Here Be Dragons

I don't have the time or the energy to write more about this, though I really want to. Instead, all I'll say is that you really must watch Brian Dunning's 'Here Be Dragons' video. Here's what it's about:
'Here Be Dragons' is a free 40 minute video introduction to critical thinking. It is suitable for general audiences and is licensed for free distribution and public display.

Most people fully accept paranormal and pseudoscientific claims without critique as they are promoted by the mass media. 'Here Be Dragons' offers a toolbox for recognizing and understanding the dangers of pseudoscience, and appreciation for the reality-based benefits offered by real science.

'Here Be Dragons' is written and presented by Brian Dunning, host and producer of the Skeptoid podcast, author of 'Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena', and Executive Producer of The Skeptologists.

It's awesome. Enjoy.

[Via the Bad Astronomy Blog]

I Really Liked 'The Happening'

A lot of people disliked M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Happening'. A major reason for that, in my opinion, is because bad marketers keep trying to promote Shyamalan's films as spooky, summer-blockbuster thrillers like 'The Sixth Sense' when, in fact, they're far from it.

Take for instance the tag line for this movie: "We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening."  WTF?! 'The Happening' is not a paranormal thriller or alien invasion movie. Why the heck is it being marketed as one?

It is because of all this crappy marketing that viewers go into cinemas expecting to be frightened or, at the very least, weirded-out. When that doesn't happen (on doesn't happen in the way they were expecting it to happen) they get upset. Hence the poor reviews.

Not a Spooky Movie

I, on the other hand, really liked the movie. Before I explain why, let me clarify a few things. This film is not a spooky, supernatural thriller (like 'The Sixth Sense'). It is not a hero movie (like 'Unbreakable'). Heck, it's not even about faith (like 'Signs').

It is, however, about a bunch of regular everyday people trying to stay alive when the world around them is going to hell and they have no idea why. In many ways, it's like Steven Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds' (another film that many critics and viewers didn't like) in which Tom Cruise's character -- a not-so-bright, not-so-smart, not-so-successful regular Joe -- does the best he can given the circumstances he finds himself in. And one of the main reasons he stays alive is because he gets lucky; i.e. it's not because he's a great leader, quick thinker, or is otherwise larger than life.

'The Happening' is, in fact, very much a good old-fashioned science fiction story. And I don't mean a Hollywood 'sci-fi' story but a 1950s or 60s classic 's.f.' story. One written by H.G. Wells or John Wyndham. Or of the kind that Clarke and Asimov might have written: an understated, cerebral, but still oh-my-god-what-an-awesome-concept type of story.

Very Real

So, keeping that in mind, I loved how the movie was done so realistically. I mean, seriously, if something like this was to happen in real life, would you expect to find yourself in a typical Hollywood action-thriller-disaster movie or in one of Shyamalan's? I know I'd expect to find myself in the latter.

There's a point in the movie, for example, when people coming from four directions meet at a crossroads. They're all running away from 'attacks' that have occurred just a few miles behind each of them. When they get together and try to figure out what to do next, the person who gets to be in charge is the obviously out-of-his-depth but still barely still-holding-it-together Army private who's the only formal authority figure there. Everyone automatically turns to him for leadership. That's probably what we'd do in real life as well.

In most other Hollywood movies this scene would have been dramatically different. That's actually a pun because it would, indeed, have been a very 'dramatic' scene. There would have been a heated argument and two clear leaders would have emerged with strongly differing opinions on what to do next. There would have been lots of shouting, panicking, and pleas for sanity. A couple of idiots would have snuck off and, as expected, quickly gotten themselves killed. Eventually, they would have split into two groups with our hero feeling terrible about the people who didn't listen to him and will surely die. Think, for example, the library scene from 'The Day After Tomorrow'. Did something like that happen in 'The Happening'? Nopes. And that's what I loved about it.

Oh and there were no obvious "No! Don't go in there!" type moments, either. I really appreciated that.

Atmosphere

Shyamalan did a great job with the atmosphere throughout the film -- starting, literally, from the first scene -- and the overall feeling was of great disquiet tinged with ohmygodwhatthefuck?! Both the acting (everyone was appropriately tharn) and the musical score (particularly the cello solos) really did that justice.

And even though I watched the movie a few days ago, some of those feelings still linger. That tends to happen with Shyamalan's films, doesn't it?

A Different Movie...

Ultimately, though, what I like about Shyamalan's films is how they're different from the usual Hollywood fare. Their locations are different (he insists on filming in Philadelphia, where he lives), their pacing is different, and though the stories themselves are not always ground-breaking they don't follow the usual Hollywood cliches.

...But Not a Really Great One

That said, they do tend to follow the usual Shyamalan cliches. Which is what makes this a less-than-great movie. Still, as Chris Hewitt from TwinCities.com says: 

Shyamalan movies demand that you surrender to his way of telling stories. If you're up for that, you should go.

Since I am more than happy to enjoy films the way he makes them and I don't go into his movies (or any other movie, for that matter) with any preconceived notions of what they should be like, I generally have a good time. And that's exactly what happened with 'The Happening'.

So, be warned: If you don't generally like Shyamalan's movies, you won't like this one either. But if you do like his movies, then you should really enjoy this one as well.

Others Views & Reviews

Roz Rows the Pacific

The TWiT Netcast Network just launched a hugely inspirational new show called 'Roz Rows the Pacific'.

The show is about Roz Savage, a former management consultant and investment banker who, at the age of 34, "decided she'd had enough of her conventional London existence and wanted to do something special with her life" so she bought a rowboat and rowed solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Okay, so it wasn't quite as simple as that but you can read more about that journey of hers on her Wikipedia page or on her own website.

Now, though, Savage is rowing solo across the Pacific Ocean -- from the US to Australia -- and, if she succeeds, will become the first woman to have done so (she was the 5th to row across the Atlantic). She left San Francisco on 25 May, 2008 and hopes to arrive at Cairns some time in 2010. Yes, that's 2010.

During that journey, Leo Laporte will be talking to Roz three times a week on the RRP netcast so you can follow her progress there and, of course, on her website.

Funny thing: before she left, Laporte gave her an iPod full of books from Audbile.com. In the last episode of TWiT, he mentioned that it had taken her just three days to get through all of 'Bleak House' so I'm not sure how long that's going to last! :)

I wish Roz all the best and hope she has an awesome journey.

A Quest for Cheeseburgers in Melbourne

Last week's Munchcast was all about geek food. That is, the almighty cheeseburger. Now I love burgers -- making them, eating them, and trying out different kinds -- and that got me thinking: what is the best cheeseburger in Melbourne? Naturally, I turned to Google for the answer and, as it happens, a lot of people have a lot to say on this topic.

Global Sources of Information

For starters, according to the World's Greatest Hamburgers website, the 9th best burger in the world is from Kermond's (in Warnabool, which is just outside Melbourne) while the 14th best is from Andrew's Burgers (in Albert Park, which is a suburb of Melbourne).

Local Sources of Information

Meanwhile, back in 2005, The Age had a whole spread on the best burgers in Melbourne (both rural and urban) which is still probably pretty accurate. Then, in 2007, a number of blogs and bloggers weighed in on the debate:

Finally, a Quest...

However the most comprehensive, scientific, and up-to-date listing of top-quality burgers in Melbourne is on the Burger Quest website. Their reviews rate burgers on a star rating (1-5 stars) and six burger joints get top honours, though two of those have since closed.

So, it is now my quest to have at least one burger from each those places during my stay in Australia (i.e. the next 3-4 years). I've already had burgers from Burger Edge (6 stars) and Grill'd (5 stars), both of which were awesome, so I'm off to a good start. Now for all the rest...

I suspect I'm really, really, really going to enjoy this quest :)

Article on the Phoenix's Mars Landing

Jeff Foust wrote a great article on the successful landing of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in this week's The Space Review called A Second Chance at Mars:

The fact that NASA had dubbed the entry, descent, and landing phase of the mission, when the spacecraft slowed from 20,000 km/h to zero, “seven minutes of terror” was not exactly inspiring.

A lot was riding on this landing and NASA spent a considerable amount of time warning everyone how risky it was going to be but, as you know, it all turned out well in the end.

Signed Up With GotRadio.com

I wrote about GotRadio.com a few weeks ago: that I was impressed with it and was considering signing up for its paid service. Well, after listening to it regularly for almost two months now I went and signed up with it today and, guess what, I'm even more impressed!

Why? Well:

  • The higher-quality audio makes a big difference
  • The player interface is much cooler and you can do many more things with it (more than just skip to the next track in the playlist)
  • I like that I can create channel blends (to play different kinds of music at the same time) as well as playdecks (which are custom playlists)
  • I like that I can both 'favourite' and 'block' songs and artists
  • I like that I can see the next/previous five songs in the my current playlist
  • Importantly, I love the music discovery benefits that you get from a radio station, particularly one that's tailored to your specific tastes and moods

The best part is that it doesn't cost much: US$4.95 per month or $26.95 per year.

So, if I was highly recommending GotRadio.com earlier, I'm even more highly recommending it now!

12 Most Powerful Musicians of Today

Interesting post on MuchMusic.com on the 12 Most Powerful Musicians of Today. The list is cool because it isn't just based on album sales but also on things like merchandising, tours, and charity work. And, in my opinion at least, it's pretty accurate.

That said, if you were to take a few more variables into account -- particularly since the word "powerful" could mean a lot of things -- you might want to add a few more names to that list. For example:

  • If you include the ability to make industry-changing strategic moves, you'd include Trent Reznor.
  • If you think about who controls the most sought after copyrighted material in the world these days, you'd include Paul McCartney.
  • If you think of musicians as influencers, then you'd consider adding people like Elton John and Sting.
  • And if you think of musicians as enablers, then people like Peter Gabriel would also warrant a mention.

But that's not the point of this post. The point is to get you to read the post on MuchMusic.com, which you should now do.

I Graduated!

Yes, I am done with my MBA. I completed my official course requirements (i.e. got my final grades) on 9th May and then on 17th May I had my graduation ceremony. I uploaded some photos and wrote about the ceremony on my professional blog (so read that first) but here are a couple of more photographs.

This is the official photo of me getting my MBA degree from the University of Melbourne's Vice-Chancellor, Glynn Davis:

Degree Presentation Photo

And here are Ayesha and Nadia in the freezing cold -- it was the coldest day in Melbourne so far and it rained continuously! -- just after the event:

Ayesha and Nadia at Ameel's Graduation

Nuzhat was also there but she had to leave early. There are more photos of all of us on Ayesha and Nuz's cameras but I haven't gotten those from them yet.

So thus endeth my MBA. Now to find a job...

All E-mail Successfully Moved to Gmail!

It's done: I've moved all of my e-mail over to Gmail. Folks at Google, please don't let me down.

So how did I go about doing it? Let me tell you...

Step 1: Rationalize E-mails

I had almost 2GB of e-mail data and many thousands of e-mail messages in my Thunderbird Profile. I knew a lot of that was crap, redundant, and no longer needed so the first thing I did was whittle this down to about half a gigabyte of data and under 10k of e-mails.

The cool thing with Thunderbird is that you can sort your e-mails by attachment. That made it easy to find messages with big attachments and then either get rid the attachments while retaining the text or delete the e-mails outright.

I also deleted tonnes of other e-mails that I knew I wouldn't need in the future. Indeed, as you may have gathered, I was brutal in my deletion criteria.

[Related post: Creating a new E-mail Taxonomy]

Step 2: Rationalize Contacts

Next, I exported all my contacts from Yahoo! Mail and Orkut and imported them into Thunderbird, which is my central contacts repository (I even have my old Outlook contacts in here) and is the easiest to mess around with. I then went through that list: updating, removing duplicates, and deleting old contacts.

I also went through my list of Facebook friends and, for those who weren't already in my address book (only 3 or 4 of them), I added their e-mail information as well.

I then exported that updated list into a CSV file. This file I imported into Gmail. For the heck of it -- and to test how well it worked -- I also imported that file into my Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail accounts. It worked just fine.

Step 3: Upload

Uploading thousands of e-mails to Gmail isn't easy. There are two things you have to watch out for: First, it's safer to upload e-mails (i.e. drag them from a local folder into a Gmail IMAP folder) in smaller batch sizes: ideally under 30 e-mails at a time. Second, don't start uploading the next batch immediately after the first one has finished uploading: give it a few seconds. Why? Because the Gmail IMAP system has spam-blocking and load-controlling algorithms built into it. If you flood it with e-mail uploads -- either too many or too fast -- it locks you out for a short period of time, which is a real pain.

All of this makes uploading e-mails a long and somewhat tedious process though it's not the end of the world. In fact, I did most of it in the background, which made it quite easy to do: I'd be working on other stuff and, every few minutes or so, I'd Alt-Tab to Thunderbird and upload another batch.

Step 4: Use

Now comes the fun part: actually using the new system (which I described in an earlier blog post). I now access all my e-mail either through Thunderbird (via IMAP) or a web browser (usually Firefox). Meanwhile, I've stopped Thunderbird from automatically checking my POP accounts. Instead, all those are POP-ed directly into Gmail, which has the additional benefit of drastically reducing the spam I get.

I still use Thunderbird when sending messages from my MBS account since I use a different e-mail signature for that but, otherwise, I've found it easier to move entirely to using Gmail's web interface. Not having both an e-mail client and browser open all the time also consumes significantly fewer computing resources which, on my ancient laptop, is a real blessing.

What I do lose from not using an e-mail client are the event reminder pop-ups that I used get but I've found a workaround for that: I've configured my Google Calendar to send me a notification via e-mail and I've installed Gmail Notifier so I get a pop-up when that notification e-mail arrives. It's not quite the same thing but, like I said, it's a workaround.

Conclusion

All in all, I am very happy with my decision to move to Gmail and the way in which everything has worked out so far. Here's hoping things continue to go this well in the future.

Oh, one last thing: When I do get a new laptop (tablet PC, actually), I might start using an e-mail client again. What I'll do then is configure IMAP to maintain offline (i.e. local) copies of all my Gmail folders. That way, I'll get the best of both worlds: e-mails available locally and in the cloud, both always synchronized. Also, you can never have too many backups, can you? :)

I Think She Knows Interlude is Awesome

The 'I Think She Knows Interlude' part (i.e. the second half) of Justin Timberlake's song Lovestoned / I Think She Knows Interlude is really quite awesome.

I've heard the song a few times before, but mostly on the radio. Today, however, I heard it on my earphones (thanks to Got Radio) and I am very impressed. Others think so too. In fact, John Mayer did a really cool electric guitar cover of it:

Cool, no?

[Via All Things Go]

'Salam Cafe' on SBS

In case you missed the first episode of Salam Cafe -- the new, very Aussie, very funny comedy panel and sketch show that debuted on SBS on Wednesday -- you can now watch it on the SBS website. I'm guessing all future episodes will be published there as well.

The show is about the funny side of being a Muslim in Australia -- which means there's plenty of Muslim and Aussie humour -- but is also about being a Muslim, particularly a young Muslim, in this day and age. Here's what The Age had to say about it.

So, set your reminders for 10pm on Wednesdays on SBS and have a good laugh.

Repaying Your Sleep Debt

Great article on the SciAm website about sleep debt, which is the difference between how much you slept and how much you should have slept.

The trick is that you can't make up for your lack of sleep during weeknights just by sleeping late on weekends, though that's very important too. For proper recovery sleep you need to be sleeping a little extra every day for a period of time till your natural sleep cycle is restored (i.e. your debt has been repaid).

Being a sleep aficionado myself, I can safely say that I already knew that. And having worked in startups for most of my life -- i.e. being someone who swings from periods of no work to periods of intense work which, as you would expect, messes with your sleep cycle -- there are a few other bits of sleep pattern wisdom that I could add. But I'll save those for another blog post since there's lots to say.

Iron Man!

I watched Iron Man yesterday and it rocks! I particularly liked that the writers took their time in developing Stark's character and back story -- like the Yinsen story arc -- before jumping into the action, which was also nicely done. In fact, what made the movie special was that it was much more of an action-drama (the birth of a superhero) than just a pure action movie (a superhero goes around kicking ass). The dialogue, acting, and smatterings of humour were all really good too.

Of course it was interesting to hear Raza, one of the main bad buys, speaking Urdu. The last time we had a cool but seriously evil bald bad guy that spoke a language from this region was when Amrish Puri played Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -- though, of course, he spoke Hindi and not Urdu.

Faran Tahir (who is of Pakistani origin, by the way) also played Raza a little less one-dimensionally than I was expecting, which was nice. That said, Raza was very much a mix between Puri's Mola Ram and Crispin Glover's Creepy Thin Man from the Charlie's Angels franchise: "menacing" to the point of being almost funny, but still reasonably believable (like the bad guys from xXx, for example). [See update below]

Oh, and all US patriotism aside -- this is an American superhero movie about a military weapons manufacturer, after all -- it was interesting how they made the main bunch of over-the-top bad guys a reasonably international group of weapons traders who spoke Urdu, Arabic, Russian, Hungarian, and a whole bunch of other languages. All the cool terrorists are either Middle Eastern, Central European, or Scandinavian these days. Gone are the days of the evil Japanese, Vietnamese, Germans, and Russians...though the ultimate bad guy is still, of course, British.

Also, to keep up with the times, they moved the entire Iron Man story from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Even Yinsen (originally Ho Yinsen) had his back-story moved from "communist Vietnam" to "terrorist Afghanistan". I guess that means the Bond franchise now has dibs on European bad guys; the Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman franchises have dibs on American bad guys; the Transformers and Superman franchises have dibs on outer-space bad guys; and the Bourne franchise has dibs on the CIA and other intelligence agencies as bad guys. Have I missed any?

Anyway, I don't have much more to say about the movie itself -- a lot of others have already said pretty much everything I wanted to say (and have probably said it better) -- so I'll just link to some good reviews, instead:

All in all, it's an excellent movie that I would highly recommend.

UPDATE: Trekker alerted me to this excellent PULSE News article on Faran Tahir and his role in Iron Man. In it, Tahir is quoted as saying:

"The thing I loved about playing Raza was the approach. It's so easy in today’s reality, when you have a movie set somewhere in the Middle East or Afghanistan, to have everything become about the current terrorism in those nations. However, it wasn't about that. It was about a different ideology. My group of people, my minions and I, are the real soldiers of fortune. We use whatever we can to get the power. It wasn't about religion, but we'd use religion, corporate espionage -- whatever we needed to get ahead. We have no alliance to anyone. We have our own ideology: profit, power, prestige -- it brings everything to an honest level. People do a lot of things under the guise of ideologies, but it's all about power in the end."

Awesome. Now I'm really looking forward to seeing Tahir in the upcoming Star Trek movie.

Creating a New E-mail Taxonomy

I truly am a geek. I am working on a new taxonomy for my e-mails (all of which I'm moving to Gmail, by the way) and...well, I'm having a really good time planning it all out!

The thing is: I'm a very nested-folders type of person so switching to the labels-and-search model is a little scary. Why is it scary? Because, other than the default folders (inbox, sent mail, etc.), I currently have 172 -- yes, that's one hundred and seventy-two -- folders in Thunderbird. And I'm trying to cut that down to about 15.

The reason I can do this (quite easily, in fact) is that most of my existing folders are second-level folders: one for each mailing list that I subscribe to, one for each MBA course that I'm taking, etc. So really I have just 37 top-level folders. Actually, even that's too many because, back in the day, I gave sites that I'm a paid member of their own top-level folder so those will now go. I also have a couple of temporary folders in there. I've been meaning to do a good folders rationalization for a couple of years now but I've just never gotten around to it. I guess this is my chance.

The good thing -- which is making this move much less scary -- is that, having used Google Web Search and Desktop Search for years now, I'm pretty confident that, even with 15 folders instead of 172, finding old e-mails shouldn't be much of a problem.

The New Taxonomy

The key change I'm making to the taxonomy is that my labels will not be about who the e-mails are from -- the taxonomy I've been following since the mid-90s that has served me well -- but what the e-mails are about -- the taxonomy I started to move to a few years ago (and which, obviously, I use for my blogs).

This lends itself well to the whole labels concept because an e-mail can be about more than one subject. So, for example, an e-mail sent from my sister about an Internet meme will get the 'Funny & Forwards' label. However, if she also wrote some family stuff in that e-mail, I'll also attach the 'Family & Friends' label to it. Neat, huh?

The challenge, of course, is in coming up with those few, most useful labels. Here's what I've come up with so far:

  1. Friends & Family -- e-mails about (you guessed it) friends and family

  2. Funny & Forwards -- jokes, forwards, memes, etc.

  3. Life Admin -- e-mails from banks, utilities, ISPs, etc.

  4. Lists & Sites -- e-mails from mailing lists and sites I am a member of

  5. LUMS -- old e-mails from my undergrad days as well as current alumni-related e-mails

  6. MBS -- all course, admin, alumni, etc. e-mails

  7. Music -- old and, in the future, new band-related e-mails

  8. Nadia -- a whole separate label for my wife since she is, after all, more than just a friend or family member

  9. Saved Stuff -- stuff I want to keep for future reference that is not a funny or a forward (i.e. articles and the like)

  10. Sites & Projects -- stuff about non-work websites I maintain or about various projects that come up

  11. Temp Bukkit -- e-mails that I'll catch up on the weekend but want out of my inbox for now

  12. Work -- all work-related e-mail (I presume I'll be maintaining another taxonomy in my work e-mail account)


Just twelve?! Not bad, eh? :)

Of course, as with any taxonomy, I expect this one to evolve over time. So far, though, I think it's an accurate representation of all the e-mails I currently have in Thunderbird. And if it isn't, I'll probably tweak it as I upload my e-mail to Gmail (either that or I'll delete the e-mails instead!). Meanwhile, I'm quite pleased with this list. Now...let the uploading begin!

For the two people who read this blog: what taxonomy do you use for your e-mails?

Switch to Gmail & IMAP?

I have three primary e-mail accounts: Melbourne Business School, Yahoo! Mail Plus, and insanityWORKS.org. I also have three secondary ones: The University of Melbourne, Gmail, and Hotmail. I forward UniMelb to MBS, Gmail to Yahoo!, and I check Hotmail via a browser periodically. I POP mail from my primary accounts to my laptop and I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my e-mail client. That is:

E-mail Changes Blog Post 1

When I'm away from my laptop, however, I usually only check my primary accounts. To do that, I use the MBS webmail interface, Yahoo!'s excellent webmail interface, and I POP my insanityWORKS mail into Yahoo!. That is:

E-mail Changes Blog Post 2

This system has worked well for the last seven years because I've always had one primary computer to work on (which, for the last four years, has been my laptop). Now things are starting to change and I'm tempted to (a) move all my e-mail online and (b) move to one primary e-mail account (Gmail) and five secondary ones (all the rest). That is:

E-mail Changes Blog Post 3

Here's why...

Three Major Changes

First, I've become a lot more mobile and I increasingly want access to all my old e-mails (and some of my data) regardless of where I am and which computer I'm working on. This wouldn't be a problem if I was to carry my laptop (and, therefore, all my e-mail and data) with me everywhere I went, but that's not something I want to do all the time. Also, in the future I want to use my phone to access my e-mail and I simply can't do that with my current setup.

Second, cloud computing has come a long way over the last couple of years and Yahoo!, which is by far my preferred e-mail provider, lacks a number of cloud computing features that I really want. For example, Google Reader is much better than Yahoo!'s RSS reader and Microsoft's SkyDrive is much better than Yahoo! Briefcase. I also prefer Google's Calendar to Yahoo!'s, I really like Gmail's labelling mechanism, and Microsoft's Live Mesh sounds very exciting as well. In other words, I want to start using cloud computing-like services and Yahoo! alone isn't giving them to me.

Third, we live in an increasingly connected world. My current system of downloading all my e-mail to my laptop works well because it assumes that I'll be doing a lot of e-mailing (and, in general, computing) offline and from one computer. Increasingly, that is not the case. Instead, I now use communication tools like Facebook and Twitter for which you need to be constantly online, I don't limit my e-mail usage to just my laptop, and I even access the 'net and my e-mail through my mobile phone (though I don't do much of that right now because it's really expensive on my current phone plan!).

Two Implications

This means two things. First, I am seriously considering moving all my e-mail to the 'cloud'. I want this for seamless and synchronized e-mail access across multiple computers and devices. And since I am frequently online (or at least in mobile phone signal range) not being able to access my e-mail because I don't have an Internet (or mobile phone) connection is no longer an issue.

For this to work, though, I will need an IMAP-based e-mail solution and not a POP-based one. IMAP will not only let me sync my e-mail across multiple computers and devices, it will let me work offline (before re-syncing) as well. 

Second, because of that IMAP requirement, I am seriously considering making Gmail my sole primary e-mail account. In fact, I'll start to POP e-mail from all my other accounts into this one as well (see diagram above).

Why? Not only is Gmail the only one that offers IMAP (which is why it should be my only e-mail interface), it's free and it gives me tonnes of storage, great calendar integration, and excellent e-mail search capabilities. It is also reliable, universally accessible, and, once I switch, I won't have to take regular backups of my e-mail folders any more.

I could, of course, use other (paid) IMAP services, but I think I'd be better off using Gmail for all the additional benefits I get from it.

One Decision

So I have a big decision to make. Do I move all 2.1GB of e-mail archives off my laptop, out of my direct control, and into the cloud? Some people have done that and are happy with it. Others didn't have such a great time. Until I try it myself, I don't know how things will turn out for me. What might be useful, though, is if I was to do a bit of e-mail housekeeping before uploading everything to Gmail. Doing that would be a pain up-front, but it would make life a lot easier going forward.

Actually, maybe the bigger issue is this: should I commit myself to using only Gmail (via IMAP) from this point on? I guess another way to think of this is to ask myself whether this is better than the status quo. That is: should I commit myself to using only my laptop (with occasional backups) to store all my e-mail? Or, to get the best of both worlds, does it make more sense to store my e-mail both on Gmail and to maintain a local copy of all that e-mail in Thunderbird as well? The answer, in theory, is pretty obvious. Naturally, it's much harder to go ahead and actually implement the solution.

I think I'll start off with a baby step: I'll activate IMAP on my Gmail account and will start using that with Thunderbird. I'll even try uploading copies of some of my old e-mails into Gmail to see how it goes. If that goes well, I'll spend the next few weeks moving all my folders over one-by-one. Before I know it, I'll be good to go. Let's just hope things go as smoothly as I've just made them sound!