I'm bored.

I like trivia.

Therefore I am starting a thread where we can post interesting bits of trivia. A bit like the Badgerfest version of QI if you like.

I actually haven't got anything to post right now, which is pretty lame, but I will do so as soon as I think of something.

Bo.

Always take the mic off?

I found out today that China now has a uniform writing system because 2000 years ago an Emperor decided that everyone will, henceforth, write so that he could understand them.

On pain of death.

I learnt that on *nix systems with BASH after running "history" (usually piped through grep) to find that command you ran earlier and it displays the results along with an index, you can then just use "!xxx" where xxx is the index. and BASH will substitute the command.

e.g.

<pre>
# history | grep httpd
102 /sbin/service httpd stop
210 /sbin/service httpd start
230 vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf
231 /sbin/service httpd restart
# !231
/sbin/service httpd restart
Stopping Apache... [ OK ]
Starting Apache... [ OK ]
</pre>

Sounds simple but I didn't know until yesterday and always had to copy/paste (which isn't always an option...)

I learnt that Belkin KVM cables smell like wet dog.

Chris - cheers for that - I never know that either.

Also CTRL+R gives you a prompt where you can start typing the command and it'll autofill in the rest.

eg:

root@mink:~# echo "Dan is bo"
Dan is bo
[CTRL+R, type 'ec']
(reverse-i-search)`ec': echo "Dan is bo"
[ENTER]
root@mink:~# echo "Dan is bo"
Dan is bo


However today I learned that KL has giant rats the size of Cats.
I wonder what eats what?

You can also do (for example) "!/sbin" to invoke the last command that started /sbin.

# history | grep httpd
102 /sbin/service httpd stop
210 /sbin/service httpd start
230 vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf
231 /sbin/service httpd restart
# # That was just to show what was in the history.
# !/sbin
/sbin/service httpd restart
Stopping Apache... [ OK ]
Starting Apache... [ OK ]

You need to be a bit careful with this, though, because you don't get any feedback before the command is executed - "!kill" is a bit like Russian roulette.

You can also do "!!" to just run the previous command again.

Another cool thing with bash is ` (backtick), which runs a command and then does text substitution of the result into your original command line, e.g. for FILE in `grep -l "Dan is bo"` ; do rm $FILE ; done, which deletes all files that contain "Dan is bo". (For this example, you could also do it via grep | xargs, which is more efficient and scalable but less flexible.)

Back to the original trail, yesterday I learnt that (according to a UN study) India has more mobile phones than toilets.

Matt

Thanks for bringing it back at the end there Williams, this thread had quickly become unreadable to me. (Some help from Sammyboy would be appreciated at this point too).

I have found out that Joss Whedon was involved in writing the following films:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (obviously, although the final film was a long way from his original script)

Toy Story (one of six writers co-nominated for an Oscar)

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (no, I don't have a clue either)

Alien Resurrection (Whedon claims he had a good script which was spoilt)

Titan A.E.

Speed (uncredited, but apparently most of the dialogue is his)

Waterworld (draft rejected)

Twister

X-Men (two lines of his remain in the film)

Yes Matt but can you 'do' the cha cha?!

William Hague invented the compact disc.

Mel Gibson and Val Kilmer were in the original line up for the A-team remake.

In a scene where Simba and his bird...um she-Lion in the Lion King frolic, a dust cloud spells 'sex'.

You can actually make it rain by shooting dry ice or some kind of silver compound into the sky with a biplane.

Also the first team to win the FA Cup in 1872 was the Wanderers. Who'd have thunk it?

Up until the 1960s pink was a boy's colour. Someone tell Watts.

Ween has the words WAR HAWK in his name. So cool.

That's all folks.