August 5th, 2006, 5:56 am

Sucktastic Internet Access, Dublin, Ireland

DUBLIN, August 4 (well, technically at 4am, the 5th)

I crack open the top of the Guinness can, and the widget bursts into action. It rockets to the top of the can, releasing nitrogen, creating a head of foam.

It’s 4 a.m, I’m in Dublin, and the only place I could find a beer was in the basement of our hostel.

Yesterday was spent in transit - a bit around London, and then hours in the Stansted’s vast, cavernous budget airport, waiting for our plane. Today we arrived in Dublin and walked around a whopping 32,193 steps as we toured the city. The highlight of the day was definitely visiting the Guinness factory - the bar on the top floor features amazing panoramic views of the city, pouring drafts only weeks old.

The beer has a completely different taste here - yes, the rumors are true. Not heavy, or bready, or thick. But rather light. Imminently drinkable. Fortunately, the exchange rate keeps us from drinking too much - at 4 euro each, (maybe 6 bucks?), we’re conservative.

Internet access is proving to be our greatest difficulty. Here we are, walking around with three Macs, four cameras, one video camera, two audio recorders and a GPS unit, recording tons of amazing material for holla - and we can’t seem to find a cafe that will allow us to connect our laptops directly onto the net.

(Non-geeks: Internet cafes that allow hourly usage mean that we can’t use the programs on our machines to edit material. Foreign keyboards are laid out differently than American ones, and the computers often have no visible USB ports, which means we can’t transfer files from our computers to the ones hooked up to the Internet. Pain in the arse.)

A source pointed us in the direction of a cafe where we can plug in our machines for tomorrow, I’m looking forward to it.

We’ve been able to get access in some Starbucks via Jon’s T-Mobile account. It’s sad to see us … me hooked directly to Jon’s machine via Firewire, me sharing my connection with Arien via Airport so we can all be online. A tiny little circle of computers and people, surrounded by backpacks and cables.

So far, Dublin has been a wee disappointing. It’s disheartening to me to see how much American capitalism has invaded this place. KFC, Coke, Burger - and of course, McDonalds are everywhere. I ate some Mickey Dee’s twisty fries today - for a euro, it’s about the cheapest meal I can find.

We’re going to plan a trip out to the cliffs in a few days, to get out of this city that’s the same as any other, and see some of Ireland’s amazing shoreline. That, I can’t wait for.

Thus far, our trip has been imminently urban. It feels like we’re in just any other American city, except we can’t really afford to eat.

A slice of pizza? Probably one of the cheapest things out there, but here it’s a whopping 6 euros … about 8-9 bucks, depending on the exchange rate. There are plenty of good quality convenience stores with fresh food, so I’ve had quite a few meals of baguette and cheese, which is frankly delightful. (But really, can even 32,193 steps cancel out the effects of eating half a block of cheese per day?)

Getting adjusted to the rhythm of this traveling is hard for me, Ms. Absent-Minded-Blogger. All of a sudden, I have to be quite sharp about “where stuff is.” Literally, I had to make four trips up and down four flights of stairs from the luggage locker to the hostel bathroom, because I kept forgetting the basics like “toothpaste.”

We were so tired from our walking today (8am-8pm), that we came back to the hostel and passed out until about 1am, when we commenced our unsuccessful search for a chill Irish pub in which to drink a pint. (How we failed is beyond me, I’ll be blogging it up on holla later.)

So mom, no, don’t stress out that I’m up this late.

Power adapters and electricity have also been an issue with us. Clearly, we have a lot of gear, and limited access to outlets, and limited numbers of adapters. Once we hit up mainland Europe, we’re planning on buying a surge protector/power strip, so we can at least all charge up whenever we find some power.

Until then, our supply is limited, so I’ll be cutting this letter to ya’ll short.

Closing thoughts?

This trip is very indicative of 2006, when broadband penetration in Europe hasn’t really caught on in the same way it has in America. Kids taking this trip in 2010 will have such a different experience than us - by then the multinational corporations will be providing wireless internet (for a fee, natch) virtually everywhere. The kids of 5 years will be able to blog and post pictures as they happen.

So much better than us silly 2006ers, who are stuck using Textedit on laptops with less than 15 minutes of power left, the screens dimmed down low to conserve every drop of power.

Uploaded Saturday, August 5, 2006 at 11:56 LST