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Enable cd by variable names
Usage: $ mydir=/very/long/path/to/a/dir $ cd mydir I often need to cd where no man wants to go (i.e. long path). by enabling the shell option cdable_vars, I can tell cd to assume the destination is the name of a variable.

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.

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

Then end of the UNIX epoch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem Some other notable dates that have passed: $ date -d@1234567890 $ date -d@1000000000

Watch how many tcp connections there are per state every two seconds.
slighty shorter

Restrict the use of dmesg for current user/session
Linux offers an interesting option to restrict the use of dmesg. It is available via /proc/sys/kernel/dmesg_restrict. You can check the status with: $ cat /proc/sys/kernel/dmesg_restrict Alternatively you can use sysctl: $ sudo sysctl -w kernel.dmesg_restrict=1 To make your change persistent across reboot, edit a fille in /etc/sysctl.d/.

Find out when your billion-second anniversary is (was).
This is the same command as this one, but for OS X. http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3053/find-out-when-your-billion-second-anniversary-is-was.

Simple colourized JSON formatting for BASH
Leave out pygmentize or `pip install pygments` first.

Show which programs are listening on TCP ports
Alternative: $ ss -tlpn

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


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