“If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.”
– Socrates
Random Atlanta\Georgia Trivia
So the other day I was looking for some info about a Braves game, so I went to my former hometown newspaper’s site: ajc.com. While there I discovered that my favorite section of the paper – “Q&A on the News”, where people can write in any marginally newsworthy question in hopes of getting an answer – not only still exists… but that there’s an extensive archive of old topics, too!
Here’s some of the fun stuff I found:
Georgia is the only state to be admitted to the Union three times. (link)
Of course, Georgia was the fourth state, ratifying the U.S. Constitution on January 2, 1788. And, like most Confederate states, Georgia was readmitted after the Civil War on June 26, 1868. However, widespread violence led Congress to re-impose Reconstruction on the state (another dubious honor, this being the only state to have this happen). Georgia was readmitted for the third and final time in July 1870.
Atlanta’s Northside Hospital delivers more babies than any other hospital in the United States. (link)
Over 18,000 babies are born there every year… including me (although that was a looooonng time ago!).
St. Mary’s, Georgia is the second oldest continually-inhabited city in the United States (link)
The city was founded “sometime in the mid 1500s” by the Spanish. It became an incorporated city in 1792. Only St. Augustine, Florida is older.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-09-04
- Sweet! The BBC has commissioned a third series of #luther #
- Yes, iTunes, this is the PERFECT time for a digital music emergency! THANKS, APPLE! #
- WHERE can I try a croque auvergnat? #
- @1outside Saw this video and thought of you:: http://t.co/Cxnt2qU #
- @1outside Your blood didn't boil at the typo in Marshall Lancaster's name? 😉 #
- Coming soon to TLC: "I Didn't Know I Was Addicted to Hoarding My Twenty Tiara'd Toddlers!" #
- I know it's only WCU, but GT has 625 YARDS of offense in this game? Woo-hoo! #
- @TechWhistle TO HELL WITH GEORGIA! #
- Happy birthday, Terry Bradshaw! 🙂 #steelers #
- I have just created a new list titled 'Steelers' using TweetDeck #
- I have just created a new list titled 'GT' using TweetDeck, follow it here: @jimcofer/gt #
- How 'bout them dawgs! hehehe! #
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Heads up, Flannery O’Connor fans!
Fans of Georgia author Flannery O’Connor probably know that she had a lifelong love of birds, especially peacocks. What you might not know is that her love of birds might have started with a chicken her family owned when she was very young. She loved the bird so much that she even taught it to walk backwards!
There have long been stories that Flannery and her famous “backwards chicken” once appeared in a newsreel. However, despite several exhaustive Internet searches, I was never able to find it… until now. Here is the clip, called “Do You Reverse?”, which shows a young “Mary O’Connor” for about two seconds. Note that the other animals walking backwards in the clip are simply shown in reverse.
Look at how cute she was! 🙂
Jill Wagner Mega-Post!
OK, guys. Looking at the server stats, you’ve made it clear that most of you come here for the Jill Wagner pics. And I’m happy to oblige. Here’s a massive post of Jill pics, mostly from her Twitter feed:
Many, many more after the jump!
Robocopy: Now Multi-Threaded!
OK, so I’m about two years too late with this, but yesterday I wanted to copy all 100+ GB of my music from my desktop computer to my netbook, and this came in really handy!
Robocopy is a command-line file copying tool from Microsoft that has been included with Windows since Windows Vista. Its name comes from “Robust File Copy”, and Robocopy offers a lot of features that are unavailable with most command-line file copy apps. For instance, you can have Robobopy include NTFS permissions on copied files, so if you need to move a file share from one server to another, you can use the /SEC switch to include all the appropriate permissions. And my favorite switch – /MIR – can create a mirror of a folder at another location, which is excellent for backups.
One of the longtime complaints about Robocopy was that it was single-threaded, meaning it would only copy one file at a time. However, the version of Robocopy shipped with Windows 7 is able to copy up to 128 files at a time using the /MT switch!
By default /MT generates 8 threads, but you can change this by adding the number of threads you want, such as /MT:6 for six threads or /MT:24 for 24 threads. As mentioned, the maximum you can do at one time is 128, so /MT:128 is the most you can do.
You might need to play with this to how many threads works best in your situation. I started copying my music with twenty threads, and my poor netbook just couldn’t keep up. In fact, file copying seemed slower with twenty threads than it did with one! So I reduced the threads to six, and it copied all my music in record time!
Sadly, unlike previous versions of Robocopy, the Windows 7 version doesn’t work on earlier versions of Windows, like Windows XP. So if you STILL haven’t upgraded, here’s one more reason to do so.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-08-28
- "Good morning!" i said to the blue and black lizard that lives on my deck. #
- "Scrobbling" is the worst word ever invented. #
- @MorganFogarty Did you feel the ground shake just now? Earthquake felt in Belmont, NC! #
- RT @Andy_Richter: Got a massage with a "happy ending", which means they gave me a pizza and some car magazines and left me alone. #
- If you have to ask, the answer's no: http://t.co/vJ0U67S #
- Apple says Steve Jobs resigning as CEO – http://t.co/nEYI9qF #
- I read the words "World Mode Code Division Multiple Access (Evolution-Data Optimized Revision A)" and my eyes glazed over. #
- Thanks for getting "Rock You Like a Hurricane" stuck in my head, hunny! #
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TicketBastard WTF
I don’t know who the hell “Ludo” are, but at almost $17m per concert ticket, they’d better be the best damn band ever:
Quote of the Day
“It sort of came at a bad time in my life, when I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to think about working. It’s hard to explain why you end up in Eragon and not GoodFellas.”
– John Malkovich,
on turning down the
role of Jimmy Conway
Starting Apps via Outlook
So my new Motorola Triumph phone has a nice big screen and rich sound via headphones. I used to use an Archos AV-420 to watch downloaded video, but when its AC adapter died, I switched over to using my iPod Nano to watch TV shows and movies. But while the Nano has a vibrant screen, it’s awfully small. And the iPod requires most videos to be converted to mp4 – a simple process using VidCoder, but an annoyance all the same. With the free MoboPlayer app for Android, I can watch those same video files on my phone – with its relatively giant screen – without conversion!
Here’s the thing, though: as of now I only have an 8GB memory card in my phone. With storing camera pictures and videos, apps, data and music for Spotify I only have around 4GB of free space on the card. This is plenty for the moment, as TV is mostly airing re-runs until after Labor Day.
One day soon I’ll upgrade the card to a 16GB model. But in the meantime I use HFS (a simple HTML-based file sharing app) to share my video folder on my local network. I watch a video on my phone, delete it, and then fire up the phone’s web browser to download a new TV show or movie to watch.
But the thing is, I’m lazy. I don’t want HFS running all the time on my computer, but I don’t want to go “all the way” upstairs or get out of bed to start it up as needed, either. And that’s where Outlook comes in.
There’s a little known feature in the rules section that allows you to start a program when an email arrives that meets certain criteria:
In my case, I set up a rule for Outlook to start HFS when it receives an email with the subject line “WH47H*QA-HFS” (not the actual text I use, but something similar). I then created this simple batch file which forces HFS to exit:
taskkill /f /im hfs.exe
exit
I then set up another rule, which runs the batch file any time an email is received with the subject line “WH47H*QA-KILLHFS” (again, this is not the actual text I use, but it’s similar).
So now when I need to download a new video to my phone, I just use the Gmail client on my phone to send an email with the appropriate subject line to my POP account. True, I have to wait 4 minutes for Outlook to do a send\receive before starting HFS, but it’s a small price to pay for laziness. And you could use this method to start (or end) any number of tasks remotely.
Try it out for yourself and let me know what you use it for!