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Find all videos under current directory
Uses mime-type of files rather than relying on file extensions to find files of a certain type. This can obviously be extended to finding files of any other type as well.. like plain text files, audio, etc.. In reference to displaying the total hours of video (which was earlier posted in command line fu, but relied on the user having to supply all possible video file formats) we can now do better: $ find ./ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file -iNf - | grep video | cut -d: -f1 | xargs -d'\n' /usr/share/doc/mplayer/examples/midentify | grep ID_LENGTH | awk -F "=" '{sum += $2} END {print sum/60/60; print "hours"}'

geoip lookup

Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password
4 random words are better than one obfuscated word http://xkcd.com/936/

yes > /dev/null
your laptop can be a good heater :)

Show numerical values for each of the 256 colors in ZSH
This will show a numerical value for each of the 256 colors in ZSH. Everything in the command is a ZSH builtin, so it should run on any platform where ZSH is installed. Prints one color per line. If someone is interested in formatting the output, paste the alternative.

Easy and fast access to often executed commands that are very long and complex.
When using reverse-i-search you have to type some part of the command that you want to retrieve. However, if the command is very complex it might be difficult to recall the parts that will uniquely identify this command. Using the above trick it's possible to label your commands and access them easily by pressing ^R and typing the label (should be short and descriptive). UPDATE: One might suggest using aliases. But in that case it would be difficult to change some parts of the command (such as options, file/directory names, etc).

Hex math with bc
To do hex to binary: echo 'ibase=16; obase=2; 16*16' | bc # prints: 111100100 To do 16*16 from decimal to hex: echo 'ibase=10; obase=16; 16*16' | bc # prints: 100 You get the idea... Alternatively, run bc in interactive mode (see man page)

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"

Find usb device in realtime
Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Simplified video file renaming
I used this when I had a directory of movies from a camera. I wanted to watch a little of each movie, then rename it depending on what was in the movie. This did the trick for me.


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