Safe As Milk

Yesterday I asked Jumpy to point my standard email address (myfirstname at theprf) to my new Gmail account. I still caved and ran Outlook Express at home this morning, because it auto-forwards my Footballguys newsletters to work. I can’t have them sent to work directly because they’re interpreted as spam and don’t make it through the filters. Anyway, I’m going to try to lay off the Outlook Express (Verizon) for the month of July. That means no FBG newsletters at work but, you know, I have work to do.

I think I put my finger on why Gmail seems so fast. It seems to move the display tasks to the client side, that is, my computer. Here’s what I mean. When I delete an email in Yahoo mail, I click the delete button, which sends a request across the net to Yahoo’s servers. Yahoo removes the email to my Trash and orders my browser to refresh. After a second or more, I get a new view of my Yahoo Inbox, sans the message I deleted. (Technical note: this may be imprecise here or there, but I think I’m close to what happens). Same thing when I click to view an email. There’s a browser refresh before I see the email.

In Gmail, it’s INSTANT. There’s no browser refresh. In fact, a couple of times I’ve thought nothing happened because the mail disappeared so quickly. (Aside: I’m mostly Archiving, not Deleting, but I have deleted a couple messages that I know I will not need. The behavior is the same, though). And same thing when viewing an email. It’s instant, no delay at all.

At first I just thought that Google had some superduper servers working. That still could be it. But I’m starting to think that instead, Gmail pushes the display processing to my PC, which is always going to react faster than a server in Palo Alto. Again, I may not get this quite right, but in simplistic terms, maybe Gmail is just altering the HTML for my local instance of Gmail to affect the change I requested. That trashed email is still sorta there, but it’s not being displayed. The only time I have sensed a full refresh of the screen is when I hit “Refresh” to see if I have new mail.

Pretty nifty.

As for email management, I did my first Google search of email yesterday. I Googled “National” because Warren & Marion sent us their itinerary for their September visit and they’re flying into National Airport. Their email came out on top… followed by a bunch of FBG updates (”… National Football League…”). Must remember to be precise when searching my Gmail.

Another good Guardian article/experiment where they sent a 17-year-old kid to see concerts by The Who, Paul McCartney, Kraftwerk, Brian Wilson and Diana Ross, whom he had never heard, and then asked him to write about the shows.

Clever idea, interesting result.

An MCV Nuclear Medicine outing to the bowling alley made for some cool phone and Zire photos. The pictures got extra cool once the bowling became extreme.

The Guardian has a nice write-up on Oasis as they get ready to play Glastonbury. This passage made me a little sad:

“They are the 90s’ solitary contribution to a club largely comprised of 60s and 70s survivors - Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones among them - who remain a vast concert draw, despite rather than because of, their ongoing recording career. “You go and see the Rolling Stones because you know they’ll play Tumbling Dice and Brown Sugar - who cares about their new album?” says Harris. “That’s where Oasis are now. I don’t want to sound mean-spirited but I sincerely doubt whether their new album will be any great shakes. But it doesn’t matter because their new album is just a glorified press release that says, ‘we’re going on tour to play all our great old songs’.”

What makes me sad is that while I am eager to hear their new songs, if they tour the States I will be there singing along at he top of my lungs to ‘Headshrinker’.

[link found over at LHB]

This is 15 kinds of awesome.

It’s a group of 4th and 5th grade music students performing “Light and Day” by The Polyphonic Spree.

Just so you know, this was a QoTSA side project that spawned this album after the main Queen kicked out the other guy.

This has been in very heavy rotation for the last couple of weeks. It’s tailor-made for the gym with it’s up tempo drums and drving guitar. Most of it is even okay for the commute, there are a minimum of swear words and paeans to The Devil (they have to earn that Death Metal tag). Don’t worry, it’s not really death metal. It’s a big pile of glam guitars fuzzed out for that Queens Of The Stone Age feel that I dig the hell out of.

It’s definitely Big Dumb Fun, but it’s a total blast and sometimes that’s just what the doctor ordered. I’ll get a track or two up for you to check them out.

Here is his AMG entry. I just saw his video for Postales on Subterranean. Good stuff.

90 days of Mars rover-ing in 90 seconds is pretty damn cool!

[found at buffoonery.org]

Well, it must be going production soon because I got one.

michael dot flynn at gmail dot com

Jenblossom was cool enough to hook me up. Thanks Jen!

This is the only belt clip I’ve ever seen that has interested me.

I usually avoid these things like the plague, but this one has potential. I think it’s because it looks like a system that you could use to attach or mount your phone (or other small electronic item) anywhere, not just on your belt. One of these would be very cool in the car.

Hmmm. Maybe.