On: Stop using tail -f (mostly)

[0x0]

Also take a look at ccze which is great for syntax-coloring all kinds of log files heuristically.

For example: tail -F somefile.log|ccze -A

For your shell, there's a lot of funky colorful interactive customizations you can get on zsh and fishfish.

[acdha → 0x0]

That's really nice – thanks for the pointer. "ssh … varnishncsa | ccze" worked first time without any config, exactly as you'd want.