Things Back To Normal

 

The Nanjing E. Rd MRT station on the Muzha line. Taken with a Nikon D200 and a 18-35mm lens on the 27th of January 2007. Part of the Muzha MRT Series 1.

It looks like things are slowly coming back to normal. I was able to blog from home, which now seems like such a luxury. I do not know how or why, but I am sure that WP.com was blocked for a few days from my ISP.

For the moment, there have been no technical difficulties whatsoever, so I am hoping that this thing was just a temporary glitch. In my eyes, WP.com had disappeared and didn’t reappear until I had started using proxy servers. I had checked multiple computers and different locations in our building, and it didn’t change anything.

Fortunately, I was still able to access a few places where I could blog and I managed to find a patch for my situation. Today, at around 2:30PM, things seemed to go back to normal.

It led me to do some research about past blocks in other places. In India, blogger was blocked from some ISP.

WP.com went down last easter.

WP.com decided to delete splogs and ban users last November.

And some discussions on the subject.

Getting back to another subject, travel plans.

In case that my laptop fails us, I have come up with a back up plan for my blogging and writing. I have purchased a notebook.

A notebook?

Yes a plain and simple notebook.

There are a lot of notebooks available for purchase. I had to find the right one. I didn’t plan on doing this, but the wife was shopping for some cards, so I had some time to kill. I looked through the different models and after a few glances, decided that I needed one without any lines so that I could add some drawings of things I saw.

 

I found a nice one from teNeues. It sounds like a German company to me. Actually it is a German publishing company. This is the one I bought, for around 395NTD (12USD). It is cheaper than in the US or Canada, because it is listed at 15.95USD. It is really nifty, because it comes with a magnetic clasp to protect the pages. It is hard to explain, but basically it wraps the part that is normally exposed to use in a hardcover binding.

Pretty cool. I plan on keeping a journal on this at the same time. This isn’t the one I bought, I bought the one with Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh on the cover, though I might go back and get this nice cool blue one as well. You never know, I might need another one!

One of my best friends did this during his travels.

It is so low tech that it appeals to me.

Since the pages are not lined and made out of ink absorbing paper, it can also be used as a sketchbook.

Cheap, low-tech and very useful.

I like it!