Shortly after taking a new job, Graham noticed that his new colleagues had a rather peculiar metric for determining software quality: cleverness. The standard measurements of cost, performance, maintainability, and so on, were afterthoughts -- nay, hindrances -- to their vision. Oh no, they were special, and so would be the software that they developed.
One of Graham's first tasks was an apparently common one for the developers there: add an image to the site so that the graphic designer may use it. It seemed a bit odd of a task; after all, the designers had full access to the site, why could they drop their .gif image into an /images folder? No less, Graham complied and sought out the /images folder to place the image in.
Unable to locate this common folder, Graham checked with a coworker. We keep all of our images in images.php, his coworker explained, so just put it in there. Thinking that "images.php" would contain a hint to where this directory is, Graham quickly opened up the code file. To this day, he is still awed by its 600KB-worth of cleverness ...
/********************** __images.php__ Displays an embedded image file (C) Initech Solutions, 2001 **********************/ $images = array(); $images["doc_filetype.gif"] = "R0lGODlhDg7nZm11aG52aG94aHB3aXB4IfkE/ywODghYAwQQIIDAgIIEEioEIFAgQQIEByxsOLBg" . "xIkNCh9eTMiwIQgVDQpgSDDAR4IoCZIsmTHlx44DHbp8uRJlwgE0ZW4kkFOnS5MdQaZUCZRhTZRG" . "P5psSTAgOw=="; $images["pdf_filetype.gif"] = "R0lGODlhDg7nP0FJQkRNREZQRUhRSEtUS05YTlFaUVRdUlZgVFpjVl5oWF1mWF5oWmBqIfkE/ywO" . "DgiHAQgMIICAAQQECChw4ICBAQYREihgICECBAkQFBhwcEKKBy5iPJDw4EGQIhkkOMBRoYCJFUMy" . "WJBgo8uPFREsmKnRo0KcBxIomEmSQEucCRIwaFDT6M2JSRc0UFnA6UGoSRU0aHAg6k+ESYUuXcCS" . "o0cCYRcsGJrAQEmFYcMymGlAocGAOw=="; /* Snipped a lot of images */ $images["open_logo.gif"] = "R0lGODlhEwFP50JFTkVIT0RGUEZIUUlMVUtOWE5SW1BUXVJWYFRbY1ZdaFhdZlheaFpgaSH5BP8s" . "EwFPCP4TLFiggEGDBggIIEDAAgQNChg4gKBixQQYM2rcaLFjR4weQ4ocWfGASQQmU55UyVKlxZYq" . "J6Y0QLNmzZMoZ9KMabOnz50HeuqU+RMoSptDhZr0GRToT5hIlwKVytJoSZgmNS44mMDAgIYOH0ac" . "6HEjRgUNCjiSRHKt25A4c6b0uBKr3aVU8968KlVp05t9p/6dDQr4KU/AgSc67ZnT8ODFOwXnbXoX" . "ZgK2Ag8uQFDga8MBYiWKvJwRrVqLbd+qfovT5dWOlasqlkmZqtzEhaM+9hu0L+6iiB/X9tmY6e/f" . "tP9Ojp2V7YKMDDYXCLAwQGiyZTEnMH0a8+rva1v+z339knlinehv74ZMGHhM30mBR346X2nR+PIF" . "517+PmXG5xht1cABBAjAkHURSRQXameZdRmD4EUIF1a3qXdXcYjdRNtR6OHXUn7FVYUcffKtN2J+" . "7B32YXL9ZeXgVgsQuBDX7RSSg6RlJ6FbFInE0msiMidXcBrO1dtyxh1WVIj9oZjbfbw56d5gsq14" . "4UUvNsBAVw0KWReaRAaMhuODYpK5I0oTUjRej3WZV6WHLbIYn5KGaUjUefgRJWWeJc7mmJswMfgi" . "A1sa4CVoDxWgIEk4lilhj+FBOh5f4g0K9aaSeKlJZ6Z4rmennScid2JUf5I4pV2S3TXmAgbFSMD+" . /* Snipped 100 lines */ "nJeDOVUWixxJZzoZQToZdcqHfHyJbSI5VdoYlqNWnYSpUd2YnWhpfw5WjpGmHkVnUjh5XQl3Q5sG" . "gjKnmQ0KiBsOiZKfCTm2I5r0aU2R1I+MWUkCp5oNCkQe/WdQyXOLidSVP4YcJXmGkScVBnEQofh+" . "jzSYhtagJJRPBQJ0YjEWZmdUdMmBMhM6s1ZX0GaE6JmZuSiiJOp+JZZ3OkeYEzmRIQNJhjWHiDWE" . "rGFyLyGL+gks7QFKlkl1P8lM6ll1O5of7umZn4VPRiSR6HWYpZFxl+FGngdpgOGYBVdn5yJOUbWD" . "nNYnzwmi0elwRTGdXTqYlyempyhcRzpc1ulG/vfpihr5pFA6l+F5esqzfAh4gCoyH2y3lyX4l3qK" . "ZILVdfPJZBv3kiCRGUnDiqqFPX/zpidVle1Wi+b5qKsaiLXJTo9hqdOJqREYmEjJZKBVlmWqb4vW" . "d0r6eSpVqlZzqs7oUjTVGPF4kE3xoa9qnrKqp1sSgYV5lthHphK4JR8XcpCmOid3acVZrPODIVPK" . "oQNqjc2qWzYBltp2qRF5j8DojSoNCkmdASs0+SXcOkWvKEpTtqXpiY2Lw6x8tn4GDQqk60qURnZz" . "dveG8bpmckMdNAkR+HmoVTmL+hptFOSqPLqemJWS78mEa8iCpfZ+8bqiCRAwPkVW6qKF/veMUxou" . "oFh2rkMjaDJ1oLdJaqJoZjg7st84EAnxdxD7lqm5bOrYk1VKVRorcT+oi7ETEDs="; if(isset($_GET["image"])) { header("content-type: image/gif"); print base64_decode($images[$_GET["image"]]); exit; }