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Embed next line on the end of current line using sed
N: On the current line, sed will display it on pattern space, plus a \n (new line); but s/\n//: Will get rid of new line displayed on pattern space, joining the current line's end with the start of the next line Useful in scripts.

Google dictionary of word definitions
$ wget -qO - "http://www.google.com/dictionary/json?callback=dict_api.callbacks.id100&q=steering+wheel&sl=en&tl=en&restrict=pr,de&client=te" this does the actual google dictionary query, returns a JSON string encapsulated in some fancy tag $ sed 's/dict_api\.callbacks.id100.//' here we remove the tag beginning $ sed 's/,200,null)//' and here the tag end There are also some special characters which could cause problems with some JSON parsers, so if you get some errors, this is probably the case (sed is your friend). I laso like to trim the "webDefinitions" part, because it (sometimes) contains misleading information. $ sed 's/\,\"webDefinitions.*//' (but remember to append a "}" at the end, because the JSON string will be invalid) The output also contains links to mp3 files with pronounciation. As of now, this is only usable in the English language. If you choose other than English, you will only get webDefinitions (which are crap).

Open a manpage in the default (graphical) web browser
An easy alias for opening a manpage, nicely HTML formatted, in your set internet browser. If you get a "command exited with status 3" error you need to install groff.

Currency Conversion
eg: currency_convert 1 usd inr

Create QR codes from a URL.
QR codes are those funny square 2d bar codes that everyone seems to be pointing their smart phones at. Try the following... $ qrurl http://xkcd.com Then open qr.*.png in your favorite image viewer. Point your the bar code reader on your smart phone at the code, and you'll shortly be reading xkcd on your phone. URLs are not the only thing that can be encoded by QR codes... short texts (to around 2K) can be encoded this way, although this function doesn't do any URL encoding, so unless you want to do that by hand it won't be useful for that.

set your ssd disk as a non-rotating medium
if you still get a permissions error using sudo, then nano the file: sudo nano -w /sys/block/sdb/queue/rotational and change 1 to 0 this thread: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=369836&postcount=15 says that this will "help the block layer to optimize a few decisions"

Remove the first character of each line in a file

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Spawn a retro style terminal emulator.
Just note that ctrl+shift+t to make new tabs will not work with . Pair it with a terminal multiplexer like for the best experience.

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


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