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Execute a command at a given time
This is an alternative to cron which allows a one-off task to be scheduled for a certain time.

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.

Binary clock
Fun idea! This one adds seconds and keeps running on the same line. Perl's probably cheating though. :)

Colorized grep in less
Get your colorized grep output in less(1). This involves two things: forcing grep to output colors even though it's not going to a terminal and telling less to handle those properly.

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

Search for files older than 30 days in a directory and list only their names not the full path

network usage per process
Nethogs groups bandwidth by process.

open two files side by side in vim (one window, two panes)

Show word-by-word differences between two latex files, in color

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