I discovered ~/.netrc today when I was trying to script an FTP upload. It has a simple format:
machine [hostname] login [username] password [password]and presto, just pipe commands to
ftp [hostname] for easy uploads.
Edit: Oh, and here are the two scripts I wrote in my boredom: one, two, and output. The first script outputs the size of GAIM logs for each buddy, and the second one uploads it.