All commands

Many sites with Flash video players will download video files to /tmp on Linux, with temporary filenames like "FlashbGTHm4". These will often play in mplayer, totem, or other movie playing software. You must first navigate to a video page, let it start loading, and then pause playback.

While they are few config options and even fewer useful details regarding what actually is being sent by the time machine 'backupd' process, this can at least tell you its doing something, how much it's doing, and exactly how often. Via macosxhints, http://xrl.us/begrwa, which in turn was via comments

If your CVS server has moved, here's a way to update your CVS Root files throughout your code tree without checking out a new copy of your files.

An apt-get wrapper function which will run the command via sudo, but will run it normally if you're only downloading source files.

This was a bit of an excuse to show off the framework of

...but as you can see, you must be careful about what is in the "true" block to make sure it executes without error, otherwise the "false" block will be executed.

To allow the apt-get return code to pass through, you need to use a more normal if/else block:

This was gotten from http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000573.html. The line will grab all the mp3 files on the urls listed in text file sourceurls.txt (one url per line) . A much more complete breakdown of the line can be found at the web site mentioned above.

Found here: http://xentek.net/xentek/315/recursively-delete-svn-folders/

This is fast and efficient because rm is only run once.

These days, most software distributed in tar files will just contain a directory at the top level, but some tar files don't have this and can leave you with a mess of files in the current folder if you blindly execute

This command can help you clean up after such a mistake. However, note that this has the potential to do bad things if someone has been *really* nasty with filenames.

The "vorbiscomment" utility lets you update information such as artist names and song and album tags in an Ogg Vorbis file. You can use this command to fix any mistakes that were made when ripping an album.

Yet another ps grep function, but this one includes the column headings.

The $[...] block in bash and zsh will let you do math.

This is the same as using $((...)), which also works in ksh. Of course, this is a simple, dumb wrapper and doesn't allow floating-point.

MIME::Base64 is a part of Perl5 distribution. You can also use decode_base64 for oposite result.

Upgraded Debian/Ubuntu/etc. systems may have a number of "orphaned" packages which are just taking up space, which can be found with the "deborphan" command. While you could just do "dpkg --purge $(deborphan)", the act of purging orphans will often create more orphans. This command will get them all in one shot.

Use gstreamer to capture v4l2:///dev/video0 and show ascii art video in display.

Enter your ssh public key in the remote end for future key-based authentication. Just type your password one last time. The next time you should be able to login with the public key. If you don't have a key, generate one with ssh-keygen.

Requires Bourne-compatible shell in the remote end.

Loads your CPU, run a instance for each CPU/CORE.

self explanatory see sample output

This command will generate white noise through your speakers (assuming you have sound enabled). It's good for staying focused, privacy, coping with tinnitus, etc. I use it to test that the sound works.