How to set up Wireless Networking in Ubuntu on the commandline

How to set up Wireless Networking in Ubuntu on the commandline  

Network Management under Ubuntu seems to be a complete pig's ear nowadays. I upgraded my laptop from 10.04LTS to 12.04LTS, and all manner of things b0rked :-( ...

I bravely proceeded to upgrade to 14.04LTS in the hope that it wall all magically get fixed... 

WRONG! :-/ 

Can *anyone* make head or tail of network-manager, avahi, all the *dm's and daemons / services / upstart processes / ??? now? 

I give up... 

Turned off the networking with the GUI, resorted to the good ol' commandline; see How to set up Wireless Networking in Ubuntu on the commandline for some details. 

It works! 

This has me in a(nother) minimalist mood.

John Britten video at NZ OnScreen

During the late 1980s, Kiwi inventor John Britten developed and built a revolutionary racing motorcycle. He pursued his dream all the way to Daytona International Speedway, where, in 1992, as an unlikely underdog, he proceeded to beat the biggest and richest manufacturers in the world. Britten: Backyard Visionary documents the maverick motorcycle designer that Guggenheim curator Ultan Guilfoyle described as "the New Zealander who stood the world of racing-motorcycle design on its head." Watch the video here.