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Sort lines using the Xth characted as the start of the sort string
Tells sort to ignore all characters before the Xth position in the first field per line. If you have a list of items one per line and want to ignore the first two characters for sorting purposes, you would type "sort -k1.3". Change the "1" to change the field being sorted. The decimal value is the offset in the specified field to sort by.

Turns hidden applications transparent in the Mac OS X dock.
In Mac OS X, pressing Command+H will hide an application. While that application's windows vanish, there is no other visual feedback, meaning there is no immediate distinction between an application running with no windows open and a hidden application. This command turns hidden applications' icons transparent, providing a clear and obvious distinction. Change YES to NO to restore the previous functionality.

Encode png's into blu-ray format
This command takes a set of images (from a render, for example), and converts them into a format conforming to the Blu-ray spec, or at least the version on the Wikipedia page.

Convert JSON to YAML
Convert JSON to YAML. Note that you'll need to have PyYaml installed.

A child process which survives the parent's death (for sure)
Test scenario: * Open xterm (or konsole, ...) * Start xeyes with: ( xeyes & ) * Close the xterminal The xeyes process should be still running.

Rename files in batch

Easily decode unix-time (funtion)
More recent versions of the date command finally have the ability to decode the unix epoch time into a human readable date. This function makes it simple to utilize this feature quickly.

Watch the progress of 'dd'
This version was mentioned in the comments. Credits go to flatcap.

Fast command-line directory browsing
Not really alternative, just giving a different behavior listing current directory if no directory given.

List symbols from a dynamic library (.so file)
You can get what functions at which addresses are inside a dynamic link library by this tool.


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