Piping binary data to a remote shell via ssh
tar -czpf - source_dir --exclude=/proc --exclude=/mnt | ssh user@desktop 'cat > /path/to/target/dest.tar.gz'
A chronological documentation test project, nothing serious, really!
tar -czpf - source_dir --exclude=/proc --exclude=/mnt | ssh user@desktop 'cat > /path/to/target/dest.tar.gz'