I don’t know if I’ve finally gotten a decent internet connection, or if China Unicom has finally gotten its shit together, or if Kiwi FM‘s recent redesign has resulted in a more China Unicom CDMA-friendly stream, but whatever or whoever is to blame, Kiwi FM is coming through pretty clearly and almost unbroken today. I hope this continues. Aotearoa has always had a wealth of musical talent and its great to hear Kiwi music (I think music, clean air, and the land/seascape are the only things I miss from home). I guess I could always test this out by trying to upload something to flickr, but I’m scared if I do I’ll kill off the Kiwi FM connection. Bandwidth can only be stretched so far. So I’ll cook my jiaozi and keep happily listening to good Kiwi music.
I should note that Kiwi FM always offered two streams. In the past it was a choice between 48 and 128 kbps, but they’ve changed that to dial-up or broadband. I don’t know if there’s any actual technical change or if it’s just a change in labelling (and to be honest, so long as it comes through clearly and with the least interruption possible, I don’t care), but I always assume that my connection won’t be able to handle the faster/bigger stream and always click on the slower/smaller one. Bandwidth can only be stretched too far.