Tuesday 6 May: Online in Italy

Here’s how I usually get online. I get up early and have coffee, granola, yogurt and fruit. Then, if I’m not going to AAR (where I can get online also), I head for Good, the local wifi caffè with fun waiters, good salads, great coffee, and pop/New Wave hits of the ‘80s. The benefits of getting online at the Academy are that I can plug my computer in, thus saving my battery. I also have access there to a large collection of print and digital resources for classical antiquity. The benefits of getting online at Good are that the place is tons of fun and you can eat and drink while online. The main problem with access at Good is that I can’t plug in. My battery lasts about an hour and a half. That is usually long enough to do email and other tasks. Uploading pics to Flickr is a problem there, though. Because my camera takes such ginormous photos (12.2 mega pixels!), it takes an hour to upload twenty. I have to upload batches so they all upload before my battery dies.

Every now and then, the router goes out at Good. Plus, they turn the wifi off at 7 pm. If I need to get online in the evening, I head for an Internet point. There is a couple within two blocks of me. At these points, you pay, usually something like 1 euro for a half hour, to access the Internet on their computers. You can print for a fee, fax for a fee, and use a jump drive for a fee. EA found out the hard way that they charge a euro just to stick a jump drive into a port.

Internet points are good if you need to print something, but there are a few things that make them a pain. First, the seats are usually really cheap and uncomfortable Ikea bar stools that are too high for comfort, have terrible seats, and offer absolutely no back support. Second, everyone walking past, including the employees, stops to read over your shoulder with absolutely no qualms. Third, the computers use Italian keyboards. This is not a bad thing in itself, since I suppose the majority of folks who use them are Italian. Still, if you’re not used to one, they take some getting used to, especially if you have fat fingers like me. The left shift key is tiny, because like many other keys, it has been split in two to provide vowels with accents and other diacritical marks. Various frequently-used characters, including !, ?, ’, ; and : are in completely different places, and you have to hunt for them. You need to hit three keys at once to get @, which sort of slows down the typing of email addresses. I understand the need for diacritics (no, they are not fancy little decorations for foreign words; they actually are part of the orthography). I would still love to find an Internet point with US keyboards!

Once in a while I can get online in my apartment. Occasionally some local wireless network gets cranked up so high that I can piggy back onto it if it’s unsecured. I wouldn’t do banking or buying on a connection like this, but I figure it’s fine to check the weather, read the news, or look up a reference. Otherwise, I do most of my work offline (Flickr Uploadr is a lifesaver), then cut and paste the next time I get online. I have been told by blogging purists that this is not “true” blogging, and I should only compose online. I invite them to purchase secure international roaming access for me.