Back online and the oddities of the digital age

Hardly a tagline for gardening, observing nature, or experiencing and commenting on the natural world, but it’s definitely a necessary component of sharing photos in various formats.

When I’m connected to the internet, I don’t think much about the data usage of images, but the last week without connection reminded me of how data-demanding posting and emailing with images can be.

Tonight’s view from our cottage in Umbria

A quick FB image doesn’t use too much data (as I think they’re automatically resized?), but linking to a larger photo via a blog post does, as does uploading/downloading photos, etc. Hmm, and updating apps, etc. — forget that if you just have cellular data to rely on.

We both had generous 4 GB data allotments on our Italian SIM cards, but with the internet down, I’d blown through about 2 GB, largely through blog posts and an accidental app updating.

So happily, after my various troubleshooting adventures with the modem, determining that it wasn’t our iPhones/iPads, testing the password (capital O is different than zero; lowercase letter “l” looks like numeral one), and with the help of two nice TIM (the Italian internet/phone/TV company) fellows that we interacted with, one in the TIM store and the other a TIM techician who visited the house, we have working internet in our lovely HomeExchange house. Woo-hoo!

This gives me pause, as we’re both veteran travelers, and have experienced the last decades of transition from film and expensive phone calls home to dropping by the “internet cafe” to check home email, to being happy to have occasional wireless access, to think, don’t they have wireless? Etc.

Not to mention that this post requires Blogo to post, then Blogger for a quick photo downsizing, as Blogo has issues with that, and tricking Blogger into a longer post (via vertical orientation and removing the keyboard attachment).  Not to mention quickly adding some labels! Blogo doesn’t do that well!

And, all of this requires lots of transmitted data. Thanks, TIM folks.