how did you do that?

I’m sure some of this is on the forums somewhere, but for the life of me I can’t find it here, or elsewhere for that matter. There’s a few things I’d like to add to my blog.
1. In the category list, I’d like it to show the number of posts in that category. I’ve seen this on other blogs, something like “General (45)”.
2. For the blogroll, I’d like a * next to ones that have been updated recently (since I last checked, if possible). I saw this somewhere, it *’d ones that were updated in the past 24 hrs.
3. I haven’t seen this, and I’ll end up doing it myself if someone hasn’t alrady. I’m using the “quicklinks” hack, and in the options for the blog I have it set to show 5 posts, but I think “3 posts and any number of quicklinks” would be better. Something like “dont count posts in this category:” Being able to set a max number of links might be nice as well, and then just show a link like “more links…” that goes to a page showing all links from that day.
Are there any plugins or hacks already to do any of this? I assume there are for at least the first two…