Lectrice's New Writeups

FreeWire (thing)

2003-10-26T14:40:52Z

Yet another P2P client that has learnt from those Greek warriors sneaking up on Troy.
"NO nags, NO banner ads, NO links to online shopping in the program", is the advertisement for this seemingly "lighter" version of Limewire. I guess their statement is true, since all the annoyances I had when installing it, were clearly outside FreeWire itself. Software included in FreeWire will hijack IE settings, fill up your desktop with shortcuts to gambling websites, mess with the registry and auto-run spyware with mainly innocent-looking names, etcetera.

Removing it all by yourself is no doubt possible, but a gruesome task. Running the newest versions of Spybot and Ad-aware after uninstalling FreeWire itself seems to get rid of all the spyware, although you might have to go over browser settings etc. manually.

It appears there was not a spyware problem with the earliest versions of FreeWire, ie - if you have an early, spyware-free version, stick to it.

Questioning the author's digestion (idea)

2003-07-22T14:34:32Z

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
- Thomas Berger

What does one make of the author's role if literature is little more than a half-digested version of what the author sees, reads, experiences and then burps up?

Every now and then, typically when the culture sections are low on juicier stuff, a serious researcher or amateur enthusiast rears his (it's normally a he, for some reason) enthusiastic head in the newspapers to reveal more or less reliable tidbits of information about a famous author. And every so often this information has to do with finding real-life models for the author's literary characters. Just today I read about a Norwegian researcher claiming that Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler character is modelled on a Russian aristocrat. And the journalist actually asked him how he found out who Hedda really was. I had to read that twice to make sure I got the question right.

If the viewpoint is that of literary…

Antony Gormley (person)

2003-07-04T20:24:48Z

The body is a language before language. When made still in sculpture it can be a witness to life and it can talk about this time now.
Antony Gormley in an interview about his work "Total Strangers"

Sculptor Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. He read archaeology, anthropology and the history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge between 1968 and 1971. After this, he travelled the Near and Middle East and studied Vipassana meditation with a Burmese teacher in India. This was when he decided to become a sculptor, and he went on to study sculpture at the Central School of Fine Art, transferring after only one year to Goldsmiths College in London. He did a postgraduate course in sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Most of Gormley's works have come to be based on various casts of his own body - in lead, fibreglass, iron or concrete. The Angel of the North at Gateshead (1995-98), which has a wing-span of 54 metres, is…

Rana (place)

2003-07-04T19:36:05Z

Municipality in the Norwegian county of Nordland. Norway's 4th largest municipality (4463 km2). The Arctic Circle cuts through Rana about 80 kms north of the municipal center, Mo i Rana. Population: Approx. 25 000.

Although considered by many Norwegians (notably those living down south) to be "way up north"), Rana is actually 1500 kilometres from Kirkenes, the northernmost point of Norway, and 1430 kilometres from Lindesnes, which is the southernmost point.

Enough geographical facts, already. (Mo i) Rana was first and foremost known in Norway for its humongous iron works, which was built after World War II and experienced a significant boom in the decades to come. In 1946, Rana had 9000 inhabitants, in 1976, there were 23 000 people living in Rana. This is why most of the homes and other buildings in the district date from this era. An architectural delight, Rana ain't, although the odd picturesque building can be found.

For a long time, it seemed a…

M2 (thing)

2003-07-02T09:55:50Z

M2 is, from version 7 and up, the built-in e-mail client of the Opera browser.

The approach of M2 is rather different from what most of us are used to. One of the major differences between M2 and most regular e-mail clients, is that it has no real folders, only various views and access points to all the messages. Messages can be accessed by

status (unread, sent, drafts, trash, spam etc.)
contact (clicking a name in the contacts list will show all messages received from and sent to that contact)
assigned labels ("to do", "important", "mail back", "valuable", etc.)
type of attachment (auto recognition)
mailing lists (ditto, if list headers are properly configured)
usenet groups
access points you make yourself by performing a search (all searched are automatically kept as access points, but you can of course choose to delete the ones you don't think you'll need again)

M2 comes with a built-in spam filter that can be…

Wand (thing)

2003-07-02T09:17:25Z

In the Opera browser versions 7 and up, the wand is the password manager. One can choose whether the wand should save the password for a page or for a whole server, and next time one enters the site, the username/password fields should already filled in. If they are not, or if it is a different page on the same site, clicking the wand symbol on the main bar should both fill in the fields and submit the information. Passwords and usernames are scrambled before they are saved. The wand can of course itself be protected by password or simply disabled (under preferences > security), for example if the browser is regularly accessed by more than one user.