- In the movie, Snow White has brown eyes but in most of the merchandise she has blue eyes.
Monster’s Inc.
- Jessie from Toy Story 2 appears at the end of the movie when Sulley returns Boo to her room – she picks her up and gives her to Sulley. The “Pizza Planet” truck from Toy Story makes subtle appearances in many Pixar films such as: Cars, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Monster’s Inc and WALL-E.
Lilo and Stitch
- When Lilo wakes up Nani in her bedroom there is a Mulan movie poster on the wall.
Leave a comment with additional Disney secrets you know.
Broken Secrets
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Sources: Various YouTube clips (see clips above), Visions Fantastic, Hiddenmickeys.org
Google Search Tricks
By Chad Upton | Editor
Google is an amazing search engine. Most of us use it to find websites with information, but it can do so much more than show you websites with answers. There are hundreds of built in features that can give you the information directly, without having to go to another site.
Movies Times
Enter “movies” followed by your town/city/postal or zip code and you’ll see some movie times for a couple popular movies along with a link to get the full list of movie times for your area.
Track Packages
Just type in a FedEx, UPS or USPS tracking number and Google will give you a link to see the shipping details.
Track Flights
Enter the airline and flight number and search. No more clicks, the info will be right there.
Find the Best Price
Enter the model name or number of a product you’d like to buy. Then click the “shopping” link at the top and Google will show prices at online retailers. To ensure you get the lowest price, you can sort by price (including shipping). There will likely be some retailers that you’ve never heard of, so you can read retailer reviews and sort by their rating as well.
Define a Word
Lets say some fancy pants uses the word “noetic” and you don’t know what it means. You could go to your favorite dictionary site, or you could type “define:noetic” into Google search. It’ll give you a list of definitions from various sites.
Unit Conversion
Whether you need to convert cups to gallons or go between metric and imperial units, Google’s conversion engine can help.
Currency Conversion
Just type in the value and the currency to convert from and to, example: 100 Euros in Australian dollars
Time
You think you’re doing a nice thing, calling somebody far away to make sure they’re well and give them a familiar voice to talk to. Then they answer the phone as if you woke them up in the middle of the afternoon, but you forgot that’s 4am in Tokyo. You can easily avoid this by checking the local time before calling.
Weather
Should you pack shorts or pants for your weekend getaway? Get a 5 day forecast in seconds (and easily switch between F/C).
Stock Quotes
Just enter the stock symbol and search.
There are many more of these features and I’ll be sure to share more later.
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Search a Specific Site
Some websites do not have good search functions on them. Sometimes I’ll read something on a site and then I go back to find it later and the site search is horrible. Otherwise, you might use google as your homepage, so it could be easier to initiate the search from there.
For example, you may remember reading why some knives have serrated blades on BrokenSecrets.com. But, you want to read it again or send the link to someone who was interested in it. You can type in google, “serrated site:brokensecrets.com” and it will only show results from BrokenSecrets.com.
Using Google as a Time Machine
Because Google’s spiders are constantly crawling the web, storing pages of data so they can resolve accurate and timely information for your search requests. Google actually lets you view the last set of data that was captured.
This information is helpful is a website cannot be reached, but you still want information from it. It’s also useful if information has changed, moved or been removed, you can potentially look at a previous version of the information.
Corporate Logo Secrets
By Chad Upton | Editor
A well designed logo is simple, easy to identify and conveys important information about the brand it represents.
Some logos do that by looking the part: cool, stylish, funky, formal, casual…etc. Logos may also represent the brand with meaningful imagery.
Although you may have seen these logos hundreds of times, you may have have missed some of the meaning.
Apple
With the cachet of this brand, it’s hard to believe it was nearly bankrupt ten years ago. Now, it’s one of the most valuable consumer electronics brands.
There are many stories floating around about how the Apple logo got its bite mark (or “byte” mark). The ad agency that created it, claims it is a biblical reference that symbolizes a bite from the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the story, a serpent promises Eve that eating the fruit would make one wise.
BMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) originally made airplane engines and there is a popular theory that the logo shape represents a spinning airplane propeller. Although that makes a lot of sense, the design is actually based on the colors of the checkered Bavarian flag, the German State where the automaker started.
Fedex
See the arrow between the “E” and the “x”?
Toblerone
Look at the white space in the mountain. It’s a bear, a symbol of the town where Toblerone started.
Tostitos
Two of the letters are sharing a Tostito and a bowl of salsa, which happens to be the dot on the “i.” That’s a legal double dip.
Baskin Robbins
They have 31 flavors and the number is right in the logo.
Milwaukee Brewers
In the old Milwaukee Brewers logo, the letters “m” and “b” form a baseball glove.
Cisco
You may not have seen cisco’s products, but chances are good that some of them are responsible for letting you view this web page — they make telecommunications equipment. The company was named after the city of San Francisco. The waveform bars in the logo represent the Golden Gate Bridge, a well known San Francisco landmark.
Sun Microsystems
The letters “U” and “N” are arranged to create the letter “S”, spelling “sun.”
Amazon
They have everything, from A to Z.
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Sources: Logo Blog, Wikipedia (Apple Logo), Kelly Advertising, Wallet Pop, CorporateLogos.ws, NY Times
Broken Secrets: Phase 2
Today, I want to talk about Broken Secrets — where we’ve been and where we’re going.
I started this site back in November of 2009. The first post was You CAN Use Foil in the Microwave. In fact, if you want to see a list of all the secrets, checkout The Secret Archive.
For those who don’t know, my name is Chad Upton and I’m the creator of Broken Secrets. I’m a 31 year old guy, living in the Midwestern United States. I have a pretty normal day job and I write this site in the evenings, usually after dinner or when my wife Kristen goes to bed.
A lot of people ask me if I make money from Broken Secrets. The answer is a vague, but accurate, “not really.” Technically, the blog generates a small amount of money through amazon referrals (if you buy something) and through kindle subscriptions. Frankly, I’ve spent more on the site than it has brought in, so I think it’s fair to say that I don’t “make” money from the site. Which is fine, I didn’t start the site because I need the money — it’s a hobby.
I don’t believe most people think about the time it takes to research, write, edit and find photos or videos to make a single entry come together. But, most posts take 2-3 hours to create. There are some exceptions, a few posts were created in less than 2 hours and a few took more than 3 hours (especially some of the videos).
Creating content and promoting the blog is a lot of work, but I’ve been lucky. The site quickly gained in popularity. It now gets more visitors each day than it got in the first month of operation.
All of the readers have different tastes and expectations. Some people love the really long, very detailed posts. Others prefer the short, sweet and glossy ones. Therefore, the topics and lengths of posts vary widely. What some readers find useful, others find elementary. What some find informative, others find useless. It all depends on your perspective, and everyone’s is different.
It’s tough to please everybody and that’s OK, the response has still been overwhelming. Up until now, I’ve written every post and delivered one every weekday for the past 9 months (166 posts). That makes for a long workday, every day.
Although the pay is negligible, the rewards are priceless.
Broken Secrets recently won a Webby Award for best personal blog/website. It has been featured by local and national media around the globe. It’s highly ranked in the Amazon Kindle store for blogs and between Facebook, Twitter, Kindle and email, there are thousands of people who subscribe and read daily. Frankly, it has exceeded all of my expectations and passed all of the milestones more quickly than I could have imagined.
The Webby Awards are by far the biggest compliment, they’re like the Oscars of the Internet. They’re the highest award a website can win; I’m honored to have won and had the support of so many of you. At the award ceremony, I got to meet Jimmy Fallon, Buzz Alrdin, Jason Bateman and many other great people.
All of this success means that it’s time to make the site bigger and better. The first step: more high quality content. As I concentrate on more quality content, the site will continue to get updated several times per week, but I may have some other contributors helping out. This will be great, we’ll have some fresh ideas.
I appreciate all your feedback, suggestions and support. You can always contact me by clicking here.
As always, thanks for reading.
Broken Secrets | Chad Upton
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Photo: zagatbuzz (cc)
One Side of Toilet Paper is Softer Than the Other
This is important, because most people are pretty adamant about the proper orientation of toilet paper. There are two ways you can put toilet paper on a roll. According to the following video, there is a right way and a wrong way.
They believe the over method is the right way, because it’s easier to find the end of the roll. I agree, it is easier to find the end of the roll using the over method.
Based on a poll at families.com, the over method is most popular. However, from reading the comments it looks fairly even, perhaps even more people are in favor of the under method.
For most of my life, I thought over was the correct method. But one day, someone on the under side revealed a secret: one side is softer than the other, and if you use the over method you’re probably not using the soft side.
I was in disbelief. There was no way I could be wrong on this issue. Why would anyone intentionally hang toilet paper in any way other than the way that is easiest to find the end of the roll?
I checked my toilet paper immediately. I rubbed each side on the back of my hand and it was clear, one side was much softer than the other. Then I roll played.
I acted out how I normally unroll toilet paper. It was true, I was not using the soft side!
I instantly changed my preference from over to under. It wasn’t until later that I started to think about how long I had been using the rough side.
The really cheap and thin commercial toilet paper is torture on both sides, but if you have anything but that stuff then it’s most likely softer on one side. Check it out for yourself.
People with cats often prefer the under method because it’s much more difficult for cats to get it off the roll. It’s a good thing we’re smarter and more dexterous than cats.
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Photos (creative commons): Aaron Landry | s e l v i n
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