SSH tunnel Quickie
Sometimes I prefer to have a private (read secure and non-observable) web connection - being a developer and admin makes you a bit more paranoid...
So how can you establish a connection that besides from being non-observable may also bypass potential content filters or firewall rules? Of course with a simple SSH tunnel: ssh -D 8080 -C -q -N user@server (-f to put it in background?)
Now simply configure your browser to use the SOCKS proxy running on your localhost at port 8080 and off you go.
The drawback is, that you need a Unix server outside to connect to. But who has not such a system somewhere? And even if not by now, maybe just go in the clouds.
And for those unlucky guys running Windows and PuTTY: even you could do that.
Update: It seems like SSH can even be misused to tunnel Remote Desktop connections. This might do the trick:
sudo ssh -D 8180 -p 8999