note tstock asking for console tips on windows XP... that's funny :) To cat a log file and see error lines in red over black, I would could use this on my machine (linux): <code> perl -ne 'print /ERROR/ ? "\033[1;31m\033[40m$_\033[0m" : $_ ' my.log </code> A cool trick I use to follow a log file is use 'less my.log', /searchstring, SHIFT+f now not only can I jump between a less and a tail -f, but also the searchstring is highlighted everytime it shows up. tstock update: silly rotating star: <code> perl -e 'print "\b" . substr("|/-\\", time % 4, 1 ) while 1' </code> 221475 221475