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iso-8859-1 to utf-8 safe recursive rename
This command is a powerful "detoxifier" that eliminates special chars, spaces and all those little chars we don't like. It support several "sequences" so be sure to check your /usr/local/etc/detoxrc while at it... and maybe define your own

Create a new file

Combine all .mpeg files in current directory into one big one.
Good old cat & output redirection. Using this method you can combine all kinds of things - even mpeg files. My video camera makes a series of .mpeg files that are broken into 4gb chunks. Using this command I can easily join them together. Even better, combined with the cp command the files can be copied and joined in one step.

Rename files in batch

How to backup hard disk timely?
Creates files in $DATE and hardlinks existing files to $PREVDATE. Thus full backup in each directory. Only drawback is changed modification time. Recommend a wrapper script to determine $DATE and $PREVDATE. Works like a charm. (Dirvish handrolled)

Isolate file name from full path/find output
Quick method of isolating filenames from a full path using expansion. Much quicker than using "basename"

create an screenshot, upload it to your server via scp and then open that screenshot in firefox
I often need to send screenshots to other people to explain settings and whatever. So I created this oneline which I use to create the screenshot with imagemagik, upload it via scp to my server and then the command opens an firefox tab with the screenshot. The screenshot can be a region or a window. You just have to replace the parts beginning with YOUR.

Job Control
background and disown, but with a proper one-line syntax

get all bookmarks from all profiles from firefox
for i in $(ls /home/marco/.mozilla/firefox/*\.*/places.sqlite); do sqlite3 $i "SELECT strftime('%d.%m.%Y %H:%M:%S', dateAdded/1000000, 'unixepoch', 'localtime'),url FROM moz_places, moz_bookmarks WHERE moz_places.id = moz_bookmarks.fk ORDER BY dateAdded;"; done

Unlock more space form your hard drive
This command changes the reserved space for privileged process on '/dev/sda' to 1 per cent.


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