Life in China...

About a month ago our access to blogger disappeared, at the same time our access to reading blogger and wordpress blogs went away. Flickr and then several other sites that we didn't realize that we checked that often. Ok, a nice reminder that there must be an anniversary coming up that we might not of noticed had they not made sure that we couldn't notice. Ok, it would have been impossible not to know what brought about the blocking of blogs, but the blocking was shoddy at best and a lot of articles still got through - most of the blogs that they are trying to block are the Chinese language blogs, seeing as most of us westerners know about the history they're blocking they usually don't even worry about us.

So we figured that all would be good in a few weeks. We've limped by with posting our blogs, more work then it should be, and used a couple of good proxy sites to make sure that we could still see the information that was being blocked (Red Sox scores).

Late last week Flickr was accessible again, yippee, and I can start to load up photos again. We are months behind in updating that one....

Blogger and all still remained blocked, and now this week the blocking seems to be getting even tighter. As of Sunday we noticed that more and more of the proxy sites we use to get around the great firewall are not responding. Who knows, maybe it'll jump back soon and things will be unblocked or maybe, as some are saying, it'll stay blocked through at least October.

So, we may be taking an impromptu break from blogging, not because we want to but because we are too cheap to pay the $40 for a VPN service that, for now at least, would allow us to get around China's firewall. So, if we don't get a post in you should be able to flip over to Flickr where, at least right now, we can still upload photos.