If you've been frustrated by the University of Aberdeen's (or your own university's) recent move to Microsoft's Exchange Labs (called Student Mail here), and you live in the EU, then you might find this advice useful to connect to the dratted thing in Gmail.

Although the school's online documentation says it's impossible to connect without Outlook, both POP3 and IMAP is available from Microsoft's servers. Simply follow the following instructions:

Open the GMail Settings
Go to "Accounts" and scroll down to "Get mail from other accounts".

Click "Add another mail account"
On the first screen enter your University email address - e.g. bob.wilson.05@aberdeen.ac.uk.

Click "Next"
On the next screen enter the information as follows:

Username: Your email address, in full, as above.
Password: Your password, obviously.
Pop Server: pop-eu.exchangelabs.com
Set the port to: 995
Tick the box marked "Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail."

Save the changes, and go through any other steps you want - it's up to you if you want to keep your messages on the University server, or if you want to send mail from that address. It really doesn't matter - so long as your settings are typed in as above you'll start getting your emails.

You can also connect to imap by just replacing "pop" with "imap" in the server address. Not sure of the port number, though, because I didn't try it.

Tell me how it goes.

What would you do if you got pregnant at 17? You might consider an abortion, or adoption, or try to keep the child. Fair enough, that's your choice.

But what if your mother is Sarah Palin, the US Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, and gun-loving religious nut? As a statement, quoted on the BBC website, says (emphasis mine):

I'm sure there are plenty of anecdotes of this sort of sudden marriage working out OK. I'm also sure there are plenty more stories of this failing. But what is sad is that this child has no choice in the matter. Politically, the Republican set will accept nothing other than a hasty marriage, lest their whiter-than-white-or-at-least-they-like-to-pretend image is damaged by the awful scare of unmarried sex. Genius guys, really.

For a group that professes to believe in the family, it's this attitude that breaks most of them up. Why don't we just turn off the internets and roll-back fifty years? That's what social conservatism seems to mean - turning off our values one decade at a time. Hold on everyone, casual racism will be back next, and they'll start harvesting under-developed countries for resources within the... oh.

So, I feel sorry for Bristol Palin. She could never do anything other than this, whatever she wants to do. Hopefully this won't take-over her life.

Today I ran-up in the Guardian's Travel Writing Competition. They cut my entry down a lot, so the original is at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd3htvp2_22gz5cd3d8

What do you think?

This idea came to me the other day. I expect a publisher very soon. MAGNANIMOUS FLETCHER - DINOSAUR HUNTER OF THE CIA. Wish me luck.

My girlfriend sent me this. I'm speechless.

I've just put up the temporary version of the new ASR website. I've quite a bit more work to do for the final version, but I think it's already a lot nicer.

Check it out, and listen to me on our classic rock show, ASRock! on Monday at 11am. Visit http://www.aberdeenstudentradio.com/

Following my Modernism lecture, in which I am still sitting, I have decided to start my poetic canon of Imagist poems. I have entitled it "The Lecture", and it follows:

The Lecture -

Sitting in lines,
Faces listening,
- - - - - - brains listening to something else.

Was it good for you?

Thanks to a generous donation from InfringementSupport.org I now have the domain JosephFarthing.com. My t-shirt website Kilt Handstands.com is almost completed as well, and you can view a preview at kilthandstands.com/new site. Please tell me what you think.

Hercules, the fallen son of mighty Zeus, was challenged by Eurystheus to accomplish twelve great feats, all of which he achieved with great mastery. However, it was in the thirteenth and final challenge that Hercules met his match; to pick kick-ass music for a classic rock show. Where the son of Zeus failed, we shall succeed. ASRock - the gods command you to listen!

Every week, we'll be drilling directly into the deep core of the earth, where all the best rock music is stored. Our master extractor-wizards know best how to channel the deep energy contained within a guitar solo or rockin' beat and deliver it straight to your internets.

Classic rock, and more, every Monday at 11am on Aberdeen Student Radio - aberdeenstudentradio.com.

My new t-shirt website is now working. Buy a shirt from me! Visit jfm.phoenixlabs.org/kilt

Someone passed me a link to a Times article about the new Thomas Deacon city academy in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, which is a 2,200 pupil secondary school without a playground. WTF? Does anyone else think that's crazy?

As a PFI funded "Academy" (ie a private school that still receives government funding, but is also corporate managed) I get the feeling that this isn't so much of a school but an educational investment, designed to turn the financiers a significant profit. A small-scale school with a large number of pupils strikes me as corporate-style streamlining. Yes, it's efficient if you're worried about gaining as much per-head pupil funding per £ invested and land bought, but it's not really great for education, is it?

Got facebook today, found it mildiy interesting. I do wonder, however, why it doesn't have an 'enemy' feature, like Slashdot. Imagine if you could add swathes of people as your enemy, team up with the Enemies of your Enemies and start some kind of online face-war. Send gifts? I want to send MISSILES! Powerful face-missiles that will obliterate entire parts of other people's profiles, creating fallout that will ruin the reputation of their friends.

I can but dream.

This is just a test entry to get my RSS stuff working.