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Convert ascii string to hex
Converts the ascii text to hex from bash. Check the sample output.

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

system beep off

Use Perl like grep
If you've ever tried "grep -P" you know how terrible it is. Even the man page describes it as "highly experimental". This function will let you 'grep' pipes and files using Perl syntax for regular expressions. The first argument is the pattern, e.g. '/foo/'. The second argument is a filename (optional).

disk space email alert
put it in crontab to get an alert when / is over 89% utilization.

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.

Edit a PDF's metadata using exiftool
Edit the pdf file foo.pdf's metadata. -overwrite_original overwrites the original file (w/o it exiftool creates a new file)

Run a bash script in debug mode, show output and save it on a file

Using PIPEs, Execute a command, convert output to .png file, upload file to imgur.com, then returning the address of the .png.
imgur < /etc/issue % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 2360 0 635 100 1725 1027 2792 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 4058 http://i.imgur.com/bvbUD.png

Use tcpdump to monitor all DNS queries and responses


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