excuse if im going over something you already know...but anyway...
basically with ssh you can forward ports over the ssh connection. so in my example i have a squid running on my home linux box listenin on port 1080.
i then from work
ssh -p 23 -L 1080:127.0.0.1:1080 userid@home
this makes your ssh connectoin as usual, too the telnet port...and forwards any traffic heading to your 127.0.0.1 port 1080 to "home".
i then point mozilla to my proxy of
http://127.0.0.1 port 1080.
And then i can surf and view whatever i like. The socks server is something i've added later...so i can run trillian or just about whatever will accept a socks server in its settin.