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Customize time format of 'ls -l'
the --time-style argument to 'ls' takes several possible modifiers: full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, +FORMAT. The +FORMAT modifier uses the same syntax as date +FORMAT. --time-style=+"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" strikes a happy medium between accuracy and verbosity: $ ls -lart --time-style=long-iso doesn't show time down to the nearest second, $ ls -lart --time-style=full-iso displays time to 10E-9 second resolution, but with no significant digits past the full seconds, also showing the timezone: $ -rw-r--r-- 1 bchittenden bchittenden 0 2011-02-10 12:07:55.000000000 -0500 bar

Reload all sysctl variables without reboot
Use `sysctl -p` without argument will only load /etc/sysctl.conf, but user configs always put in /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf, `sysctl --system` will load all the config files

Check your unread Gmail from the command line
Checks the Gmail ATOM feed for your account, parses it and outputs a list of unread messages. For some reason sed gets stuck on OS X, so here's a Perl version for the Mac: $ curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '' '{for (i=2; i

Backup with versioning
Apart from an exact copy of your recent contents, also keep all earlier versions of files and folders that were modified or deleted. Inspired by EVACopy http://evacopy.sourceforge.net

Google text-to-speech in mp3 format
Usage: t2s 'How are you?' Nice because it automatically names the mp3 file up to 15 characters Modified (uses bash manip instead of tr) t2s() { wget -q -U Mozilla -O $(cut -b 1-15

Cut/Copy brackets or parentheses on vim (in normal mode)
We have for example : func () { echo FOO echo BAR } Place the cursor under a bracket and press d + %. It will cut everything inside and the brackets. It let : func () You can copy text with y + %

Open a Remote Desktop (RDP) session with a custom resolution.
Using a widescreen monitor, I often get annoyed that the RDP window is too high, or too narrow for what I want to display. In this example, I'm on a 1680 x 1050 display.

Who invoked me? / Get parent command
Get the name of the parent command. This might be helpful, if you need to react on that information. E. g. a script called directly via ssh has got sshd as parent, manually invoked the parent process will probably be bash

List all files opened by a particular command
List all file opened by a particular command based on it's command name.

Bash autocomplete case insensitive search
Change bash autocomplete case search to insensitive when pressing tab for completion.


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