GNU Screen by Stephen Turner.
Speaking of useful things like R and Swirl reminded me of this post by Stephen:
This is one of those things I picked up years ago while in graduate school that I just assumed everyone else already knew about. GNU screen is a great utility built-in to most Linux installations for remote session management. Typing ‘screen’ at the command line enters a new screen session. Once launched, you can start processes in the screen session, detach the session with Ctrl-a+d, then reattach at a later point and resume where you left off. See this screencast I made below:
I’m not sure why but ‘screen’ has never come up that I recall.
Take a look at Stephen’s screencast and/or man screen.