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backup all your commandlinefu.com favourites to a plaintext file
Usage: clfavs username password num_favourite_commands file_in_which_to_backup

Remove all zero size files from current directory (not recursive)
works only in zsh

Ping Twitter to check if you can connect
Returns a JSON object, by connecting to the 'test' endpoint of the Twitter API. Simplest way to check if you can connect to Twitter. Output also available in XML, use '/help/test.xml' for that

Remove everything except that file
Remove everything except that file with shell tricks inside a subshell to avoid changes in the environment. $ help shopt

Google Translate
$translate works from command line

Create A Continuous Yahoo! News Ticker For The Terminal
This creates a permanent stock ticker in the terminal. it has scrolling action and refreshes when each cycle is done to get the latest news.

ruby one-liner to get the current week number

Random numbers with Ruby
There's been a few times I've needed to create random numbers. Although I've done so in PERL, I've found Ruby is actually faster. This script generates 20 random "10" digit number NOT A RANDOM NUMBER. Replace 20 (1..20) with the amount of random numbers you need generated

Mount/unmount your truecrypted file containers
This should automatically mount it to /media/truecrypt1. Further mounts will go to /media/truecrypt2, and so on. You shouldn't need sudo/su if your permissions are right. I alias tru='truecrypt' since tr and true are commands. To explicitly create a mount point do: tru volume.tc /media/foo To make sure an GUI explorer window (nautilus, et al) opens on the mounted volume, add: --explorer To see what you currently have mounted do: tru -l To dismount a volume do: tru -d volume.tc. To dismount all mounted volumes at once do: tru -d Tested with Truecrypt v6.3a / Ubuntu 9.10

Google verbatim search on your terminal
Put it in your ~/.bashrc usage: google word1 word2 word3... google '"this search gets quoted"'


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