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

Diff two directories by finding and comparing the md5 checksums of their contents.
Compute the md5 checksums for the contents of two mirrored directories, then sort and diff the results. If everything matches, nothing is returned. Otherwise, any checksums which do not match, or which exist in one tree but not the other, are returned. As you might imagine, the output is useful only if no errors are found, because only the checksums, not filenames, are returned. I hope to address this, or that someone else will!

show where symlinks are pointing
displays the output of ls -l without the rest of the crud. pretty simple but useful.

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

List top 10 files in filesystem or mount point bigger than 200MB
Specify the size in bytes using the 'c' option for the -size flag. The + sign reads as "bigger than". Then execute du on the list; sort in reverse mode and show the first 10 occurrences.

regex for turning a URL into a real hyperlink (i.e. for posting somewhere that accepts basic html)
This should work with anything://url.whatever etc etc ;)

vim easter egg
inside vim try: :help 42 to get the meaning of life, the universe and everything !

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"

Use top to monitor only all processes with the same name fragment 'foo'
top accecpts a comma separated list of PIDs.

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.


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