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Copy a file with progress and save hash to a different file

Shell function to create a menu of items which may be inserted into the X paste buffer.
The function will take a comma separated list of items to be 'selected' by xsel -i: $ smenu "First item to paste,Paste me #2,Third menu item" You will then be prompted to choose one of the menu items. After you choose, you will be able to paste the string by clicking the middle mouse button. The menu will keep prompting you to choose menu items until you break out with Control-C.

check open ports without netstat or lsof

echo unicode characters

Search for a process by name
ps and grep is a dangerous combination -- grep tries to match everything on each line (thus the all too common: grep -v grep hack). ps -C doesn't use grep, it uses the process table for an exact match. Thus, you'll get an accurate list with: ps -fC sh rather finding every process with sh somewhere on the line.

find out how much space are occuipied by files smaller than 1024K
The command gives size of all files smaller than 1024k, this information, together with disk usage, can help determin file system parameter (e.g. block size) or storage device (e.g. SSD v.s. HDD). Note if you use awk instead of "cut| dc", you easily breach maximum allowed number of records in awk.

Dump dvd from a different machine onto this one.
You can use this to directly dump from machine A (with dvd drive) to machine B (without dvd drive) . I used this to copy dvd using my friend's machine to my netbook. Above command is to be issued on machine B. Advantages : 1) No wasting time dumping first to machine A and then copying to Machine B. 2) You dont need to use space on Machine A. In fact, this will work even when Machine A doesnt have enough hdd space to dump the DVD. Use -C ssh option on slow networks (enables compression). you can replace "dd if=/dev/dvd" with any ripping command as long as it spews the iso to stdout.

Batch convert PNG to JPEG
Convert all PNG images in directory to JPEG using ImageMagick, and delete the old PNG images.

Remove BOM (Byte Order Mark) from text file
Takes file (text.txt), removes BOM from it, and outputs the result to a new file (newFile.txt). BOM is "Byte Order Mark" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark]), an invisible, non-breaking, zero-length character. In other words, if you see a DIFF with "" at the beginning, you've got a byte order mark, which can't be removed without this command or a hex editor. It can appear for a number of reasons, such as getting copied to/from a UNIX filesystem...

Install pip with Proxy
Installs pip packages defining a proxy


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