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Watch the size of a directory using figlet
You can substitute /home/$USER with any path you like.

Uniquely (sort of) color text so you can see changes
Colorify colors input by converting the text to a number and then performing modulo 7 on it. This resulting number is used as the color escape code. This can be used to color the results of commands with complex outputs (like "482279054165371") so if any of the digits change, there's a good chance the color will change too. I say good chance because there's only 7 unique colors here, so assuming you were watching random numbers, there would be a 6/7 chance that the color would change when the number changed. This should really only be used to help quickly identify when things change, but should not be the only thing relied upon to positively assert that an output has not changed.

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

validate json
I have this saved as jsonlint chmodded +x and file.js is instead $1, but YMMV

Check apache config syntax and restart or edit the file
Checks the apache configuration syntax, if is OK then restart the service otherwise opens the configuration file with VIM on the line where the configuration fails.

GREP a PDF file.
PDF files are simultaneously wonderful and heinous. They are wonderful in being ubiquitous and mostly being cross platform. They are heinous in being very difficult to work with from the command line, search, grep, use only the text inside the PDF, or use outside of proprietary products. xpdf is a wonderful set of PDF tools. It is on many linux distros and can be installed on OS X. While primarily an open PDF viewer for X, xpdf has the tool "pdftotext" that can extract formated or unformatted text from inside a PDF that has text. This text stream can then be further processed by grep or other tool. The '-' after the file name directs output to stdout rather than to a text file the same name as the PDF. Make sure you use version 3.02 of pdftotext or later; earlier versions clipped lines. The lines extracted from a PDF without the "-layout" option are very long. More paragraphs. Use just to test that a pattern exists in the file. With "-layout" the output resembles the lines, but it is not perfect. xpdf is available open source at http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

C function manual

Substitute spaces in filename with underscore
Substitute spaces in filename with underscore, it work on the first space encountered.

Stop long commands wrapping around and over-writing itself in the Bash shell
add the command either in /etc/profile or ~/.bash_profile so that this is available to your shell.


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