I’ve switched back to Gmail. The only thing that stopped me from using it a year ago was the fact that all of my mail was coming from my gmail.com address. I still wanted to keep my individual addresses on my own domains; I like having e-mail come from particular domains, depending on what conversation I am participating in. Robotics stuff coming from @chiefdelphi.com, personal stuff coming from @pubarso.com, etc.

I just read the other night that you can change the ‘From: ‘ header now. So, I can forward all my e-mails to gmail, and make it look like they’re coming from my domains. That, along with the minor improvements they’ve made in the past year (filters, interface, etc.) and I’m sold.

I also am diggin’ the Google Desktop sidebar (which happens to have a Gmail panel) ..

Google Talk this week. When’s the (better) RSS reader coming, Google? That’s all I need. That, and a 27 hour day.

A year or two (has it been that long?) ago, I wrote a website called Listen-To. The site, along with a media player plugin, would keep track of what music you listened to, and compiled some statistics for you. You could find out what artist/album/song you listened to the most, etc. It provided an image for your blog, livejournal, myspace, forums, AIM sub-profile, etc. that would show what you were listening to at that instant. Once it got going, within a few months there were over 20,000 users with little-to-no advertising on my part. It eventually outgrew its design, and the free time I had to give wasn’t nearly enough to support it .. so I took it down for a redesign to hopefully relieve some of the support necessary to keep it running.

Almost a year later, I really haven’t worked on it much. Life has taken over; it sucks, but I’m happy with my life right now, so not having Listen-To is not too big for me. I had fun, I learned a lot, and am pretty proud of what Listen-To was. Will Listen-To be back? Nah, probably not. Unless they find a way to pack 3-4 more hours into a day.

Anyway — there was another site, based out of England, that did the same basic thing as Listen-To, called Audioscrobbler. They just merged with their sister site (last.fm) yesterday. Both sites had been loosely intertwined; sharing user accounts, data, etc. The new design eliminates the Audioscrobbler interface, and puts everything on the last.fm site.

If you liked Listen-To, go check out last.fm. They’ve done a great job on the design and it seems to be working pretty good so far.

Hmm, I have (had) some free time, tonight.

Catch up on some work? Um, nah. (hah)
Work on some websites for fun? Nah.
Work on some websites for money? Nah.
Watch a movie? Nah. No more.
Learn a new song? Nah.
Write a new song? Nah. Can’t.
Go out and take pictures? Nah.
Stay in and take pictures? Nah.
Look at houses online? Nah. No more.
Surf Flickr? Nah. No more.
Clean up? Nah. It’s not too bad in here.
Listen to music? Nah. No more.
Sleep? Probably, soon.

I want to do most of the above, but when I start to (or attempt to start to) do them, I have this strong urge to not be doing them, almost instantly after I start them. You know something’s out of whack when relatively easy money doesn’t even motivate you. I need to reboot myself, somehow. Blah? Nah.

The past few weeks I’ve been getting my normal amount of spam, but the subject matter has changed a bit. It has gone from a ton about mortgages, stocks, and erectile disfunction .. and changed over to food. One hundred pounds of Oreos. Golden Grahams vs. Cheerios. Chocolate vs. vanilla ice cream.

I guess it’s just weird. It makes me hungry, too. Bah.