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[re]verify a disc with very friendly output
[re]verify those burned CD's early and often - better safe than sorry - at a bare minimum you need the good old `dd` and `md5sum` commands, but why not throw in a super "user-friendly" progress gauge with the `pv` command - adjust the ``-s'' "size" argument to your needs - 700 MB in this case, and capture that checksum in a "test.md5" file with `tee` - just in-case for near-future reference. *uber-bonus* ability - positively identify those unlabeled mystery discs - for extra credit, what disc was used for this sample output?

find distro name / release version

Quick notepad
Quick write some notes to a file with cat. Ctrl+C when you have finish.

make, or run a script, everytime a file in a directory is modified

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Mirror the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive
Mirror the entire NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive, all the way from 1995. The archive is close to 2.5 GB, with lots of files, so give it some time. The logs can be redirected to a file using '-o somefile'. You might also want to try '-nH' and the '--cut-dirs' options

List of directories sorted by number of files they contain.

Fast command-line directory browsing
After typing cd directory [enter] ls [enter] so many times, I figured I'd try to make it into a function. I was surprised how smoothly I was able to integrate it into my work on the command line. Just use cdls as you would cd. It will automatically list the directory contents after you cd into the directory. To make the command always available, add it to your .bashrc file. Not quite monumental, but still pretty convenient.

display ip address
add this alias in .bashrc to fast check the ip address of your modem router alias myip="curl -s http://myip.dk | grep '' | sed -e 's/]*>//g'"

vim read stdin


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