Eric's Beijing Diary

Well, the Internet is back. Mainly, anyway. I can listen to most audio streams without too much difficulty. Good thing, because Christian Classics has started a biography of Queen Victoria that sounds like it's going to be good.

The most notable improvement is iTunes. For several weeks I couldn't get any podcasts. As I mentioned earlier, I did hove a bunch saved up. And I use an open source program called, "Audacity" to record songs off the Internet, so I could listen to lots of music even though online stations like BBN were virtually impossible to get. I do watch one American TV program a week, called "McLaughlin Group," but all their programs are encapsulated now as 65 MB QuickTime videos, so I could download them with a download manager. (I use Netants, but there are others.) A download manager allows you to download in segments over very erratic connections. If a download crashes, you can pick up where you left off when you restart the download. Awkward and clumsy, but it works.

But it's much better now. I can get streaming video without too much trouble. There are still issues, of course. I was watching "Washington Week in Review" on the PBS website the other day, and it cut out after only 10 minutes. But that's not the Internet's fault. I cut out of it myself because I couldn't stand to listen to it anymore. That show is so boring.

But again, I really get most news and information through iTunes, except for BBC Newshour (see link at top right). So a reasonable functionality allows me to stay informed without constant interruptions. That, of course, is the main benefit of podcasting. Once the podcast is downloaded, you can listen without interruption, because the data is already on your hard drive. The only problem is that since iTunes downloads automatically, you end up downloading many more .mp3 files than you will ever listen too. Information overload. The ever present affliction of the information age.