I Drank the Gool-aide or How I Migrated 12 Years of Email to GMail

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Over the years I have had many email address from different ISPs, employers I’ve worked for, businesses I’ve started and for personal branding. Being online since 1996 I have collected and created a huge archive of emails; over 30,000 which was clogging up over 30GB of data on my HDD even though I had moved many years worth from to backup DVDs and external HDDs.

I recently started working with a new client (@wingdude) who outlined the way he preferred to work with consultants. Amongst other things he stated he ‘lived in GMail’ and had over 10 years of emails sitting in Google’s cloud. Google offer many fantastic free services of which GMail is but one. Google Apps is a brilliant and free solution for small to medium enterprise who need to offer email to staff without having to pay for email hosting. There is also a document creation and management function, calendar function and website construction interface. I use it for one of my businesses (@nextbigthing.com.au) , am about to deploy it for another business (@misterbig.com.au)  and implemented it for one of my personal branding domains (@craigashleyrussell.com).

When Google first launched GMail it was through an invite only mechanism. Very wise considering in those days there was no such thing as cloud computing so the addition of users had to be managed carefully to avoid server failure at a massive scale. Originally, each invitee was given 10 invites for their friends. These found there way onto message boards and even eBay where they sold for a ten to twenty dollars. Now anyone can join without an invite and get about 7GB of storage, which grows all the time (you can actually watch your memory allocation grow, kilobyte by kilobyte), and Google’s amazing search interface for your own mailbox. That means you never have to delete emails ever again as the memory continues to grow. And it’s spam filter is the ultimate; I get no spam. Plus all this costs me nothing. $0!

I liked the idea of cleaning 30GB off my HDD and taking advantage of GMail’s advanced tools so I started to plan the best way to go about it. After all, moving 30GB to the cloud meant using 30GB of bandwidth at least. So these are the steps I took before sending a single email.

Migrate all my emails into one place – my Apple Mail app

Run de-duping software to ensure that I was not uploading any double-ups.

Delete any emails I was 101% sure would never need again; e-newsletters etc

Move all hese emails to the Inbox or Sent Mail box – all other mailboxes and Smart mailboxes had been condensed

Set-up my GMail account. This was interesting because I had several already; my very first crashrus@gmail and, for personal branding, craigashleyrussell@gmail. I decided to make crashrus@gmail the master account. It was my login to Google analytics, YouTube and several other of their platforms. In short, that login had a ‘history’ with Google that could be useful down the track remembering that one of Google’s search criteria is history.

Next I turned on the IMAP feature for my GMail account. IMAP essentially keeps a mail client and email web server in sync with each other. I have always found this very handy especially as when an email is marked as read on one device it is automatically marked as read on every other device or web server where that IMAP account resides (online, laptops, stand alones, iPhones etc). An email which is sent from one device appears in every other device too. Well not really, but a version of it does. The server houses the email in reality.

That’s it. All my emails from many different accounts are now living in Goggle’s cloud, available to me any time via my choice of device.

When I send an email it goes from the account that received it. I can create signatures for each address but the real bonus os Google search. I’ve had instances where looking back at 5 year old emails has made a big difference.

And migrating to GMail has made a big difference to me.

A bleep Victory for bleep Common bleep Sense

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Recent bleep decision by the US Appeals Court that states bleep ‘fleeting expletive’ on live TV is NOT an bleep offence is a major slap in the bleep face for the very vocal, highly bleep visible, ultra bleep conservative, increasingly bleep minority, Christian bleep right wing movement of American politics. While this article focuses on the bleep impact upon bleep reality television the major impact is actually in the presentation of bleep live broadcast news. In debate speak, it’s not an bleep offence to broadcast a designated bleep expletive word.

The problem was dealt with extremely bleep well in the drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip when a fictitious TV broadcaster has a bleep massive fine levied against them by the bleep Federal bleep Communications bleep Commission because a bleep soldier swears while being interviewed under bleep fire in bleep Iraq.

The matter deals with the bleep right to free bleepbleep speech and thus the censorship of bleep news. It may seem minor on the bleep surface but has bleep massive implications for broadcast bleep media.

If we had the same bleep laws in bleep Australia, ABC2 wouldn’t have to bleep bleep out a lot of The Daily Show with John Stewart or The Colbert Report when replayed here. I’d bleep actually be bleep able to understand what the bleep they’re talking about instead of having all the gags punctuated by bleep bleep.

Spirit-ED Production Stills

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For media, cast and crew only. These links are to the day-by-day production stills and key art. Usage is strictly limited for media only. These images are NOT to be used on any social media sites until published by me on facebook.com/spiritedmovie. You can follow the production at twitter.com/Spirit_ED

Media enquires to:

Peter Mether – Director +61 418 614 824 pete@mether.com

Shannon Wilson – Producer +61 412 058 033 shannon@prettylittlethings.tv

Galleries (Copyright of all images remains with Craig Ashley Russell)

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12

 

 

 

 

The Almost A-Team

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The A-Team is the most recent in the long line of Hollywood movies drawing off mildly successful TV series. First going to air in 1983, The A-Team told in 48 minutes + commercials and credits, the story of some impossible situation which is solved with an overly complicated rescue performed by the four former US Army Rangers. They are of course super tough, geared up with the latest hi-spec gadgets and have plenty of covert experience. The feature is much the same. except the bad guys are a rouge Ranger General and friend of Col Hanibal Smith (Liam Neeson), a CIA black ops commander and a CIA handler.

The movies starts out before The A-Team (the A stands for Alpha) even exists. Liam Neeson is rescuing Bradley Cooper and on his way brings in Quentin ‘Rampage’ Jackson (No, that’s his real name – the character name is B.A Baracus). Later they invite Sharlto Copley to join their merry band. Let the fun begin. Old friend/mentor betrays younger leader with the aid of a hostile contemporary on the same side. Add the CIA and it’s clear that no one in Hollywood has any idea what constitutes an authentic enemy anymore. Russia is now a friend, South Africa held free elections, North Korea was held up to ridicule so spectacularly in Team America that no one has the balls to use them anymore as the bad guys and the ‘A-rabs’ just don’t hit the mark anymore while the body count in Afghanistan continues to mount. The opening scene depicts a confrontation between Neeson and Cooper, and a Mexican drug cartel boss but again they are easy targets. You will however need to know the phrase Alpha Mike Foxtrot for the conclusion to this scene to make the maximum impact.

Neeson does a very good job of hiding his Irish accent as does Copley in trading his South African accent for a Southerner.

Special effects are amazing and the director uses a nice method of explaining the plan while showing the action.

Big budget, lots of explosions, over the top finale and of course as this is the introduction of The A-Team the Hollywood ending you might expect isn’t forthcoming.

Glad I saw it, wouldn’t see it again. 6/10

Salo – The Most Disturbing Movie Ever Made

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Salo: 120 Days of Sodam is not a new movie. Released in 1975 it tells a story based on a novel by the Marquis de Sade. It’s like this; WWII is fast coming to an end in Italy and four old buddies think they’ll go out with a bit of a party. There’s The Bishop, The Magistrate, The Duke and The President (of what, I’m not sure). What better way celebrate the end of the war than to round up all the teenagers in the town by force and subject them to the most inhumane and sexually depraved acts a mind could ever conceive. This movie is like a roller coaster without the ups; it just goes down. It is so gut wrenching that I had to turn away as the final act was carried out by The President upon a young man while The Bishop looks on… and masterbates.

Salo was banned in Australia – twice. First in 1975 and again in 1998 after being approved in 1993. It’s just been re-approved for DVD distribution in Australia and not everyone is happy about that. Especially the Christians. And for the first time, I don’t think they’re wrong.

I can’t remember exactly when I saw it (some where between 93 and 96) but I will never forget it. Two friends and I had discovered the Red Eye Cinema in Surry Hills. It made for an artsy change to the mega cinemas up on George Street. A couple of weeks earlier we had seen Andy Warhol’s ‘Frankenstein’ in 3D and that was hugely entertaining with livers and hearts being dangled right in front of your face and blood squirting onto the person next to you. Brilliant ’70s schlock. Salo however, makes Tarantino look like he isn’t even trying.

Salo is not entertaining nor thought provoking. It’s a demonstration of how to make a movie to shock. Obviously the blood from the stabbing, shooting, raping, murdering, butchering and slaughtering is not real. Nor any of the other activities just mentioned. The DVD versions comes with 3 hours of additional material as sort of a rationale for the movie. I haven’t seen it so I can’t comment but it sounds to me more like a 3 hour excuse when it should really be a 3 hour apology.

Please don’t see this movie. Your life will be complete enough without adding it to your 1000-films-to-see-before-you-die list.

Breaking the Code

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The news cameraman and their stills photographer counterpart form a very small and exclusive club. Being at what is often the front line of a war without actually taking part is not an easy thing. It creates a bond between these newsmen who are comrades while waiting for something to happen and competitors when the action starts.

Recently a Channel 9 Melbourne cameraman insulted the father of a man charged with several crimes, including rioting, after being verbally abused by the father outside a court. It’s happened before. Many times. I’ve witnessed it. When you see footage showing angry mourners or defendants or their families attacking news crews typically you don’t see or hear anything from the cameramen or photographers. There’s two reasons for this:

  1. 99 times out of a hundred nothing is said by the newsmen,
  2. That one time something is said the ‘code’ is such that no other news putlet would report the incident.

But with this story the ABC in Victoria have removed themselves from the club by breaking the code. The SMH and all Fairfax papers are also out now. In fact, not only out, but ripe for retribution from the Nine Network.

But here’s the interesting thing about this story; if the son is found guilty, the cameraman will not have been insulting the father but stating fact.

Networking for those who hate networking

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Pay particular attention to points 6 and 9 in the attached article below; Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent tools but not substitutes for real-time, off-line, face-2-face, over-the-back-fence (as my latest client calls it) conversations.

Social media marketing works when like minded people (friends/colleagues you like) are introduced to a new idea/product/service by someone in the group. If you add a hundred or worse a thousand randoms to your online networking groups you will be flooded with irrelevant and therefore annoying messages. Networking FAIL!

Facebook is for friends and family. LinkedIn is for colleagues.

Networking for shy people – The Venture – MySmallBusiness – Sydney Morning Herald Blogs.

There’s an old saying; a man who can’t count his friends on one hand is a very lucky man.

A close friend of mine recently went through an enormous personal crisis; life changing, potentially soul destroying. Her 479 Facebook friends were no where to be seen. Her support group was her family, one or two other friends and me. Interestingly, we’re so close we’re not friends on Facebook.

via Networking for those who hate networking.