blogging - the Haloscan problem

Ellen Sander wondered already days ago what was happening to our comment-service Haloscan. I had tested the connection and concluded that the server was down, not that the IP address was blocked. Mostly the service is still down, but emerges every now and then, while I see on my RSS-reader that people still leave their comments now and then. So, I'm confused now. There are reasons enough to expect a short-term IP block, but the traffic pattern I see consistently points at a problem at Haloscan.
Can the world outside China still use Haloscan?