April 8, 2005

• Exploring the International Blogosphere

  Okay, I know, “international blogosphere” is a tautology, but it
  doesn’t hurt, especially in the U.S.of A., to remind people that not
  every blogger is tapping out the English language on those keys.

  The other day, my radio was on and tuned to public broadcasting, as it
  often has been since I was driven back to the radio two months ago when
  my computer and the PS2s all went down at once.  Before I moved in
  here on the public utility powergrid around the turn of the century and
  went online, public radio (an old car radio connected to a 12V battery
  that I sometimes had to drag on a sled to a neighbor’s house to charge)
  had been my connection to the outside
  world.  I’d listen as I did jewelry work or household tasks.

  Radio has TV beat for multi-tasking because one can lend an ear to it
  while doing any number of other things.  I remember, back in the
  1950s, when we’d recently gotten our TV, my mother complained that she
  had a tendency to scorch the ironing or let the soup boil over when the
  TV had grabbed her attention.  That doesn’t happen so often with
  radio.

  I was tapping away here at the keyboard when I heard that tautological
  phrase, “international blogosphere.”  The program, I think, had
  been The World.  I’m pretty sure, anyway, that it was one of the
  BBC programs our local NPR station rebroadcasts, but it could have been
  some other news show.  As I said, I was multi-tasking, not giving
  it my full attention.

  I caught the entire “blogosphere” spot later in the day when the rebroadcast came on.  They were talking about the globalvoices
  project at Harvard.  The speaker said they wanted to be sure that
  the blogosphere didn’t become parochial to the English speaking
  world.  I made a note to check it out later, and googled it today.

  The top item was about Isaac Mao,
  whose original site is being blocked because of an April Fools Day blog
  in which he made fun of the Great Firewall of China.  Here is the
  substance of that entry:

  The site of isaacmao.com has been blocked due to it’s ’sensitive’
  content. I don’t know how long it will take to return. I’m starting
  emgergency processes now, and will update information in this backup
  site. Thanks for your attention and kind queries.

  (Anyone
  ever linked to my site for the “sensitive” post about Great Firewall,
  please kindly trackback here to tell more people what happened)…

  Don’t worry, it’s not so sad thing, it’s fun enough~! No experience, no understanding.

  The “sensitive content” in question may have
  been Isaac’s very funny April Fools post, where he said that
  isaacmao.com had been blocked, and suggested people visit other,
  non-offensive websites, including net memes like “How to Fold A Shirt” – his post read, in part: “Isaac Mao was exiled to Siberia… what do you want to visit now?”

  Or, it may been the diagram – hosted on flickr – that Isaac linked to, with his speculations on how
  the Chinese firewall operates. (Flickr is becoming an increasingly
  useful tool to help our Chinese friends evade the firewall. In the
  event that Isaac’s flickr post is blocked, here’s a copy of the diagram hosted on our servers.)

  Isaac
  believes his blog is intact, but his ISP was ordered to stop resolving
  the isaacmao.com domain name. He’s now working to get the domain name
  to resolve to his backup blog. A number of people (Global Voices
  included) have offered Isaac hosting for his blog outside of China.
  Isaac’s planning on keeping it in China, seeing situations like this as
  an excellent chance to learn more about internet filtering in China:

  To
  my personal blog, I’m not so eager to move my blog to oversea’s
  hosting. It’s so good to study this space with more local experience.
  (from a recent email from Isaac.)

  One issue
  Isaac’s situation raises is the idea of “blogger adoption”. We may want
  to look into a system that allows bloggers in relatively free countries
  to “adopt” blogs in relatively unfree countries and keep backup copies
  of those sites. When a site is blocked, the adoptive blogger could post
  a mirror of the site based on the backup. If anyone is interested in
  trading ideas on how we might hack together such a system, please drop
  me a line at ethanz AT gmail DOT com.

  Any techies in my readership interested in contributing?

  ---

  Memory Lane

  Retrograde Mercury has been a helpful factor since I started writing my
  memoirs.  Most of the progress I’ve made in that area has happened
  when Merc was retro.  In recent weeks, I added a few episodes to
  the adolescence end of my dangling threads, and have been giving a lot
  of reflective thought to the other dangling end in the ‘seventies.

  But that’s not the only area of those memoirs that have been getting my attention.  Thanks to a new reader, craftygirl, I have been rereading, expanding and revising many of the entries I wrote almost three years ago.

  This
  leads me to a little aside about that fine Xanga feature, the Feedback
  Log.  I have been trying for years to point out to my Luddite Old
  Fart that little box at the left on his main page where his daily and
  weekly props, comments, guestbook entries and new subscribers are
  tabulated.  Recently, he told me with some chagrin that he
  possibly might have missed out on a lucrative knife sale because he
  hadn’t been checking his guestbook for months.  He doesn’t check
  his email either (and I check it for him only rarely), but that’s
  another story.
  
  
  
  Usually, when I present “new” ideas
  to him, particularly technological innovations such as copy-and-paste
  or “feedback logs”, his eyes glaze over and he tunes me out.  He’s
  sure that, since he got along for over half a century without such
  newfangled things, he can get along without them now.  This time,
  though, with the added stimulus of a financial connection, I think I
  successfully got his attention when I mentioned the feedback log.
  
  
  
  Do you pay attention to your feedback
  log?  If someone were to leave a comment on one of your past
  entries (assuming that you’re not one of those Xangans who deletes or
  makes private everything older than yesterday), would you know
  it?  I check my feedback log every day, because if I didn’t, I’d
  miss the comments that are left on my memoir entries.  Those
  comments help keep me motivated to go on writing the memoirs.
  
  
  
  Few people leave comments on those
  “old” entries.  I think that’s because they don’t expect me to
  read those comments, and not because those entries aren’t being
  read.  I get occasional emails, and gifts in the little purple
  hat, from both Xangans and non-members, that indicate people are
  following those links in my left module and reading the memoirs.
  
  
  
  I want to make it known that it is
  also okay to comment on those old entries.  When these things are
  compiled into a final manuscript for publication, whether by me or my
  heirs, there will be acknowledgement of the input and support my Xanga
  readers have provided.  I’ve promised a few autographed copies,
  too, to benefactors who’ve had enough confidence in me to assume that
  there would eventually be a book.

  craftygirl
  has been reading my life story.  I read her comments in my
  feedback log.  Some of them impelled me to go back and look at the
  entries on which she was commenting.  In some instances that led
  to corrections, additions and revisions.  This was a task I’d
  known I needed to do for a long time.  I appreciate being given
  the impetus to do it.  Most days, blogging the present is
  infinitely more attractive than revising the past.

  ---

  Brenda Starr is gone.

  For 43 years a comic book heroine, redheaded reporter Brenda Starr, inspired a
  couple of generations of women to
  break out of some “feminine” stereotypes, while perpetuating some other
  stereotypes.  Brenda’s creator, Dale Messick, died a few days ago
  at the age of 98.  If Janet and Dan hadn’t completely bollixed up
  the image upload system, I’d have pics for you of both Brenda and Dale.
   

  

  • 2:49 pm
  • 6 Comments