The Chinks has done it again. Wednesday Evening, March 25, The ever popular western video webby Youtube has been blocked in China again.

According to CNN Technology reports:

"We do not know the reason for the blockage and we are working as quickly as possible to restore access to our users," said Scott Rubin, a spokesman for Google, which owns YouTube."

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/ptech/03/25/youtube.china/

I've been scrambling millions of proxies and still can't find one that works. They made their Firewall like Fort Knox.

Finally This morning I found this http://kproxy.com/

The results would seem mediocre because of the language barrier but I guess this would suffice this stupid predicament.

I Saw another alternative call the FREEDOM STICK which is like a collection of pre-installed softwares that can be used to go through China's impenetrable firewall. I really don't know where to get/buy this but I reckon it's underground.

Http://siliopedia.com

IMHO, this is just pure crap but the more I try to rationalize things the more messed up I become. Only to realize one thing...

"Oh yeah, reality check.. This is China PERIOD"

*Grunts*

5pm on a Friday afternoon. A call came through ..

“Hello?” I said ..

“Hey .. Are you going back to the office? There is a problem on site, we need to talk to you..”

“I’ll be there in 20 minutes..”

The project is literally very small and not much design was involved, mostly additions and alterations of the existing site. It’s a startup fashion design company that is gonna be building its name in Beijing.

Layout plans have all been approved by the client and was sent over to the builders for site verification.

When I came to the office everybody was there, the marketing fellow, the project manager, my assistant and head of the sub-contractor company that was doing all the work.

Apparently, there was a discrepancy between the drawings that I sent over and the markings on the site. I visited the project 3 days ago and this predicament was never brought to my attention until now.

This was quite late, given the fact that the client has already approved the layouts and everything was given a go signal by everybody involved.

What I’m really pissed about is that this mistake was being pinned on the Design department specifically on me. Procedural wise, this is really not my job. It is the Project Manager’s duty to verify if my drawings are accurately interpreted on site.

The contractor not only has a tongue of a retarded bird which relatively sounds like a sick pigeon but he also has an attention span of a lightning bolt. He would utter the words, like

“I see, I see..”

but what he really meant was ..

“there is a big pile of wood blocking my brain”.

This is definitely the last time I would be working with him. He is metaphorically making me age faster.

The Project Manager, on the other hand, is a complete opposite. He’s pompously clever. Too clever that he can perfectly make impromptu stories just to clean his hands. He would’ve been a great prosecution lawyer. Project Management by definition is quite self explanatory, but I reckon his mantra with regards to his position is..

“I will manage the project but if it screws up, I’ll blame the designer..”

I really wanna place him in a skewer and barbeque his chinky ass.

The heated debate held on for hours which ended up with my assistant shouting at the pompous, incompetent Project Manager. He pointed his fingers at us like a fart-sniffing airhead.

Nobody likes being blamed for something that’s not under his scope of work. Nobody!!

Yep... I've officially converted. Adobe Photoshsop CS 3 is out, CS4 is in. I'm a lil surprised that the total file size is less than 1 gigabyte but it still It took me around 30 minutes to install everything including new fonts and plug-ins.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/

I don't really consider this as a major upgrade but just a revamp of its predecessor. The colors are relatively still the same as well as the command tool sequences.

I doodled with the interface & immediately noticed the major change that Adobe has been bragging which was the tabbed canvasses. It works like a web browser which all the files you open as you goes into one window. I'm still not sure if this will be a helpful feature for me or it might just make me jump up the ceiling.

20 minutes after, I can roughly say that I'm gonna spend some time getting used to this new interface.

High Res Version: GET YOUR FILTHY PAWS OFF MY WIFE!!

After all the wacky fellows of hifi finally stopped bugging me to join this micoblogging thingy... I finally gave in.

I'm that much of a hyper blogger as my last entry here as you can see is three months ago. lol This lazy afternoon gave me the gutts to try something new.

http://www.plurk.com

Plurk's interface is pretty confusing at first but 15 mins into trying the buttons and you'll be able to figure it out. It's sort of like an upgrade version of Twitter. Sadly though, most of my friends inside made it like a humongous chat room which defeated the purpose of microblogging. (Peace tayo larry .. :P)

First thing that came to mind was if I was on the road could I take a photo with my phone, upload it on flickr and post it on plurk. Sounds like a hard task a few years ago but I marveled at how easy it was.

I tried this while I was in the cab heading home for lunch. *Shutter Click*

I am using a nokia E71, which would typically look like a knock off from the blackberry series but this baby lets me do everything now a days. I went online using GPRS, (No wifi was available) and went to flickr's mobile website.

It's my first time uploading something from my phone but the site was  quite idiot free. Went to the upload button and searched for the picture inside the memory card.

After uploading was the daunting task of getting the URL of the jpeg i uploaded. I tried a couple of things but the only thing that worked was clicking the SEND as TEXT button while on the flickr webby. It will automatically go to a new sms page with the URL in its body just waiting to be copied.

After copying the website address (Editing Options > Copy). I went to plurk's mobile website. and realized I can't see the paste option on the list. I tried a couple of combinations and finally got it to work.

(Press the Corner Triangle Button + the Control button and V) this command makes a lot of sense since windows applications have the same logic.

10 mins later I have successfully taken a picture, uploaded it in cyberspace and posted it on a website. Plurk also does automation to most of the major social networks such as Facebook, Multiply and Friendster in realtime.

Microblogging may sound like an overly narcissistic attempt in life but what the heck, it's too short to be sheltered.