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list files recursively by size

this toggles mute on the Master channel of an alsa soundcard

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.

Remove grep itself from ps
When you 'ps|grep' for a given process, it turns out that grep itself appears as a valid line since it contains the RE/name you are looking for. To avoid grep from showing itself, simply insert some wildcard into process' name.

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

Find Out My Linux Distribution Name and Version
Another way of do it in debian like distros, don't know if works for others

Backup of a partition
Clone a partion with tar.

List by size all of the directories in a given tree.

find large files
simple find -> xargs sort of thing that I get a lot of use out of. Helps find huge files and gives an example of how to use xargs to deal with them. Tested on OSX snow leopard (10.6). Enjoy.

Create multiple mp4 files using avidemux
Convert multiple files using avidemux. Version updated (thanks to the guys who helped me giving me hints about how to improve the command). Works with files whose name contains blank characters. One of the reasons why I love open source: everyone can take something "done" and improve it to make it better! If u have suggestions, please let me know.


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