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Use GNU info with a pager
This makes GNU info output menu items recursively and pipe its contents to less, allowing one to use GNU info in a manner similar to 'man'.

Kill a broken ssh connection
This is useful for example if you are on ssh in a server and the server goes down without letting you out. This is part of a larget sets of escape sequences provided by ssh. You can find them with ~? Here's the list: ~. - terminate connection (and any multiplexed sessions) ~B - send a BREAK to the remote system ~C - open a command line ~R - request rekey ~V/v - decrease/increase verbosity (LogLevel) ~^Z - suspend ssh ~# - list forwarded connections ~& - background ssh (when waiting for connections to terminate) ~? - this message ~~ - send the escape character by typing it twice (Note that escapes are only recognized immediately after newline.)

start a VNC server for another user

merge vob files to mpg

Grab mp3 files from your favorite netcasts, mp3blog, or sites that often have good mp3s
This was gotten from http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000573.html. The line will grab all the mp3 files on the urls listed in text file sourceurls.txt (one url per line) . A much more complete breakdown of the line can be found at the web site mentioned above.

View the newest xkcd comic.
This function displays the latest comic from xkcd.com. One of the best things about xkcd is the title text when you hover over the comic, so this function also displays that after you close the comic. To get a random xkcd comic, I also use the following: $xkcdrandom(){ wget -qO- dynamic.xkcd.com/comic/random|tee >(feh $(grep -Po '(?

Search commandlinefu.com from the command line using the API
for me the above command didn't work for more than one argument but this one does

Parse a quoted .csv file
The $2, $3, $4 fields are arbitrary but note that the first field starts from $2 and the last field is $NF-1. This is due to the fact that the leading and trailing quotes are treated as field delimiters.

command line Google I'm Feeling Lucky
opens the Google I'm Feeling Lucky result in lynx, the command line browser

Create a CD/DVD ISO image from disk.
Many like to use 'dd' for creating CD/DVD iso images. This is bad. Very bad. The reason this is, is 'dd' doesn't have any built-in error checking. So, you don't know if you got all the bits or not. As such, it is not the right tool for the job. Instead, 'reaom' (read optical media) from the wodim package is what you should be using. It has built-in error checking. Similarly, if you want to burn your newly creating ISO, stay away from 'dd', and use: $ wodim -v -eject /path/to/image.iso


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