Blocked by the Great Firewall of China

Inspired by Alec, I just checked using the Great Firewall of China checking site and found out that my site, along with Donna’s, her blog, her podcast, the site for her first book and the web site we set up to promote self-employment for folks on the Autism spectrum, Auties.org, are all blocked!

Blocked by the Great Firewall of China

Presumably it’s working by IP address and so anything that happens to be on that IP address is persona non-grata in China. 🙁

I did a bit of testing and found that VPAC (where I work) is blocked too, as is Melbourne Uni.

The Jumbled Jigsaw arrives!

Well the author copies of Donna’s 9th published book The Jumbled Jigsaw have arrived with a fab cover featuring a lovely painting by Donna called the Music of Beingness!

Hopefully it’ll stir up the autism field into realising that there is far more diversity in the causes of the symptoms that get labelled as “Autism” and that a diagnosis of autism confers no magic resistance to things like Tourettes, OCD, bipolar or anything else that the rest of the population gets.

The Sydney Riots

My wife wrote the following and has kindly given me permission to publish it here.


THE SYDNEY RIOTS

I don’t love a racist country
a land of sweeping hate
of rugged men with iron bars
who say they stand up for a mate
I don’t call that madness friendship
I don’t call that loyalty
A communion based on hatred,
That’s not Australian, not to me.

We are all from far horizons
For our beliefs we are to blame
We make choices for our actions
In a world that’s gone insane.

by Donna Williams
www.donnawilliams.net


Donna’s website in new languages..

I’ve spent a big chunk of the weekend adding links to translate Donna’s website into a variety of languages using FreeTranslation.Com who kindly provide a method to link such that a visitor can click on a page and jump to a translation of it created via their site in real time.

I can’t speak any of the languages, but Donna assures me it’s pretty good as machine translations go for the ones she understands! 🙂