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external projector for presentations
i spent way too many hours trying to fiddle with /etc/X11/xorg.conf trying to hook up various external projectors. too bad i didn't know this would solve all my problems.

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

Find files and calculate size of result in shell
Find files and calculate size with stat of result in shell

Copy the text from the 3rd line to the 9th line into a new file with VI

Convert your favorite image in xpm for using in grub
* size must be 640?480 pixels * only has 14 colors * save it in XPM format Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/grubimg.xpm make sure for your path name and hard disk

Get top N files in X directory
You can simply run "largest", and list the top 10 files/directories in ./, or you can pass two parameters, the first being the directory, the 2nd being the limit of files to display. Best off putting this in your bashrc or bash_profile file

cd into another dir to run a one-liner, but implicitly drop back to your $OLD_PWD after
Obviously the example given is necessarily simple, but this command not only saves time on the command line (saves you using "cd -" or, worse, having to type a fully qualified path if your command cd's more than once), but is vital in scripts, where I've found the behaviour of "cd -" to be a little broken at times.

Quickly graph a list of numbers
Useful when you've produced a large file of numbers, and want to quickly see the distribution. The value of y halfway along the x axis is the median. Simple! Just create the listOfNumbers.txt file with a number on each line to try it out.

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

history autocompletion with arrow keys
This will enable the possibility to navigate in the history of the command you type with the arrow keys, example "na" and the arrow will give all command starting by na in the history.You can add these lines to your .bashrc (without &&) to use that in your default terminal.


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