Writing in China

In my search for various funny photos for Lethargic Friday, I stumbled over www.thoughts.com website. It’s not really just a photo site, but a social networking kind of deal as well.

In their photos area is a wide range of images, ranging from the really quite nice, to the strange, (such as the one below), to the downright bizarre. They’re submitted by various users, which may explain the variety.

There are other things on the site though, from blogs to videos, polls, surveys a news area (rather out of date), a forum and groups area.

I’ve signed up because it looks like it may be a bit of fun, but also because I think it might be quite a good place to add my links and generally advertise my blog etc. Not that I believe in splashing my blog name all over the place, but if you put your links in a forum signature, and then actively and suitably join that community, people will click on them.

These can also be picked up by search engines, which is good for your pagerank and so on and so forth.

I have to say some of the blogs on the site are rather… meh, but there are a few good ones. The videos mostly consist of the usual ‘YouTube’ kind of tosh, though there was one that made me laugh.

I think the key areas here are the forums and groups though. For a bit of promotion, and a bit of fun. It’s not as big as the larger social networking sites, so you stand more chance of being noticed if you contribute well. I’m a member of numerous forums, and they’ve provided a decent amount of traffic over time.

Okay. Apparently the problem with the internet access I'm having is due to the undersea cables to the US and Europe. One was damaged a few days ago (not sure how), slowing the net from here down (for sites outside of China of course). Then the backup cable was broken in an earthquake, reducing bandwidth even more.

This happened a couple of years ago, and I was barely able to get online at all then. Now it's bad, but I can at least access things from work (apparently business connections are getting priority), and reach most sites from home via proxy servers, though I'm not quite sure why that is.

So it looks like I'm going to struggle for at least a month.

Yesterday was very cloudy (and very humid and hot) here in Beijing, and I was out and about when people suddenly started looking upwards.

I looked up too and lo! There it was. The sun was being eaten! I panicked and started screaming, until someone explained what was going on, whereupon I took a photo with my phone.

Due to it being overcast, the clouds acted as a kind of filter, allowing me to see the eclipse quite clearly without burning my retina's out, though it was the last bit by then.

I'll post a pic when I get around to it. I'm quite chuffed, I've never seen an eclipse before!

Thanks for the comments about being blocked from Facebook and Twitter. I had a suggestion from Aldon at Orient Lodge to use TOR. TOR is a browser/plugin that links to a chain of servers which masks your IP address. I used TOR before, years ago, but forgot about it.

Anyway, I loaded it up again, and sure enough, it still works. The only problem is that it makes browsing very sloooooww!

And my RevuBlog has finally been approved for an Entrecard widget, so you can drop on that now too!

Anyway, I was so busy yesterday during the day I didn't manage to write anything, and yesterday evening I was too drunk and lazy.

Today I'm feeling a bit hungover, so I'm moving my Lethargic Friday to Lethargic Saturday. I didn't do one last week anyway, so we're overdue.

I don't usually repeat news that you can find on other sites, but I thought this one was relevant, considering all the problems I have with blocked blogs.

Recently China announced that every new PC should have software it's named 'Green Dam' either pre-installed, or included on a disk.

According to the Govt. the software is an 'extension' of the 'Great firewall of China', bringing filtering right onto your desktop, to prevent people accessing porn, basically.

According to other people, it will filter a lot more than that, and even shut down your application (Word/web browser etc) if you type in certain 'sensitive' words.

What's more, a US company says some of the code used has been blatantly stolen from one of their applications, and is considering legal action against PC suppliers (in the States initially) who ship it.

The software was supposed to start shipping July 1st, but the Govt. recently announced it would be delayed, but even so so companies have installed/shipped it anyway.

Personally, I don't think this is going to be very effective. An awful lot of PCs bought in China are sold in PC markets, which are run by small dealers. I can't see these people worrying about installing this software on their PCs. I build all our PCs myself, so it's certainly not going to end up on any in this household!

Still, if you're in China and wish to buy a PC, then it's worth remembering. Ask your supplier not to load it, or format and reload Windows when you get home! I don't think it's available for Linux, so you're probably safe using that.

You can read more details here.