Adso

[lostinchina]

Anyone know if Adso got shut down? I haven't used it in about a month, but now I'm getting that kind of message -- "adsotrans could not be found" when every other website is fine; and even something like "entry was refused" for both adso and newsinchina.

Anyone know how we can know if something is blocked or just difficult for some other reason? I've never been able to get into any site that had a .gov ending, including the US Embassy in Bangkok and the UK Inland Revenue, and I always assumed they were blocked -- until today, when to my surprise I got into the Inland Revenue site.

cheers

[roddy]

I'm sure the man himself will be along shortly to fill in the details, but it's apparently a temporary issue and should be solved within 24 hours.

[lostinchina]

many thanks. indeed, soon after I sent it I came across the adso forum (where I could've asked) and it had recent dates (so I wouldn't have asked) and then I came across your hydrogen issue.

So I'll have to submit myself as evidence in favour of your view re: hydrogen vs stupidity..

Know anything about the other issue? I am absolutely amazed that I just got into the Inland Rev site after a year. I just assumed they were blocked.

[trevelyan]

Hi lostinchina,

We're not banned (yet) but are down for the day. The short story is that we're having some technical trouble with DNS servers that won't be resolved until tomorrow. There is a longer story, but it involves me looking stupid so I'm not going to share it in this forum. ;-)

There is some good news though. If you've used the site for a while you may have noticed that we occasionally have "downtime" issues where the server drops like a stone and needs to be rebooted manually. We just narrowed this down to a problem with the CPU overheating -- a technical problem with the server rather than an issue with load. After a bit of a back-and-forth with the hosting company by telephone, a hands on demonstration this afternoon has apparently convinced them that there actually is a problem and that they need to fix it.

If you want to access the site in the meantime, it should still be accessible by IP address.

http://211.167.74.65

[lostinchina]

many thanks.

I'm sure many others have pointed this out to you, but I'd like to add my name to the list of fans of Adsotrans. I started studying Chinese a very long time ago (1977, but who's counting) and my life would have been immeasurably better in those days with something like this. And since I haven't studied much Chinese in the past decade or two, and am now getting back up to speed, this is a fantastic tool. Keep up the good work!

[self-taught-mba]

1st thanks for a great service

2nd, been trying to sign up for Adso Vocab and have not received the confirm email. Should I wait and try again or is this function currently down?

[trevelyan]

Thanks for the nice comments, guys. With luck the domain name will kick back in sometime later today and things will start working again.

mba -> the mail server went down when the server did and I hadn't thought to turn it back on. Both the Adso Vocab and NewsinChinese are run using PHP scripts that interact with Adso through http calls made to the adsotrans.com domain, so I don't think either site will really be functional until the DNS stuff kicks back in. If you have any troubles when the site is back up and running send me a private message and I'll take care of any problems.