Monthly Archives: September 2003

Technodonkey

Why it’s taken me so long to find MLDonkey I don’t know – but what a find. It’s a P2P filesharing client that can talk to all the major networks including Gnutella (Limewire etc), Fasttrack (Kazaa etc), Direct Connect (DC) and…that type of thing. What I love most about it is that it isn’t just a graphical app – it runs as a daemon. You can control it through a telnet interface, or a web interface or a GTK-based GUI front end. So even if you close the GUI (or it bombs) the downloads continue. There’s a nice MacOS X port too. I’m still not sure how they got FastTrack support into it – last I heard it was pretty closed.

Oh yes, and as if this wasn’t geeky enough, I’ve been running a HAL9000 screen saver on the iBook.


Words of wisdom

James, probably the most clearheaded person(against all odds)in any university computer science department; the man who renamed the Computing department as “the department of Internet Shopping”, came out with the all time classic on friday. We persuaded him to come down the pub for lunch and he explained that it was the Computing Department’s graduation day and, in his own words, “I didn’t want to go to the ceremony because it would legitamise the farce”. You’re a fucking poet James.

In fact Friday was a top day. Not only was it Rakesh’s birthday, but Suzanne, Brodie, Charlie, Colin and the Sun also came out to play – in addition to the “regulars”. After the after-work drink I went back to Colin’s to hear some of the tunes he’s been doing. Despite feeling a bit like a turd in a casserole with his wife wanting him to spend more time with kid, we got a chance to listen to some of his most excellent tunes, have a j and generally get moist over his collection of studio equipment. He also introduced me to some sounds that as a fat 30-something-saddo I didn’t know about – including Adam Freeland. Mr Freeland is playing at the Brick lane festival tomorrow but I think we’re going to the Brockley Nature reserve open day instead…

This whole week wasn’t too bad. I’d taken monday off (for headspace) and yet again ended up working…although it was quite good: a business meeting the people with whom I’m working on the “wine site for experts”. Not only was it pretty productive, but we sunk a few in a nice pub on TCR. And the sun was out. Another evening Michele and I went out with Roland, and his brother and brother’s girlfriend. Roland is due to move back to germany, which is great for him, but quite sad for those that will miss him. I took them on the standard and tedious guided tour from the Gypsy Moth to the Cutty Sark. My chips were well and truly pissed-on by the fact that the path has now been blocked by yet another cynical river-side housing cash-cow. Bastards. We had to go right out of the way… nonetheless we did get a couple of rounds in and enjoyed a nice riverside drink, which brought back memories of doing the same thing, at the same place 15 years ago.

Today was very domesticated, which is no bad thing. Humphrey climbed up his new setee-ladder a couple of times to see me, raised his wings for us on demand and generally sat around being cute. Pictures coming. There’s more I’m sure…but i can’t think of it now. Tomorrow maybe. The French Connection’s on now….