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generate random mac-address using md5sum + sed

useless load
check your load with top... Start more of these jobs to get an multi-core cpu busy...

recursive search and replace old with new string, inside files
If you can install rpl it's simpler to use and faster than combinations of find, grep and sed. See man rpl for various options. time on above operation: real 0m0.862s, user 0m0.548s, sys 0m0.180s using find + sed: real 0m3.546s, user 0m1.752s, sys 0m1.580s

Mirror a directory structure from websites with an Apache-generated file indexes
wget/curl/friends are not good with mirroring files off websites, especially those with Apache-generated directory listings. These tools endlessly waste time downloading useless index HTML pages. lftp's mirror command does a better job without the mess.

Generate Random Text based on Length
Random text of length "$1" without the useless cat command.

Stream audio over ssh
This one doesn't need to convert to wav.

Converts uppercase chars in a string to lowercase
Another alternative is to define a function: lower() { echo ${@,,} } lower StrinG

Awesomeness Confirmation Bias

force a rescan on a host of scsi devices (useful for adding partitions to vmware on the fly)

Git diff last two commits
How about this one ?


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