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Count files beneath current directory (including subfolders)

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.

Find Mac address

Deal with dot files safely

Print the current time on the whole screen, updated every second
http://www.joachim-breitner.de/projects#screen-message now also supports reading stdin continuously to update what it shows, different ?slides? separated by a form feed character. Here, we feed the current time into it each second to create a large clock.

download and unpack tarball without leaving it sitting on your hard drive

convert wav into mp3 using lame

List the CPU model name
Extracts the model name of the CPU and displays it on screen.

Test http request every second, fancy display.
Use the command watch, which is really hard to pass nested quotes to, and insert newlines where they are supposed to go in the HTTP request. that is after 1.1 after the host and two newlines at the end before the EOF. i use this all day what? no support for HEREDOCs on commandlinefu's interface? need more fu.

Follow tail by name (fix for rolling logs with tail -f)
If you use 'tail -f foo.txt' and it becomes temporarily moved/deleted (ie: log rolls over) then tail will not pick up on the new foo.txt and simply waits with no output. 'tail -F' allows you to follow the file by it's name, rather than a descriptor. If foo.txt disappears, tail will wait until the filename appears again and then continues tailing.


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