Although today I found a cafe very close to where I am now living that has a 500k Internet connection. It feels so much better than the other place I have been using – and they serve amazing berry smoothies.

Before i left New Zealand, i had a plan that i thought would work well. I have VMWare and a Virtual Appliance with a Linux server and ISPConfig installed. It is like a fully-fledged hosting server but on my MacBook. It worked great in NZ – but i was always connected to the Internet in NZ. Now i find that when i am not connected to the Internet, the ftp connected to the VMWare based Linux server is just too slow to use. Its strange that when I am connected to the Internet, the ftp server responds well but without an Internet connection its a old snail. I wonder if its some sort of technical networking issue, but i havent been able to find anyone with the same problem, or a resolution.

Up until today i havent been able to download something like Mamp or Xampp because of the terrible speed, but i am currently downloading Xampp at the recommendation of a friend and will see how that goes. As a developer, I prefer to work off a real hosting server rather than a local copy of Apache, but am willing to see if this works. Ideally, i would like to do most of my work offline.

Update: I started writing this yesterday. Since then I have found there is this one spot where i live that i can use the Internet from this cafe. Its when you sit in the hammock! But you have to hold the laptop in a certain position which is not comfortable for very long – and a hammock is designed to be enjoyed comfortably. So today im back at the cafe drinking Noni tea, listening to the church service over the road. I prefer the night service.