Park Life – 公园生活

When the weather’s nice, there’s nowhere better to go than the park! The Jing’an Sclupture Park is one of my favourite places to go (near to my house), for many reasons.

艳阳高照的天气里，没有比去公园更好的去处了！静安雕塑公园是我最喜欢去的地方之一（就在我家附近），有很多原因。
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It’s now official – Facebook is a terrorist hangout (perhaps)

Due to what some see as draconian approach to media control, news stories don’t always come quickly to the mainland. Sometimes, however, the opposite is true!

I read a story in the Telegraph this morning which reminded me of something I’d heard many times before…but I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly where, so I did about 5 minutes of research and put together this super-timeline…

It was a shock when terrorism hit China before the Olympics…

August 2008 – Beijing Olympics security fears as terror attack kills 16 Chinese policemen

“The seemingly well-coordinated assault [...] appears to be China’s most serious act of political terror in more than a decade.”

“Ten days ago, a Muslim group which said it was fighting for the liberation of the region posted a video to a security website threatening to make the “most critical points of the Olympics” a target.

Riots in Western China saw more than 100 killed…

July 2009 – China riots: 156 killed in Urumqi as riots spread to Kashgar, according to Xinhua

“Calm had settled over Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province, after 20,000 police, troops and firefighters reclaimed the streets from rioters who burnt and smashed vehicles and shops, and clashed with security forces over Sunday night.”

The Telegraph’s coverage was, as usual, accurate and well-researched…

August 2009 – The battle to scale the Great Firewall of China

“[T]he Chinese government cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exercised [...] Facebook four weeks ago. This is because the government believes the rioters in Xinjiang province on July 5 used networking sites to communicate.”

As well as this golden nugget…

“When expats move to China, the issue of internet access is one of the first culture shocks. The first surprising thing is that internet cafés do not exist.”

Earlier this year released a whitepaper about its block of FB and similar sites…

June 2010 – China defends censoring web

“Anything considered subversive or threatening to “national unity”, China said, would however continue to be blocked.”

And now today’s breaking news…

December 2010 – Facebook emerges as ‘terrorist recruiting ground’

“The US government has warned that terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are targeting Facebook as a prime recruitment ground.”

It’s hard for progressive techophiles to argue the virtues of unblocking this type of website (or at least question the reasoning of the censorship) when Western governments underline the same fears…and more than a year later!

Norway owns Facebook – 挪威拥有Facebook

Name.com has a feature where you can search for domain names by keyword, and then see how many Google searches there are for that particular term. I was checking out Facebook related websites when I found out a shocking fact….

Name.com有一项功能，就是你可以按关键字搜索域名，然后看看有多少谷歌搜索结果是有这些关键字的。在我查看跟Facebook相关的网站的时候，找到了一个令人震惊的事实…

…Facebook is Norwegian! This ‘beta’ needs some more work…

…Facebook是挪威的！这个‘测试版’的需要再加工一下…

The funny Facebook status, or how I miss updating my blue friend

If you’re not interested in the concept of a funny Facebook status, then please turn away now! I have been without the blue monster for so long that I’m craving some humour and some chat…help me!

Some of you may know, and some of you may not know, but this site runs on the blood of Facebook. I got my first ‘hit’ internet article (that sounds so strange) writing about Facebook emoticons, and I feel like I owe a lot to the company in that it gave me the opportunity to talk to loads of people about different technology subjects (usually which I know nothing about).

Well today, that’s different – I’m going to write a bit about a new phenomenon which is sweeping the internet – the funny Facebook status. Let me preface this with a comment, I’m not claiming to be reinventing the wheel here, but I’m going to give you a list of some of the most amusing, cool, funny (and some downright hilarious) funny Facebook statuses out there right now. Some involve irony, some involve special characters and symbols, and some just include a straight up joke. Let’s check some out…

Funny Facebook status

Dalan is colour blind and thinks trying to solve a Rubik’s cube is pretty difficult…

Ok, let’s just admit it right off the bat, making fun of blind people (wait…colour blind isn’t really blind!) is not cool or clever (but it might make a couple of people laugh just a little bit).

Fiona ¡ǝɯıʇ ǝɯɐs ǝɥʇ ʇɐ ʞooqǝɔɐɟ ǝsn puɐ puɐʇspuɐɥ ɐ op ʎןןɐuıɟ uɐɔ

Ok I don’t think I have ever seen something as cool as this! All of the words are actually upside down! I think I saw a post about how to write characters upside down on someone else’s blog a few weeks ago, but right now all I can say is HAHAHA!

Jyrki is uploading a virus ████████████ 83%

I remember on MSN a few years ago there was one of those ‘sets of three’ emoticons which had an ‘uploading virus to you now’ thing on it. Made people crap themselves thinking that they would be infested with viruses soon! Now you can do it in your Facebook status – and you KNOW that there are fifty girls on your list who will message you asking if it’s for real…

Daisy is cle’a[ni.ng he'~r ke]yb36oa;rd

We’ve all done it, so why not share it! I actually haven’t cleaned my keyboard in months and it’s full of dirt and little hairs (no, not THAT type of hairs!).

Why don’t aliens eat clowns? Because they taste funny.

I have a colleague at work who is obsessed with puns, and this is the one I have heard him repeat most. Simple, funny and guaranteed to have people clicking ‘like’ on your status!

Anyway, these are my favourite funny Facebook statuses – let me know if you have any better!

Facebook penguin emoticon

Ladies and Gentleman, you’ve been waiting for a long time, so here it is – how to insert the brand new Facebook chat penguin emoticon into your Facebook chats! Ever since the Facebook shark emoticon was made available to the public, users have been going crazy guessing which animal or face that FB would provide for its loyal fans – well the wait is over! The designers have clearly been locked away in a special room for months, and they finally decided on…a penguin!

Why a penguin?

This is a tough question, as generally Facebook is not noted for the high frequency of penguins (or other animals to be honest), however this one could make good sense. The weather has begun to turn cold for the winter, and the Facebook penguin smiley could be just what you need to send your friends some emotion over the holiday season!

Anyway, I know that you are ready and prepared for it now, so here it is…

Facebook penguin emoticon

 

So cute, right? I can’t wait to use the penguin and the shark together…maybe make them fight each other to the death…or maybe just torment my friends by continually posting the new Facebook emoticon and making them beg me to tell them where I found it…well it’s just our little secret, ok?

You can, of course, find this emoticon on our Facebook emoticons page here on DJOD.co.uk, as well as every other smiley that is available online. The question is, can you wait to use it?! Enjoy the new Facebook penguin emoticon!

How to do bold and underline text in Facebook chat

Here’s a short guide to doing bold and underline in Facebook chat. It’s pretty simple, but can add some good emphasis to your conversations. They haven’t added different fonts in Facebook chat yet, but they probably will soon. The formatting in FB is similar to Google Talk’s bold and underline system.

Bold in Facebook chat

*Surround your text in stars*
(Shift+8)

Underline in Facebook chat

_Surround your text in underscore_(Shift+Minus sign)

Magic! You now have bold Facebook chat and underline Facebook chat text!