[This is my Blog] Technical assistance

[Ben Lehman]

Hi --

I'm in serious need of some technical assistance for This is my Blog and I was hoping someone could lend a hand.

Here's the situation:

I'm shortly (possibly already, as I've been having non-trivial difficulties accessing the thing) going to be living behind a very large firewall which, amongst many other websites, blocks out all of blogspot.  Which includes my blog, as well as many other gaming theory blogs.

For the purposes of reading other people's stuff, I have some well-jury rigged solutions with RSS feeds.

However, for the purposes of posting on my blog, I am totally at a loss.  The anonymizers I've been given are pretty much worthless at the task -- so far, I haven't managed to author a post to completion.  I would very much like to keep writing This is my Blog, but I need to work something else out.

That's where you come in.

My ideal solution would be to migrate the archives and comments to a new site or even an entirely new blogging interface, which I can update via web.  Other solutions might include an off-line posting application, some other work around, or even (in a last ditch) someone else taking over posting duties (I would send you the text via e-mail.)

I know there are a lot of tech-savvy people about this, and I can't imagine what I want is too impossibly hard.  Anyone want to step up and lend a hand?  You will win my undying* gratitude.

yrs--
--Ben

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Ben,

There's a lot of possible ways to tackle this, but it might be useful to get a little more info from you out in the open:

1) How comfortable are you with obviating the filtering that is in place at the firewall. (If you've already tried anonymizers it's probably not an issue, but it's something to consider.)
2) Are you willing to pay a monthly fee to someone in order to host/allow access to the blog?
3) Do you have other reasons for moving to a new location beyond the access problems? Would you prefer not to have to move at all?

My initial take is that perhaps you just haven't found the right anonymizer. They have differing implementations that could be hampering your experience.

-Tim

[Adam Dray]

I sent Ben a PM with the offer of a port redirector from my well-hosted linux box to blogspot. If his blog pages are set up with relative links, it should do the job nicely.

[Selene Tan]

Blogger offers a service that allows you to post to your blog via e-mail. It's in the Settings|Email section -- you pick a "secret word" and e-mail your posts to username.secretword@blogger.com . If you can get access to this once (i.e. use another computer) and set it up, that should allow you to post. (Make sure you check the "Publish" button if you do this.)

That's probably the simplest solution.