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Make a zip file with date/time created in the name of the file , zip all sub-directorys
zip -r /tmp/filename-`date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S`.zip /directory/

Send an http HEAD request w/curl

MoscowML with editable input-line and history
Works also with SML/NJ and other interpreters or tools with interactive environments.

Unbelievable Shell Colors, Shading, Backgrounds, Effects for Non-X
I've been using linux for almost a decade and only recently discovered that most terminals like putty, xterm, xfree86, vt100, etc., support hundreds of shades of colors, backgrounds and text/terminal effects. This simply prints out a ton of them, the output is pretty amazing. If you use non-x terminals all the time like I do, it can really be helpful to know how to tweak colors and terminal capabilities. Like: $ echo $'\33[H\33[2J'

Better recursive grep with pretty colors... requires ruby and gems (run: "gem install rak")

remove all snapshots from all virtual machines in vmware esx
Old snapshots can cause problems. It's best to remove them when finished. I use this script to remove all snapshots. The "while read" command is necessary because my vm names contain spaces. The "time" command reports how long the process runs.

Watch contents of a file grow
In this case, I'm keeping an eye on /var/log/messages, but of course any file will do. When I'm following a file, I generally don't want to see anything other than what has been added due to the command or service I've executed. This keeps everything clean and tidy for troubleshooting.

Choose from a nice graphical menu which DI.FM radio station to play
This is a very simple and lightweight way to play DI.FM stations For a more complete version of the command with proper strings in the menu, try: (couldnt fit in the command field above) $zenity --list --width 500 --height 500 --title 'DI.FM' --text 'Pick a Radio' --column 'radio' --column 'url' --print-column 2 $(curl -s http://www.di.fm/ | awk -F '"' '/href="http:.*\.pls.*96k/ {print $2}' | sort | awk -F '/|\.' '{print $(NF-1) " " $0}') | xargs mplayer This command line parses the html returned from http://di.fm and display all radio stations in a nice graphical menu. After the radio is chosen, the url is passed to mplayer so the music can start dependencies: - x11 with gtk environment - zenity: simple app for displaying gtk menus (sudo apt-get install zenity on ubuntu) - mplayer: simple audio player (sudo apt-get install mplayer on ubuntu)

Remind yourself to leave in 15 minutes
If you spend most of your time in front of the terminal, leave is a useful reminder. Leave can have absolute form: leave 1555 reminds you to leave at 3:55PM

Convert all MySQL tables and fields to UTF8
This loops through all tables and changes their collations to UTF8. You should backup beforehand though in case some data is lost in the process.


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