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Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

Displays the version of the Adobe Flash plugin installed
This is for Debian, simply change the path if your Flash plugin is installed elsewhere.

Are there any words in the English language that use at least half of the alphabet without repeating any letters?
This is the most straightforward approach: first regexp limits dictionary file to words with thirteen or more characters, second regexp discards any words that have a letter repeated. (Bonus challenge: Try doing it in a single regexp!)

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

repeat any string or char n times without spaces between
(here is character '+' repeated 80 times) Sometimes needed to enhance the title of the script.

Swap a file or dir with quick resotre
This lets you replace a file or directory and quickly revert if something goes wrong. For example, the current version of a website's files are in public_html. Put a new version of the site in public_html~ and execute the command. The names are swapped. If anything goes wrong, execute it again (up arrow or !!).

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Recursively scan directories for mp3s and pass them to mplayer
The command first deletes any old playlist calles playlist.tmp under /tmp. After that it recursively searches all direcotries under ~/mp3 and stores the result in /tmp/playlist.tmp. After havin created the playlist, the command will execute mplayer which will shuffle through the playlist. This command is aliased to m is aliased to `rm -rf /tmp/playlist.tmp && find ~/mp3 -name *.mp3 > /tmp/playlist.tmp && mplayer -playlist /tmp/playlist.tmp -shuffle -loop 0 | grep Playing' in my ~/.bashrc.

pretend to be busy in office to enjoy a cup of coffee
just make some data scrolling off the terminal. wow.

Browse system RAM in a human readable form
This command lets you see and scroll through all of the strings that are stored in the RAM at any given time. Press space bar to scroll through to see more pages (or use the arrow keys etc). Sometimes if you don't save that file that you were working on or want to get back something you closed it can be found floating around in here! The awk command only shows lines that are longer than 20 characters (to avoid seeing lots of junk that probably isn't "human readable"). If you want to dump the whole thing to a file replace the final '| less' with '> memorydump'. This is great for searching through many times (and with the added bonus that it doesn't overwrite any memory...). Here's a neat example to show up conversations that were had in pidgin (will probably work after it has been closed)... $sudo cat /proc/kcore | strings | grep '([0-9]\{2\}:[0-9]\{2\}:[0-9]\{2\})' (depending on sudo settings it might be best to run $sudo su first to get to a # prompt)


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