I often watch local video files using the mpv video player, often invoking it from the command line for easy accessibility. In some cases I would like to delete the played file after playback. Since there is no shortcut in mpv to delete the currently playing file, I created a very basic script to handle this task. Creating the deletion script Create a new executable file named rmpv in with the following content: #!/bin/bash ### __author__ = "joseti.me/about" ### __version__ = "1.0.1" ### __license__ = "GPLv3" ### ### very basic shell utility script to play files using mpv ### and ask to delete the provided files afterwards ### requires 'mpv' to be successfully set up on system working ### command syntax: rmpv <files> ### ### does not support switches or flags ### mpv "$@" && rm -i "$@" Place the rmpv executable in an appropriate location and reload your shell.......
One of the best ways to move between cities in Central Asia is to take the train. You get to look at the changing landscapes passing by and get an impression of how large the distances can be without being forced to take part in the crazy road traffic of the region. The following links have been used by me for planning train journeys and purchasing tickets. Generally useful sites Poezdato (Russian) is a useful third-party site listing train connections all over the former Soviet Union You can search for direct connections between two stations or a full listing of all trains arriving and departing a given station or city.......
Recently I noticed that the clock of my laptop was off by around 6 minutes for reasons beyond my comprehension. Besides being irritating in general, it also caused trouble with a variety of applications and services. The Date and Time settings of the Cinnamon desktop environment didn’t offer any fix to the problem besides manually setting the time. Since manually setting the time would mean to adjust the clock every time I moved between time zones, I tried to find another way to keep my computer in sync with network time. The solution was to manually call ntpdate to force an update of the local clock.......
The common way to cross the border between Uzbekistan and Southern Kyrgzystan is the Dostyk border crossing, open 24/7 for both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. However, there is another border crossing that will shave off around an hour of travel time between the Fergana valley and Northern and Central Kyrgyzstan, the Madaniyat border crossing, open for pedestrians. It is also sometimes referred to as “Izboskan crossing”, referring to the greater area the town is situated in. Getting there from the Kyrgyz side Any vehicle on the route between Bishkek and Osh will pass Madaniyat, so it should be no problem to get a marshrutka or shared taxi to drop you off at the petrol station at the junction 3km away from the border.......
As part of my work I often have to run time-intensive jobs, both locally and remotely. In order to not have to actively check on them before they finish I have written a small utility in Bash to observe select tasks and send me a message upon their completion. This utility is based on Telegram-Alert by Omar Richardson and it requires the following two prerequisites: internet access for curl or wget telegram-alert to be executable Setting up Telegram-Alert First download and set up the telegram-alert system according to the steps outlined in the readme. Place the telegram-alert executable in an appropriate location in your $PATH and try sending a couple messages from a new shell instance.......