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Binary clock

Reboot machine when everything is hanging
If the machine is hanging and the only help would be the power button, this key-combination will help to reboot your machine (more or less) gracefully. R - gives back control of the keyboard S - issues a sync E - sends all processes but init the term singal I - sends all processes but init the kill signal U - mounts all filesystem ro to prevent a fsck at reboot B - reboots the system Save your file before trying this out, this will reboot your machine without warning! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

Remote control for Rhythmbox on an Ubuntu Media PC
Note: you'll want to set up pub-key ssh auth. Gives you a quick means of changing volume/tracks/etc for rhythmbox on a remote machine. E.g.: rc --next # Play next track rc --print-playing # Grab the name rc --volume-down rc --help

Create date based backups
This script creates date based backups of the files. It copies the files to the same place the original ones are but with an additional extension that is the timestamp of the copy on the following format: YearMonthDay-HourMinuteSecond

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

find all writable (by user) files in a directory tree (use 4 for readable, 1 for executable)

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

Forwards connections to your port 2000 to the port 22 of a remote host via ssh tunnel

display a smiling smiley if the command succeeded and a sad smiley if the command failed
you could save the code between if and fi to a shell script named smiley.sh with the first argument as and then do a smiley.sh to see if the command succeeded. a bit needless but who cares ;)

Remove empty directories
You can also use, $ find . -depth -type d -exec rmdir {} \; 2>/dev/null


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