I Heart Terminal and X11

Either program alone is probably too powerful for a UNIX neophyte like me, actually. But I only need them to ssh to various school servers (with or without X forwarding), without third-party software. They are awesome.

Of course, PuTTY (among other programs) works great for ssh in Windows. But it doesn't let you access the X environment without XWin32, which is 20 dollars a pop* at my school.

On the flip side, WinSCP rocks for file transfer. I'm not sure which equivalent program for Mac is the most suitable, actually. Fugu? Cyberduck? Eh, I'll figure it out when I need it.

The other down side, probably not Terminal's fault, is that programs in this remote X environment are incredibly slow. Kind of like loading an image using a dial-up connection to the internet. Or maybe I shouldn't have used Matlab as my trial program *cough*. Maybe when school starts I can use that down time to nap :P

I also have trouble ssh-ing to one particular server (it doesn't respond to me), but at least it's probably not a problem on my end.

Reminders to self:

ssh hostname does exactly that, but uses your home computer's username and immediately prompts for a password.
ssh -l username hostname uses the indicated username for login
ssh -X hostname enables X11 forwarding.

There's a whole bunch of other options as well, but just get Terminal to tell them to you.

I'm actually a little paranoid about ssh not being secure enough, but I don't know enough UNIX to know what to do, so I'll have to leave it be for now.

Now, what else should I be doing? Seriously, my brain is so bored it's starting to shutdown for naps randomly. I need something to do. (*Mumbles to self* Work report done, resume update done, connecting to school test done, software installation almost done - need to go buy Parallels and a CAS then install Beilstein and Microsoft Office, need to find a job...)

*Meaning, annual license. Either that or run the trial version, which closes after every half an hour.