andrewducker | May. 26th, 2009

May. 26th, 2009

I was looking for an email I'd sent myself, and I have several thousand emails in my sent items, so it's easiest to read/search them through the gmail interface.

I opened it it up and waited the customary 5 seconds while it loaded the page.

And then I had thought.

I've always assumed that those 5 seconds were the various bits of html and javascript downloading. It had never occurred to me that it might also be the running of the code that takes time.

So I grabbed Chrome - which is much faster with Javascript - and installed it (which took about 2 minutes in total) and opened up GMail.

Almost instant.

I'd been blaming the internet pipes/servers for the loading speed, and actually it's the speed of the browser.

Of course, right there on the page there was a large advert - and the tabs don't work "right". So I'm not going to use it much.

But I was impressed by the speed - and I'll be looking forward to either Firefox catching up or Chrome getting extensions.

Achieving Fame, Wealth And Beauty Are Psychological Dead Ends

Even though our culture puts a strong emphasis on attaining wealth and fame, pursuing these goals does not contribute to having a satisfying life. The things that make your life happy are growing as an individual, having loving relationships, and contributing to your community.

(tags: happiness life psychology)
Gene research finds opposites do attract | Science | The Guardian

Bicalho's team looked at a group of genes known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), and noted down how much the genes varied between 90 married couples and 152 fictitious couples paired up at random by a computer.

(tags: research genetics relationships sex)
Why Mass Customization Isn't Mainstream

(tags: business design customisation)
Inside USB 3.0

Reasonably in-depth article, if you're interested in USB3.

(tags: USB technology)