Is it Monday already? I’m not ready for that. And I’m not ready for this cold spell that’s covered the entire East all the way down into Florida. January and February are when all the people from up north take their Florida vacations, and this year’s visit will be a memorable one, for sure. Where I am right now in Virginia, it is 9º. That’s called minus-12 in Canada. We do not embrace that kind of weather down here.
On another subject, I read something that I found interesting yesterday. YouTube is getting approximately 20 hours of new video uploaded every minute. That’s hard to comprehend. Of course, probably 98% of them are videos of nimrods taking pictures of themselves at arm’s length. But I would like to learn how and where YouTube has the storage space for all this digital accumulation. Three minutes of video compressed into YouTube’s .flv format takes up about 8 Mb of file space.
Not only do they need lots of digital file storage now, but their growth demand is constantly expanding. No doubt YouTube has several server facilities scattered around the country and in other parts of the world, but still….. And, is all this stuff backed up? Do they have two of everything stored somewhere? Inquiring minds want to know.
Speaking of puzzling thoughts, I have always wondered how crossword puzzle writers go about designing their creations. You know there has to be some sort of a trick to doing it, otherwise it would take way too long to hack one out in a reasonable amount of time.
Keep in mind that not only do they have to assemble an interwoven collection of valid words, but the finished product has to end up with a symmetrical layout of black squares. That drives me nuts….how do they do that?
There is undoubtedly a trade secret that they possess that allows them to whip one out every 5 hours, or so, and I am curious about how they do it. Maybe a benevolent crossword designer will make a home video of how it’s done and post it on YouTube.
Alright, put on your helmet cam and start recording this procedure to check out the equipment. This is Monday, so we’ve got some extra items to cover. I’ll make sure there’s plenty of coffee.
You’ve still got the rest of today and most of tomorrow to get your votes in for your favorite in the Fire/EMS Blog of the Year contest. The balloting stops at 6 pm eastern time tomorrow, so don’t put it off any longer. You can vote every six hours if you want to support two or more of your favorites. There aren’t any prizes being handed out, it’s just a winter pastime to have some fun while we’re waiting for the hydrants to thaw out. So CLICK HERE and cast your vote now.
See you back in the day room.
