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paste one file at a time instead of in parallel
paste one file at a time instead of in parallel

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.

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

Backup with versioning
Apart from an exact copy of your recent contents, also keep all earlier versions of files and folders that were modified or deleted. Inspired by EVACopy http://evacopy.sourceforge.net

Do one ping to a URL, I use this in a MRTG gauge graph to monitor connectivity

Write a bootable Linux .iso file directly to a USB-stick
Writes hybrid ISO directly to USB stick; replace /dev/sdb with USB device in question and the ISO image link with the link of your choice

Updating the status on identi.ca using curl.
identica is an open source social networking and micro-blogging service. Based on Laconica, a micro-blogging software package built on the OpenMicroBlogging specification. http://identi.ca/

Print info about your real user.
To get your effective user: whoami

create a .avi with many .jpg

Match a URL
For the record: I didn't build this. Just shared what I found that worked. Apologies to the original author! I decided I should fix the case where http://example.com is not matched for the next time I need this. So I read rfc1035 and formalized the host name regex. If anyone finds any more holes, please comment.


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