bluebones.net

I was at Extreme Computing 2002 (Need to Know‘s 5th birthday party) the other day where stand.org.uk was launched. It seems that its already had (or helped with) a major success – the indefinite postponement of the RIP s22 Order that would have given access to traffic data to dozens of government departments. Their front page right now (June 19, 2002 story) has a very interesting piece on how its not so hard to influence your MP as you might think. Very heartening. If you’re American you can trundle off to eff.org who do similar good things for you guys (actually all over – they had a speaker at the ntk gig who was very good and I’ve sent them some money).

England have beaten Argentina 1 – 0 in the World Cup. I have nothing insightful or interesting to add I just wanted to celebrate the fact publicly. COME ON ENGLAND!

My review of Dinosaur in a Haystack by Stephen Jay Gould now online

Adam & Dawn’s engagement party photos are now online

My review of Martha Quest by Doris Lessing now online

I’ve just spent about an hour trying to set up WAP on my Nokia 6210. I eventually found the right settings (no thanks to the One2One website) and I include them below for fellow searchers:

Homepage:	http://wap.one2one.net
Connection type:	continuous
Connection Security:	Off
Bearer:	Data
Dial-up number:	+447953968999
IP address:	149.254.001.010
Authentication type:	Normal
Data Call type:	ISDN
Data call speed:	9600
Username:	user
Password:	wap
Port:	9201
Idle time out:	120

My World Cup 2002 Simulator/Predictor program is now available for download. Full details can be found on the program page

I’ve had this book almost since it came out in hardback in 1994 soon after it had won the Whitbread First Novel award but never got around to reading it. I picked it off the shelf this morning and an hour and a half later I’d finished it.

It is a really beautiful, compelling book. The story concerns a 100-year-old slave on a Virginian plantation in the early 19th Century and his relationship with the plantation owmer, the overseer and his own dynasty of slaves. I won’t say any more as the plot is revealed cleverly and with real poise through the length of the novel.

D’Aguiar was originally a poet and that grasp of language serves him well throughout the novel. The characters might be accused of being archetypes but I think instead I would say that the book uses simplicity to great effect. Recommended.

My review of The Trial by Franz Kafka now online

Kludged together a quickstart guide to email through telnet from this story on slashdot.org

(From comments by xQx, carm$y$)

telnet [your mail server] [port – usually 110 for POP3]
USER [username]
PASS [password]

Once you’re in:

STAT gives you number of messages and total size
LIST gives you a list of your messages
RETR [message number] to read a message
HEAD [message number] [bytes] (I couldn’t get this to work on BT’s mailserver but I assume it gives you the first part of a message)
DELE [message number] deletes the message permanently

And when you’re done:

QUIT

You can also send email via telnet