I know that a number of people in my web friends circles already do this, but this afternoon I have converted all my mail accounts (except one!) to work through Google mail. I know Daze is a big fanboy and he’s part of the reason I have done it.

It was always quite a scary proposition to have all my personal data live on the web and it had always stopped me from taking the plunge. After reading a few articles about living in the “cloud” (ie having everything on the web rather than stored locally) I decided that if big name techie people can do it and be safe then why can’t I?

With my life changing the way it is I have less access to my own PC and that can make it awkward if someone wants to get me an important document. By putting all my domain email addresses (4 of them) into Google I can log on from anywhere and view as I need to.

I haven’t used Google Docs or Calendar yet but have been using Google Reader for a number of months with great success. I guess I could start using them much more and I will get the same benefits as with email.

The next step is to grab one of my old pen drives (USB memory stick), put a mobile Linux distro (I haven’t decided which one yet) on it and run PCs from that. It means that I can boot any (USB bootable) PC to my pen drive, get to my favourites, reference documents and other useful info without ever going near the host OS or hard disks. Of course, I could just go for the mobile version of Firefox for the moment although that would restrict me to using either a Windows or Linux machine for compatibility.

So, do you do live in the clouds or are you scared to trust Google (like I was) and are still tethered to your PC? What problems have you found? Got any useful tips or tricks that you want to share?

Well, with a very big apology to all those that received a spam email from my email address, cloned of course - I hate spam as much as you do - I have had to change my email address.

In the last 48 hours I have received undeliverable messages (1035 and counting), people letting me know I have been cloned (4 - thanks!), ridicule (27 so far), and at least two threats to report me to my ISP for being the person in the title.

IT’S NOT ME! Come on people! If you’d read the fucking blog before threatening to kill me¹ you would have realised that I’m not hyping the latest makeyourp3n1sthreefeetlonglaquo super drug or offering to sort your money problems with two swift clicks of the mouse. Perhaps you could sort your money problems using Seppuku²?

So, if you have my old domain email address, I’m sorry, it ain’t gonna work. If you want my new email address you have a few options: 1. Facebook. 2. The contact form. 3. Text message (if, of course you have my mobile number.

Stop the internet, I want to get off.