name: /dev/urandom (sometimes dev or rnd for short)

date of birth: june 1993

job: programmer

tech: i’m mostly a computing and retro software/gaming dork. i am kind of a linux/open-source fan, although i try not to be a jerk about it as some do. i occasionally code something in C or C++ (or a rare Bash/Perl script) in my personal time, and am currently figuring out Rust.

favorite movies: typically old comedies and silly action movies of the 80s and 90s, but I also like an occasional modern one.

shell scripts:

grab lines from dictionary, convert them into up-to-16-byte strings, do a binary dump

for x in `cat input_words.txt`; do echo $x | tr -d \\n | dd ibs=16 conv=sync 2>/dev/null | xxd; done

convert a .vgz directory to a .vgm one, along with updating all the playlists:

rename ".vgz" ".vgm.gz" *.vgz; gzip -d *.vgm.gz; sed -i "s/\.vgz/\.vgm/" *.m3u

(requires rename from util-linux and not from perl)

Some small hints for profiling utilities used on Linux systems.

This is a small cheat sheet to remind me of how parameter expansion works in unix shells.