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Normalize volume in your mp3 library
This normalizes volume in your mp3 library, but uses mp3gain's "album" mode. This applies a gain change to all files from each directory (which are presumed to be from the same album) - so their volume relative to one another is changed, while the average album volume is normalized. This is done because if one track from an album is quieter or louder than the others, it was probably meant to be that way.

Backup your hard drive with dd
This will create an exact duplicate image of your hard drive that you can then restore by simply reversing the "if" & "of" locations. $ sudo dd if=/media/disk/backup/sda.backup of=/dev/sda Alternatively, you can use an SSH connection to do your backups: $dd if=/dev/sda | ssh user@ssh.server.com dd of=~/backup/sda.backup

Transcode .flac to .wav with gstreamer
Takes all .flac directories, feeds them into a simple transcode pipeline to spit out .wavs with the same name (but correct extension).

Check motherboard manufacturer, product name, version and serial number
Very slick way to check your motherboard manufacturer, product name, version and serial number.

Shows what processes need to be restarted after system upgrade
emerge,apt-get,yum... all update your system. This will at some point replace either a runtime dependency or a process (which is still running). This oneliner will list what processes need to be restarted

convert .bin / .cue into .iso image
bchunk [-v] [-p] [-r] [-w] [-s]

Display the history and optionally grep
Place this in your .bash_profile and you can use it two different ways. If you issue 'h' on its own, then it acts like the history command. If you issue: $ h cd Then it will display all the history with the word 'cd'

Create an animated gif from a Youtube video
requires "youtube-dl" -- sure you can do this with wget and some more obscurity but why waste your time when this great tool is available? the guts consist of mplayer converting a video to a gif -- study this command and read the man page for more information $ mplayer video.flv -ss 00:23 -endpos 6 -vo gif89a:fps=5:output=output.gif -vf scale=400:300 -nosound generates a 6 second gif starting at 23 seconds of play time at 5 fps and a scale of 400x300 start time (-ss)/end time (-endpos) formats: 00:00:00.000 end time should be relative to start time, not absolute. i.e. -endpos 5 == seconds after 0:42 = 0:47 end point play with fps and scale for lower gif sizes the subshell is a solution for the -b flag on youtube-dl which downloads the best quality video, sometimes, which can be various video formats $(ls ${url##*=}*| tail -n1)

Create Encrypted WordPress MySQL Backup without any DB details, just the wp-config.php
The coolest way I've found to backup a wordpress mysql database using encryption, and using local variables created directly from the wp-config.php file so that you don't have to type them- which would allow someone sniffing your terminal or viewing your shell history to see your info. I use a variation of this for my servers that have hundreds of wordpress installs and databases by using a find command for the wp-config.php file and passing that through xargs to my function.

bash shell expansion
The expansion {,} in bash will repeat the given string once for each item seperated by commas. The given command will result in the following being run: cp /really/long/path/and/file/name /really/long/path/and/file/name-`date -I` These can be embedded as needed, ex: rm file{1,2,3{1,2,3}} would delete the files file1, file2, file31, file32, file32, and no other files.


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