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use vim to get colorful diff output
:q to quit

Watch the progress of 'dd'
The previously-posted one-liner didn't work for me for whatever reason, so I ended up doing this instead.

mplayer -af scaletempo
Pitch-correct play speed with mplayer. You can also use [] and {} keys to change play speed on-the-fly.

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Quickly display a string as Qr Code
Takes the first argument (string) and display a Qr code version of that.

Define shell variable HISTIGNORE so that comments (lines starting with #) appear in shell history
I was surprised to find that with RedHat bash, I could not find any comment lines (begining with #) in my bash shell history. Surprised because in Mageia Linux this works. It turns out that RedHat's bash will keep comment lines if in my .bashrc, I define: export HISTIGNORE=' cd "`*: PROMPT_COMMAND=?*?' Why have comment lines in shell history? It's a handy and convenient way to make proto-commands (to be completed later) and for storing brief text data that is searchable in shell history.

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

Convert "man page" to text file
You can convert any UNIX man page to .txt

watch iptables counters
Watch the number of packets/bytes coming through the firewall. Useful in setting up new iptables rules or chains. Use this output to reorder rules for efficiency.

Spoof your wireless MAC address on OS X to 00:e2:e3:e4:e5:e6
If you want to check that the spoof worked, type the same command as earlier: $ifconfig en1 | grep ether Now you will see: $ether 00:e2:e3:e4:e5:e6 For the wired ethernet port: $sudo ifconfig en0 ether 00:e2:e3:e4:e5:e6


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