Updating the blog where Internet barely exists…
I forgot to mention in the Day 10 post that I finally solves some of my challenges with updating the blog out here in Barkley Sound. The basic problems are these, there is no infrastructure pretty much anywhere in the Broken Group set of islands, but lots of rocks and hills, etc. The only places that even remotely have a WiFi opportunity is the first place we stopped, Bamfield, and the last place we plan to stop, Ucluelet. Then there’s the cell service, or lack thereof. Yes, there’s coverage, Rogers seems to have a signal most of the time, but it’s always just 1 bar, and it bounces between 0 bars, 1 bar, LTE, GPRS, EDGE, and 3G. It can’t make up it’s mind. My phone randomly downloads an email here and there and sometimes can download a little Facebook or a FB message, etc.
After day 5, I was unable to upload pretty much anything via computer or phone to the blog, or nearly anywhere for that matter. I disabled everything on the phones, Ipads, and computers I could find that would try to sync data in the background when Internet is available but it only helped a small amount. Image uploads to wordpress are a fantastical dream that only sometimes works. I was somehow successful at uploading days 6 and 7 via wordpress.com from Google Chrome on my phone, but later I couldn’t get anything working the next day. I tried with some success to set up an email to wordpress function when we were in Dodger Channel and had some help from a friend via text messaging to setting up some of what i needed to get it working, but alas that failed. Then last night at Nettle Island, with inconsistently 1 bar of Rogers 3G, I was able to Google for a solution and successfully set it up with a different method. I was able to pose several entries via email from my phone, including photos even over the slow 3G. So I’m stoked! I successfully uploaded days 7 through 9 via email over the slow cellular network. Unfortunately that meant typing out these things on my phone. Today when we were moving from Nettle Island to Pipesteam Inlet we had better coverage and I was able to do an email post from my laptop. Unfortunately once we anchored I lost all cellular service entirely. So this post is being sent via email over Satellite, as a first time test.
Well, the sun just came back out just as its’ getting close to dinner time and it’s time for a beverage.. Crap, I forgot to buy tonic.
Posted to WordPress via e-mail through Iridium Satellite and XGate
