20 AFV Winter 2013.pub - Federation of Australian Movie Makers

Waiting for AF&V MagazineBy John LawrieEven though Gary does a wonderful job producing this magazine of 40 and sometimes many more pagesand with relatively small file sizes of between 1.5 MB and 5 MB, receiving AF&V has always been a problemfor me.Here in the wilds of suburban Athelstone just ten kilometres from the Adelaide CBD there is an internetblack spot.There is a shortage of cable pairs from the telephone exchange at Paradise to Athelstone so I have to sharemy copper telephone line with other Telstra customers on a “pair gain” circuit. This allows two or moretelephone services to share the cable pair on a time multiplex basis. The “pair gain” circuitry preventsADSL equipment from being connected to the cable.We are also in a wireless black spot as well. Adam Internet has the black spot contract to service this areaand strange little box shape antennas have been springing up on rooftops.Because of this contract, and so that Adam can recoup its costs, Athelstone will be the last place in Australiato be connected to the NBN.So up to now I have had to make do with dial up. This is not only slow but is doubly so because the timemultiplex circuitry connects my service for only part of the time in each cycle.AF&V can take anything from thirty minutes to one hour to download to my computer.My internet service provider (Internode - now part of iiNet) uses the Optus network to provide wirelessconnection to its customers. My nephew works for Internode and he had brought out a wireless USB dongleto see how it would go. But no good - the signal strength here was too low and the signal drop outsmade it worse than dial up. We tried the optional antenna, but no better. At least dial up was reliable.So while waiting for AF&V to download I would find something else to do. Gardening if the weather isright or some movie or multimedia work or writing, on one or other of this row of computers below.Page 50 AUSTRALIAN FILM & VIDEO—VOL 20 WINTER 2013