Useful Commands (and their options and switches)

rsync -aPEmivvz <src_dir> <dst_dir>
Actually good copying without huge suckage!
latexmk -xelatex -interaction=nonstopmode -synctex=1 -pv <latex.tex>
Sensible LaTeX compiling.
ssh <user>@<host> -L 0.0.0.0:<loc_port>:<host>:<host_port>
Create a sensible port forwarding to a host, that's sitting behind a firewall, where SSH is the only way to get access to. <loc_port> is the ports on the machine you're SSH-ing from. <host_port> is the port on the <host> that we're trying to forward to.
ssh <user>@<host> -XY
Make X forwarding work, even when the Admins are idiots.
netstat -alptune
Useful and grep-able netstat output.
xz -9ve <file>
Very high compression if you want to feel really special.
mplayer -ass -embeddedfonts <video>
mplayer with embedded subtitle fonts, and everything...
gm convert -density 150 -type GrayScaleMatte <document.pdf> -trim <image.png>
Convert a PDF to PNG.
mkisofs -J -l -r -f -allow-lowercase -allow-leading-dots -A "<friendly name>" -V "<vol_name>" -o <file.iso> [<files>|<directories>]
Create standard data CD ISO. Optional -iso-level [1234].
dd if=/dev/zero of=<file> count=0 seek=<blocknum>
Quickly make an empty file. Optional bs=<size>.
ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -s:v <width>x<heigh> -r <framerate> -i input.yuv -c:v libx265 -preset veryslow -x265-params crf=15 out.mkv
Convert uncompressed video using h.265 (HEVC). crf selects quality, goes from 0 (highest) to 51. -preset has various settings, file becomes smaller, the slower the process.
pacmd list-sources
Print all attached audio devices to pulseaudio.
pactl load-module module-loopback latency_msec=1
Load module to playback input straight through to an output device.
setxkbmap -option compose:menu
Set Menu key to be compose, no matter the keyboard mapping.
setxkbmap -layout us -variant altgr-intl -option compose:menu
Set keyboard mapping to US-AltGr-Intl with a Compose key.
ffmpeg -i <input.mp4> -c copy -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=<deg> <output.mp4>
Rotates a video by altering meta data. This doesn't work universally, but it beats recoding the video.

Network monitoring

(WIP) nload, iftop, iptraf, nethogs, bmon, slurm, tcptrack, vnstat, bwm-ng, cbm, speedometer, pktstat, netwatch, trafshow, netload, ifstat, dstat, collectl

Pandoc

pandoc <input.md> -o <output.html> -s -S -i --toc --html-q-tags -m {-c <opt.css>} {-H <header.html>} -f markdown+tex_math_single_backslash -t html5 --normalize --highlight-style tango
Pretty much basic and general setup. Assumes additional setup in header files. KaTeX has to be set up via tailored header files.
pandoc <input.md> -o <output.html> -s -S -i --toc --html-q-tags --mathjax=res/MathJax/MathJax.js\?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML {-c <opt.css>} {-H <header.html>} -f markdown+tex_math_single_backslash -t html5 --normalize --highlight-style tango
Local MathJax installation.

Compiler stuff

CPPFLAGS="-I$HOME/include" LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/lib" PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/include/pkgconfig" make
run make for something that needs local libs. Also works for ./configure

Windows

reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout" /v "Scancode Map" /t REG_BINARY /d "00000000000000000300000001003A003A00010000000000" /f
make CapsLock be Escape. Good for Vim and such.
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont /v "00" /t REG_SZ /d "Consolas" /f
Add Consolas as general purpose font for the Console.

Fonts

 mkfontdir <directory>
 xset fp+ <directory>
 xset fp rehash

This makes PCF fonts available in X. A fonts.alias can be placed in the directory for font name aliases.

fc-cache -vf
Re-read fontconfig directories.

XFCE autostart

When starting applications automatically on logon (Settings > Session and Startup > Application Autostart), XFCE seems to be rather picky about a few things. Here are the workarounds and bodges.

/bin/sh -c "sleep 5"; xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap"
this applies custom .Xmodmap settings after logging in, gracefully. Otherwise XFCE does whatever it feels like with this...