Hi,
I had the same problem, if you use Mozilla firefox as a browser, there is a good addon to connect to IRC
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/16/
once installed,
- Run it from the Tools/Chatzilla in the menu
- Click on the "freenode" link in the list of available servers
- Once the connection is complete, type /j wrongplanet
Otherwise you can install a standalone program, mIRC
http://www.mirc.com/get.html
- connect to freenode in the server list
- type /j #wrongplanet once connected