Occasional Tales

Unless you’re using Firefox. Sort of. At school I was able to append material to existing entries on my Live Journal blog, but I was unable to post anything new. At home, I still can’t access Live Journal at all via Firefox, even via mail messages advising me of unwelcome comments. That has been the means by which I’ve been visiting LJ from school. For want of any solution to the problem at home, I switched to Chrome and – make surprised face now – everything worked. I could log in to LJ, see my blog, and post a new entry. I double checked with IE9 and met with the same success. What is it about my version of Firefox at home that’s preventing me from getting near Live Journal? I thought it might be noscript, but disabling that made no difference. I wondered whether some cookie was affecting access, but deleting ones with .ru in them didn’t help. But… but… Doh! I should’ve deleted the LJ cookies. Done. And? There’s my blog… No, I can’t log in. Nor can I get to th...

A lunchtime update. I’m using lunch as an excuse to add some further information about the current state of Live Journal, but I should really be ploughing through lunch and getting on with marking some tests while at the same time enjoying a horrible little headache. There’s a story about Live Journal on Global Voices which offers some hints about the current cranky state of the service. I don’t know whether everyone is banging their head against a brick wall trying to access their blogs or anyone else’s. The Information Policy site has this post from early August about the mis­treatment of Live Journal. It looks like the Russian authorities (though which authorities is another matter) are probably to blame for the current state of affairs and that Live Journal is about to become Dead Journal. 17.10.11. The latest update is that I was able to update an LJ post and access most of the site, but I was unable to post anything new. 18.10.11. Still unable to post new entries o...

Let’s say stupid things. I’ve just been reading Meeting signals pressure on microblogs from the China Media Project. It’s about the new State Internet Information Office and its antics. This paragraph is classic Doublespeak At yesterday’s meeting, Wang Chen emphasized that “[we] must thoroughly apply a series of guiding spirits of the central Party in regards to internet construction, development and management, keeping to the guiding principle of ‘positive use, scientific development, management by rule of law and ensuring safety’ …” Wang said the government must “thoroughly give play to the positive role of microblogs in serving society, taking concrete steps to develop and manage [them], working together to preserve a healthy and orderly online communication order, serving the overall work of the government and the Party, and serving the masses.” Which is basically saying, “We must utterly control everything to the sub-atomic level as usual”. Don’t even get ...

Dose of the flu? I did a little experiment last night, posting to WordPress using IE9, Firefox and Chrome. Apart from the WP toolbar being quirky with Firefox and Chrome, there were no further problems. Live Journal has remained quirky today. From home I still can’t access LJ or if I can, it’s temporary. I can see some parts of the site, but not others, and then the former join the latter. From school I was able to edit an entry, but when I tried to post a new entry, I hit a brick wall. The odd thing is, it doesn’t matter whether I’m using Freegate or not: I can’t post new entries on my LJ blog. When I did manage to see the LJ status page, it claimed all was well. Mind you, that may be like Windows saying, “This device is working properly” when you rather suspect it’s probably doing no such thing. I’m hoping the current situation is temporary although I don’t know where the problem lies. Of the various blog hosts, what’s still accessible from this darkest of dark holes o...