I altered Zoltan's script so that it could handle muting and unmuting, and also change the speaker icon depending on what the volume was set at. Ubuntu is displaying notifications for brightness changes on my T60 (don't ask me why), so I can't comment on how the brightness notifications in this script work with my changes (though I didn't touch that part at all, so they really should work just fine).
I altered Zoltan's script so that it could handle muting and unmuting, and also change the speaker icon depending on what the volume was set at. Ubuntu is displaying notifications for brightness changes on my T60 (don't ask me why), so I can't comment on how the brightness notifications in this script work with my changes (though I didn't touch that part at all, so they really should work just fine).
Thank you Zoltan for posting your script.