I live in Ireland and work in South Africa which means I rely on a solid internet backbone and decent speeds.

We have had to move out of our rented house as the owners wanted to move back in after 2 years of living in France. We had good internet and a decent workspace, plenty of room for me and my iMac and extra screen and all the mix and edit paraphernalia I use on a daily basis, not to mention speakers and the like.

But for now and the next couple of weeks while we wait for our new rental to come available we have moved in with a neighbor, oh the joys of a small community.

I’m working from the bedroom and have had to scale down to accommodate the living arrangements and so have moved to working on a single desk, a laptop and headphones, which isn’t a problem because this is mostly what happens when we go off to England to visit family. Pack a backpack with my travel set up which consists of portable drives, headphones, iPad, MacBook Pro, USB Hub and mouse. I have been working this way on and off for the last 2 years and because FCPX is an incredible piece of kit flies beautifully on my 2015 MacBook Pro and so no real downside to the system in place. I have decent internet wherever we go so never fall behind of my schedule and am always able to deliver on time. Even now at the neighbors I have decent internet and I can use my original RAID Drives so didn’t have to prep stuff before leaving. Traveling and using portable drives means copying libraries and footage etc across onto them and requires a little brain power to keep on top of, but once done off you go.

I’m very lucky that I am able to do this, principally because my client is already 10000 kilometers away anyway, so it doesn’t matter where in the world I am as long as the internet is good. And so now we are moving to a little ways out of town, 8 kilometers to be exact, right alongside the Irish Sea. I mean like 50 meters from the Irish Sea in a small estate with 12 cottages on the property. Gorgeous views, great wildlife, big sky at night etc. We were out a few nights ago trying to catch a glimpse of the annual Perseus Meteor shower but t’was too cloudy and while we were sitting on the bonnet of the car along came a fox who shyly walked past us and carried on with its nightly business, not even bothering that we were trying to take photos etc, so really really a special place, except for one small thing. There’s fuck all internet in that neck of the woods!

Fiber cabinets are a few hundred meters down the road but haven’t been connected to the house and so it’s a mission to get them to sort it out for us. So in the meantime I’m planning on coming into town every evening, starting the process for downloading the days material to my laptop and portable drive in the house we’re in now and then the next morning swapping out drives etc to carry on so I don’t lose momentum.

Hopefully the internet is sorted out there shortly, especially as it’s supposed to be the 1000meg line speed that’s being rolled out across Ireland currently. Then we will fly. And it’s a good job, I suppose, that my broadband provider is completely uncapped, unshaped and unmonitored for the 3-4 terabytes of data I do a month.

The new house has a solid 2 megabit download capacity, just enough for email. so holding thumbs fingers and toes that the internet is sorted within a few days.

8 kilometers away in town we are getting futuristic internet speeds, back in the old countryside it’s 1990 all over again.

Peace love and vomit

J