Cakes: no lie

Previously I blogged about a Rickroll cake that was hidden beneath a 'cake that was a lie'...


Well, here’s yet another Rickroll cake.



It’s not too surprising though. It seems that the Internet memes and in-jokes have long been the inspiration for some fantastic cake ideas. It all goes to show, if it exists, there is cake of it.

Check out some of these geeky masterpieces:

The perfect Portal cake, baked using the recipe found hidden in the Portal game. (Instructions via instructables)


The AYBABTU cake from Flickr


The Mudkip cake made by Clever Cake Studio. Here's another.


The Domo cake found on Deviant Art and instructions on how to make your own.

 The Dramatic Hamster/Prairie Dog cake (via Flickr)

 The Lolrus cake... made of fish!

Two 1337 cakes

Pirates vs Ninja cake from Scienceblogs

The Chuck Norris cake

The Hypnotoad inspired Hypnocake.




And here's a bonus: a FAIL cake - they asked for it to read "Best Wishes Suzanne" and underneath that, "We will miss you".

For more Internet-inspired cakes, see Gizmodo’s cake gallery and this geekcake blog.

And while we’re on the subject of baked goods, here’s a Pi Pie.

I'm in ur base...

Loosely defined, “In your base, killing your d00ds” is a catchphrase that basically means “right now, I’m pwning you, and you don’t even know it."

The phrase originally came about when a ‘N00b’ player, playing multiplayer Starcraft online typed in a message asking his opponent “dude, where are you?” At the time, the more experienced player had managed to rush into the N00b’s base and had started destroying everything in sight. His response is now famous: “I’m in you’re your base, killing your d00dz.”

Screenshots of this famous exchange were posted on imageboards, and the meme spread from there.


Initially, people took the phrase and placed it on a number of different pictures. But as the meme grew, the phrase took on a life of it’s own.




The formula: take a picture and add any variation of "Im in ur (noun), (verb-ing) ur (noun)".









During the height of the LOLcat meme, it became very popular to put an “im in ur” phrase together with a cat picture.




















Political images were also very popular at one point. The meme is quite old now, but you still do see references to it popping up from time to time.

A little language called leet

I’m going to digress from talking about memes and take some time to explore the Internet ‘language’ known as Leet.

The Leet ‘language’ is actually an alternative alphabet system with uses a combination of numbers and other keyboard characters to replace normal letters. So for example, Leet is spelled 1337 (1=L, 3=E and 7=T).

It was originally developed on bulletin board systems way back in the 1980s. One theory is that Leet actually came about so that people chatting on the boards could get around the text filters which picked up ‘forbidden’ topics like hacking and cracking.

It developed from there and then became a way to show off your knowledge of the in-joke. Lately though, Leet has become a part of ‘mainstream’ Internet culture and slang, and is even considered cheesy by ‘those in the know’. It is now also used to mock newbies (N00BZ), or newcomers, on web sites, or in gaming communities.


Why did they call it ‘Leet’?

Leet comes from ‘Eleet’ – which originated from ‘Elite status’ on Bulletin Board systems. Initially, the word leet was used as an adjective, to primarily describe ‘elite’ accomplishments.


Hax0rs Pwn

Besides simply replacing letters with numbers, Leet also has it’s own vocabulary.

Haxors or Haxorz is a common term meaning ‘hacker’ (and often it’s actually used in a self deprecating way or to insult someone).

Pwn is derived from ‘own’ and means the domination or humiliation of a rival (in an argument or video game, for example), or the successful hacking of a website or computer.

A lot of Leet words contain deliberate misspellings – and pwn is a prime example. The letter P is right next to the letter O on the keyboard, and so it might have originally been a common misspelling, which became an in-joke, and then eventually a standard word that everyone used.

LOL teh N00b Suxorz!!!!111one11!

If you don’t know that LOL stands for ‘Laugh Out Loud’, you should really get out more. LOL is considered to be part of Leet, but really this term has become so mainstream its practically a part of the English language by now.

Again, teh is deliberate misspelling which originated from people typing ‘the’ fast and making the error. It has been adopted as a part of Leet speak, and people deliberately type it incorrectly.

Noob or N00b is derived from, newbie (as in new and inexperienced or uninformed). Apparently, there is a widely accepted separation of the definitions of newb and n00b: a newb is merely new to something (usually the person also wants to learn more), which is forgivable, while a n00b continues to engage in "newb" behaviours long after they should know better (and usually refuses to learn). Generally the term N00b is insulting!

Suxxors or suxorz means to suck. The opposite of Suxxor is roxxor (to rock, basically) and both can be used as a verb or a noun.

Over exclamation is another common feature of Leet. When chatting in chat rooms or playing games online, people would often overemphasise, ending their sentences with many exclamation marks (so for example “Pwnage!!!!!”). Of course, people would end typing ‘1’ instead of ‘!’ (because they haven’t pressed the shift key down). As this was such a common mistake, people started making it on purpose, as a joke. The joke has evolved, and now people actually type out the number (for example: “I pwn!!11one!1!” or in the case of extreme sarcasm: “OMG!!!!111!11shiftone1!11shift1!!1111capslock1!one12131”)