X Window System == awful handy
I just got around a little annoyance that's been bugging me for a few days, and I'm so happy that I had to share. This will be old news to *nix users, but you with the macs and the windows, listen up, because this is some wild and crazy stuff you can't do so easily (unless it's easier in OS X than it used to be).

OK, here's the situation: I've got two computers in front of me. One is a desktop that I have my monitor, keyboard, and mouse hooked up to. Would also like to attach headphones to it, except 1) it's not close enough to make this practical without an extender that I do not possess, 2) the output has a ton of noise, which detracts from my enjoyment. Next to the desktop is a laptop which has a decent audio output. Unfortunately, its nub-pointer-thing is possessed and keeps wandering all over the screen, which makes it hard to do things like click on the UI to my music player. Other than not being able to control the music player, this isn't a problem, because I just use the laptop as another server and do everything over ssh. Today it hit me that the music player can be run in the same way - I just ssh to the laptop, and from the command line, start my music player. Through the magic of ssh's X11 forwarding, the player's UI pops up on my desktop machine, and music comes out of my laptop's output. Cool, network transparency. Big ups to Jim Gettys, Bob Scheifler, Ron Newman, etc.
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