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Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Check if a machine is online
PING parameters c 1 limits to 1 pinging attempt q makes the command quiet (or silent mode) /dev/null 2>&1 is to remove the display && echo ONLINE is executed if previous command is successful (return value 0) || echo OFFLINE is executed otherwise (return value of 1 if unreachable or 2 if you're offline yourself). I personally use this command as an alias with a predefined machine name but there are at least 2 improvements that may be done. Asking for the machine name or IP Escaping the output so that it displays ONLINE in green and OFFLINE in red (for instance).

Simple Video Surveillance by email
This takes a picture (with the web cam) every 5 minutes, and send the picture to your e-mail. Some systems support mail -a "References: " so that all video surveillance emails are grouped in a single email thread. To keep your inbox clean, it is still possible to filter and move to trash video surveillance emails (and restore these emails only if you really get robbed!) For instance with Gmail, emails sent to me+trash@gmail.com can be filtered with "Matches: DeliveredTo:me+trash@gmail.com"

Generate a 18 character password, print the password and sha512 salted hash
Generate a 18 character password from character set a-zA-Z0-9 from /dev/urandom, pipe the output to Python which prints the password on standard out and in crypt sha512 form.

Limit the cpu usage of a process
Similar to `cpulimit`, although `prlimit` can be found shipped with recent util-linux. Example: limit CPU consumption to 10% for a math problem which ordinarily takes up 100% CPU: Before: $ bc -l

Make a ready-only filesystem ?writeable? by unionfs
First look into /etc/modules if you have unionfs (or squashfs) support. If not, add the modules. UnionFS combines two filesystems. If there is a need to write a file, /tmp/unioncache will be used to write files (first create that directory). Reads will be done where the file is found first. http://tldp.org/HOWTO/SquashFS-HOWTO/creatingandusing.html

List the most recent dates in reverse-chronological order

Convert multiple files using avidemux
Using avidemux to convert multiple files that are in the folder where the command was executed.

power off system in X minutes
Replace 60 with the number of minutes until you want the machine to shut down. Alternatively give an absolute time in the format hh:mm (shutdown -h 9:30) Or shutdown right away (shutdown -h now)

Stream (almost) any music track in mplayer
Just give it an artist and/or song at the end of the command as shown.


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