Just some notes that have accumulated:

when trying to mount a remote windows NTFS system via:

sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.0.112/E -o username=Administrator,password=mypass /home/me/mybackup/

and receiving:
wrong fs type bad option bad superblock on …
this is because the cifs flag requires:
$ sudo apt-get install smbfs

more info here

Adding a program to unity launcher:

$ gnome-desktop-item-edit --create-new ~/Desktop

fill in the details, then drag the created icon from the desktop to the unity launcher

Changing icon in unity launcher
$ gksu nautilus /usr/share/applications

color console output in git:
$ git config --global color.ui auto

In ubuntu – use the ALT+mouse drag to drag a window when for some reason you can’t click on it’s title in order to drag it. When using ALT+mouse drag you can drag the window by clicking on any part of it and moving the mouse.