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convert vdi to vmdk (virtualbox hard disk conversion to vmware hard disk format)
Converts a .vdi file to a .vmdk file for use in a vmware virtual machine. The benefit: using this method actually works. There are others out there that claim to give you a working .vmdk by simply using the qemu-img command alone. Doing that only results in pain for you because the .vmdk file will be created with no errors, but it won't boot either. Be advised that these conversions are very disk-intensive by nature; you are probably dealing with disk images several gigabytes in size. Once finished, the process of using the new .vmdk file is left as an exercise to the reader.

fdiff is a 'filtered diff'. Given a text filter and two inputs, will run the filter across the input files and diff the output.
Fdiff will run the command given by the first argument against the input files given as the second and third arguments, and diff the results. It will use 'diff' as the default diff program, but this can be changed by setting $DIFFCMD, e.g. $ export DIFFCMD=vimdiff; $ fdiff zcat 0716_0020005.raw.gz 0716_0030005.raw.gz ... This function will work under bash, but requires the use of command substitution, which is not available under a strict ANSI shell.

Get the full path of a bash script's Git repository head.
Rather than complicated and fragile paths relative to a script like "../../other", this command will retrieve the full path of the file's repository head. Safe with spaces in directory names. Works within a symlinked directory. Broken down: $cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" temporarily changes directories within this expansion. Double quoted "$(dirname" and ")" with unquoted ${BASH_SOURCE[0]} allows spaces in the path. $git rev-parse --show-toplevel gets the full path of the repository head of the current working directory, which was temporarily changed by the "cd".

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 not clear the screen after viewing a file with less
From the manpage: $ man less -X or --no-init Disables sending the termcap initialization and deinitialization strings to the terminal. This is sometimes desirable if the deinitialization string does something unnecessary, like clearing the screen. Bonus: If you want to clear the screen after viewing a file this way that had sensitive information, hit or just type clear. Since is readily available, I don't know why less bothers to automatically clear. If you're viewing the file at all, chances are you want to see the output from it after you quit.

Play random music from blip.fm

Search trought pidgin's conversation logs for "searchterm", and output the result.
will search trought pidgin conversation logs for "searchterm", and output them stripping the html tags. The "sed" command is optionnal if your logs are stored in plain text format.

ffmpeg command that transcodes a MythTV recording for Google Nexus One mobile phone
This command will transcode a MythTV recording. The target device is a Google Nexus One mobile phone. My recordings are from a HDHomerun with Over The Air content. Plays back nicely on the N1.

Quick plotting of a function
The arguments of "seq" indicate the starting value, step size, and the end value of the x-range. "awk" outputs (x, f(x)) pairs and pipes them to "graph", which is part of the "plotutils" package.

Replace php short open tags
Tired of front end developers using short open tags in your views? This will replace all instances of


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