more on yesterday's journal post
What follows is the post from yesterday's entry on matt dalby journal which seemed to precipitate an immediate blocking of any searches relating to the journal or to me, and perhaps a tightening of restrictions on tumblr which mean I can no longer edit posts already made.
Those searches are now available again - presumably on the grounds that searches involving the words matt dalby journal (with or without reference to tumblr or China) are non-existent. And that tumblr's blocked anyway.
I have made some slight changes. Where I've added comments after the fact they are in square brackets prefaced by an asterisk. Other material in square brackets is from the original post, but added after the journal was handwritten, as I was typing. I incorporate some of the first supplementary post which provided a reference to a news story in square brackets like other added material.
Any other discrepancies that creep in are because I'm having to type the whole thing again, having no way to cut and paste.
The second part of the post is also included since it has a calmer explanation of what happened from my point of view:
Monday 31 October 2011
An annoyance since late last week has been trying to get images of recent work for the studio to put on their website.
I'd sent images not long before coming so hadn't expected to need to do so again. I also chose not to bring my computer with me.
In most other places that wouldn't be a problem, but here I've been unable to access Facebook or blogger, and so unable to download images from my profile or santiago's dead wasp to my phone.
If anything tumblr is more frustrating. For the first couple of weeks I could access my sites and other people's sites just fine. Then just before I was asked for images access was blocked.
Now, I can still (at present) access my own posts through the tumblr app on my phone. I still see notification of the posts of people I'm following, and can still post using the app. But I can't see a way to download my own images.
This battle with the great firewall is annoying, but obviously just a minor irritation against what some people have to confront all the time.
[Ai Wei Wei and his struggle with authorities who are apparently happy to allow potentially life-threatening beatings despite hia international profile and involvement with the Olympics is only the most prominent example. We should all be so fearless.]
It puts into perspective the (still serious and repressive technology the Metropolitan Police have invested in allowing them to monitor people's phone use [, download data,] and direct their traffic onto a dummg network, covered in The Guardian online. I think it can also be used to shut down communications.
[For anyone interested the company behind this are UK based *[Leeds], they're called Datong *[plc] and supply a number of governments, many of them repressive, across Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Their technology is available at an arms fair near you. I'd say they were unethical bastards who ought to be put out of business - you may disagree. *[I accessed the Guardian story about the Metropolitan Police and Datong here - http://gu.com/p/3327k]]
For what it's worth I'm fundamentally opposed to the restriction of access to information by any authority for any reason.
In any case, although I haven't wanted to I have been able to mobilise friends and family to get me some images.
It's been a long process but at present I have a couple of shots of the mask/skull object from Tamlyn 11, a couple of shots of the mound of bricks and sticks also from Tamlyn 11, and some shots I had on my phone of the clay masks left by the Irwell and on Pomona Strand before I came here.
Thanks to Jen, Hannah, and Adam for going out of their way to help.
[I've been arguing with myself about making a post like this for close to a week.
Before access was blocked I did have some Chinese readership for the journal. I was concerned that in being too explicit I might cause problems for those people.
But on the other hand if you don't say what you think or stand for what you believe you deny an important part of yourself and collude in repression.
Besides the journal is almost wholly innocuous, even today's entry is pretty hedged about and easily ignored. It just felt important to stop avoiding the issue.]
*[The first part of the journal, posted in the morning, ends here. The rest was written and posted later in a separate entry since I can't edit posts. That second part follows:]
Things went a little screwy this morning after the first part of today's journal went up. First I wasn't able to edit that post (or any other) in order to add a link to the Guardian story about the Metropolitan Police and Datong [who are both still massive collections of bastards with no conscience.]
Now it's a few days since I went in to edit an existing post, so that may have been the case for a while. It might also be a glitch in the app, a problem with tumblr, or a transient issue. I'm sure it's coincidental rather than sinister though.
But following that I tried searching for matt dalby journal on Google using both browsers [on my phone]. That search was blocked, as was a search on my name. Both searches now have been restored [on the phone's browser, Opera still didn't return results. *[As of at least 8.45 Tuesday 1 November that search is now fine on Opera. But you'd need to know about the journal to search for it obviously.]]
At the time it certainly felt like action was being taken to ensure no one in China knew about the post [although at a guess no one in China would have known or cared about it anyway.] I emailed friends and blogged about the situation on santiago's dead wasp in case I found all my blogging and email routes blocked.
I don't believe that any action was taken by an actual person, that anyone read the journal, or that it had anything to do with me or that post in particular. Instead I'd guess that certain words, 'Ai Wei Wei' and 'repression' maybe, triggered an automatic action.
It did though have the effect of pissing me off amd ensuring that I'm not going to avoid saying just what I like in future. I intend to blog the whole of the offending posts *[the first part of the journal and the first supplement with the link to the Guardian story] over at santiago's dead wasp and to post the account of what happened that I put up there on the tumblr.
I don't suppose there'll be any further developments but if there are I'll cover them on both santiago's dead wasp and matt dalby journal.
I think at nearly three weeks I showed a lot of restraint before letting fly. A shame it was over something so selfish and trivial as not being able to access my photos. Oh well.
_____
But enough of that. A reasonably productive day in the studio - most of the casts came off easily and could be sealed again without being too badly deformed. I haven't attempted the bowl or the pomelo yet. I plan to use scissors rather than a craft knife for both, but I still expect they'll end up terribly distorted.
The spoon, pen and jar have been cast again. I ate the apple since I sliced into it so it be another one I cast.
_____
A pleasant evening at the studio where Lifen had a barbeque. There were a number of Swiss, Swedes, and Norwegians there with varying connections to Nordica. Nice friendly people, relaxed atmosphere, a good way to end the day.
Those searches are now available again - presumably on the grounds that searches involving the words matt dalby journal (with or without reference to tumblr or China) are non-existent. And that tumblr's blocked anyway.
I have made some slight changes. Where I've added comments after the fact they are in square brackets prefaced by an asterisk. Other material in square brackets is from the original post, but added after the journal was handwritten, as I was typing. I incorporate some of the first supplementary post which provided a reference to a news story in square brackets like other added material.
Any other discrepancies that creep in are because I'm having to type the whole thing again, having no way to cut and paste.
The second part of the post is also included since it has a calmer explanation of what happened from my point of view:
Monday 31 October 2011
An annoyance since late last week has been trying to get images of recent work for the studio to put on their website.
I'd sent images not long before coming so hadn't expected to need to do so again. I also chose not to bring my computer with me.
In most other places that wouldn't be a problem, but here I've been unable to access Facebook or blogger, and so unable to download images from my profile or santiago's dead wasp to my phone.
If anything tumblr is more frustrating. For the first couple of weeks I could access my sites and other people's sites just fine. Then just before I was asked for images access was blocked.
Now, I can still (at present) access my own posts through the tumblr app on my phone. I still see notification of the posts of people I'm following, and can still post using the app. But I can't see a way to download my own images.
This battle with the great firewall is annoying, but obviously just a minor irritation against what some people have to confront all the time.
[Ai Wei Wei and his struggle with authorities who are apparently happy to allow potentially life-threatening beatings despite hia international profile and involvement with the Olympics is only the most prominent example. We should all be so fearless.]
It puts into perspective the (still serious and repressive technology the Metropolitan Police have invested in allowing them to monitor people's phone use [, download data,] and direct their traffic onto a dummg network, covered in The Guardian online. I think it can also be used to shut down communications.
[For anyone interested the company behind this are UK based *[Leeds], they're called Datong *[plc] and supply a number of governments, many of them repressive, across Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Their technology is available at an arms fair near you. I'd say they were unethical bastards who ought to be put out of business - you may disagree. *[I accessed the Guardian story about the Metropolitan Police and Datong here - http://gu.com/p/3327k]]
For what it's worth I'm fundamentally opposed to the restriction of access to information by any authority for any reason.
In any case, although I haven't wanted to I have been able to mobilise friends and family to get me some images.
It's been a long process but at present I have a couple of shots of the mask/skull object from Tamlyn 11, a couple of shots of the mound of bricks and sticks also from Tamlyn 11, and some shots I had on my phone of the clay masks left by the Irwell and on Pomona Strand before I came here.
Thanks to Jen, Hannah, and Adam for going out of their way to help.
[I've been arguing with myself about making a post like this for close to a week.
Before access was blocked I did have some Chinese readership for the journal. I was concerned that in being too explicit I might cause problems for those people.
But on the other hand if you don't say what you think or stand for what you believe you deny an important part of yourself and collude in repression.
Besides the journal is almost wholly innocuous, even today's entry is pretty hedged about and easily ignored. It just felt important to stop avoiding the issue.]
*[The first part of the journal, posted in the morning, ends here. The rest was written and posted later in a separate entry since I can't edit posts. That second part follows:]
Things went a little screwy this morning after the first part of today's journal went up. First I wasn't able to edit that post (or any other) in order to add a link to the Guardian story about the Metropolitan Police and Datong [who are both still massive collections of bastards with no conscience.]
Now it's a few days since I went in to edit an existing post, so that may have been the case for a while. It might also be a glitch in the app, a problem with tumblr, or a transient issue. I'm sure it's coincidental rather than sinister though.
But following that I tried searching for matt dalby journal on Google using both browsers [on my phone]. That search was blocked, as was a search on my name. Both searches now have been restored [on the phone's browser, Opera still didn't return results. *[As of at least 8.45 Tuesday 1 November that search is now fine on Opera. But you'd need to know about the journal to search for it obviously.]]
At the time it certainly felt like action was being taken to ensure no one in China knew about the post [although at a guess no one in China would have known or cared about it anyway.] I emailed friends and blogged about the situation on santiago's dead wasp in case I found all my blogging and email routes blocked.
I don't believe that any action was taken by an actual person, that anyone read the journal, or that it had anything to do with me or that post in particular. Instead I'd guess that certain words, 'Ai Wei Wei' and 'repression' maybe, triggered an automatic action.
It did though have the effect of pissing me off amd ensuring that I'm not going to avoid saying just what I like in future. I intend to blog the whole of the offending posts *[the first part of the journal and the first supplement with the link to the Guardian story] over at santiago's dead wasp and to post the account of what happened that I put up there on the tumblr.
I don't suppose there'll be any further developments but if there are I'll cover them on both santiago's dead wasp and matt dalby journal.
I think at nearly three weeks I showed a lot of restraint before letting fly. A shame it was over something so selfish and trivial as not being able to access my photos. Oh well.
_____
But enough of that. A reasonably productive day in the studio - most of the casts came off easily and could be sealed again without being too badly deformed. I haven't attempted the bowl or the pomelo yet. I plan to use scissors rather than a craft knife for both, but I still expect they'll end up terribly distorted.
The spoon, pen and jar have been cast again. I ate the apple since I sliced into it so it be another one I cast.
_____
A pleasant evening at the studio where Lifen had a barbeque. There were a number of Swiss, Swedes, and Norwegians there with varying connections to Nordica. Nice friendly people, relaxed atmosphere, a good way to end the day.
Comments