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pimp text output e.g. "Linux rocks!" to look nice

let a cow tell you your fortune

Mac OS X: Change Color of the ls Command
I use terminal with black background on the Mac. Unfortunately, the default ls color for the directory is blue, which is very hard to see. By including the line above in my ~/.bash_profile file, I changed the directory's color to cyan, which is easer to see. For more information on the syntax of the LSCOLORS shell variable: $ man ls I tested this command on Mac OS X Leopard

ping a host until it responds, then play a sound, then exit
This allows for sleeping in between pings. Also, espeak needs to be installed.

Find common lines between two files

shutdown pc in 4 hours without needing to keep terminal open / user logged in.
From the 'disown' man page: disown prevents the current shell from sending a HUP signal to each of the given jobs when the current shell terminates a login session.

Get the Volume labels all bitlocker volumes had before being encrypted
Get information of volume labels of bitlocker volumes, even if they are encrypted and locked (no access to filesystem, no password provided). Note that the volume labels can have spaces, but only if you name then before encryption. Renaming a bitlocker partition after being encrypted does not have the same effect as doing it before.

Check if it's OK to spawn tmux. Bool's Rools.
The command cechks if we are connected to a X11 console, if the $TERM var noct yet contains a "screen" derivat, and only then attachs to tmux. You could add a test for interactive shell [[ $- == *i* ]] but your .bashrc has that already, I bet.

urldecode with AWK
Fast and simple awk urldecoder! Note: Parameter -n is specific to GNU awk


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