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clone an USB stick using dd + see its process
The following command will clone usb stick inside /dev/sdc to /dev/sdd Double check you got the correct usb sticks (origional-clone)with fdisk -l.

tar the current directory wihtout the absolute path
tars the current directory (and its children) in an archive of the same name (plus ".tar" :)) in the parent directory without the absolute path, so that when the archive is extracted, only the current directory name is created for the path. Assumes bash/zsh.

pip install into current directory without virtualenv
For subsequent commands in the prefixed path: $ PYTHONPATH=$PWD/lib/python*/site-packages ./bin/pip --version

Eliminate dead symlinks interactively in /usr/ recursevely
Its not mine... I get from textlive migration in gentoo : http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/tex/texlive-migration-guide.xml

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Use lynx to run repeating website actions
This command will tell lynx to read keystrokes from the specified file - which can be used in a cronjob to auto-login on websites that give you points for logging in once a day *cough cough* (which is why I used -accept_all_cookies). For creating your keystroke file, use: $ lynx -cmd_log yourfile

generate random tone

Pick a random line from a file
This is from perldoc -q random.*line, which says: This has a significant advantage in space over reading the whole file in. You can find a proof of this method in The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2, Section 3.4.2, by Donald E. Knuth. Who am I to argue with Don Knuth?

Generate a random password 30 characters long

Convert ascii string to hex
If you're going to use od, here's how to suppress the labels at the beginning. Also, it doesn't output the \x, hence the sed command at the end. Remove it for space separated hex values instead


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