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

set your ssd disk as a non-rotating medium
if you still get a permissions error using sudo, then nano the file: sudo nano -w /sys/block/sdb/queue/rotational and change 1 to 0 this thread: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=369836&postcount=15 says that this will "help the block layer to optimize a few decisions"

Rename files in batch

Grab mp3 files from your favorite netcasts, mp3blog, or sites that often have good mp3s
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.

Capture video of a linux desktop

strip non-constant number of directories from tar archive while decompressing
If you want to decompress the files from an archive to current directory by stripping all directory paths, use --transform option to strip path information. Unfortunately, --strip-components option is good if the target files have same and constant depth of folders. The idea was taken from http://www.unix.com/solaris/145941-how-extract-files-tar-file-without-creating-directories.html

Find the package that installed a command

Get AWS temporary credentials ready to export based on a MFA virtual appliance
You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials

Set up alarm with fade-in, for graceful awakening
There are a lot of commands, which invokes your player at specified time. But I prefer not to jump from by bed, when alarm start to play. Instead, this script increases volume of mpd over time, which much more pleasant when you just woke up :)

Change pidgin status
Thanks for the comment oshazard, i wasn't aware of purple-remote existence.


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