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Create test images
Useful to test programs and webpages.

find all files containing a pattern, open them using vi and place cursor to the first match, use 'n' and ':n' to navigate

generate iso

Mirror the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive
Mirror the entire NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive, all the way from 1995. The archive is close to 2.5 GB, with lots of files, so give it some time. The logs can be redirected to a file using '-o somefile'. You might also want to try '-nH' and the '--cut-dirs' options

Convert mkv to SVCD/DivX
ffmpeg supports mkv

Listen to BBC Radio from the command line.
This command lets you select from 10 different BBC stations. When one is chosen, it streams it with mplayer. Requires: mplayer with wma support.

Mount important virtual system directories under chroot'ed directory
The command is useful when, e.g., booting an existing system with a rescue or installation CD where you need to chroot into the hard-disk and be able to do stuff which accesses kernel info (e.g. when installing Ubuntu desktop with LVM2 you need to mount and chroot the hard disk from a shell window in order to install packages and run initramfs inside chroot). The command assumes that /mnt/xxx is where the chroot'ed environment's root file system on the hard disk is mounted.

Rotate a video file by 90 degrees CW
Change video orientation in metadata only

Remove blank lines from a file using grep and save output to new file
The ^$ within the quotes is a regular expression: ^=beginning of line, $=end of line, with no characters between.

rsync Command that limits bandwidth
Useful for transferring large file over a network during operational hours


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