What a time to be alive. Elm has had numerous “native” versions lately (Eco and elm-run, the latter of which I’ve blogged about already), and I’m happy to say I’m testing the more “official” Acadia alpha. And there’s a new Elm version, with another one coming up shortly as well. All (mostly anyway) while I was either in the middle of MOVING from Askim to Skien, and/or on my glorious and long Lofoten vacation with my family.

Adding to that this week’s deadline at my new client’s (can’t say much yet, but rest assured I’m still mostly writing Elm), there’s A Lot™ going on. And that’s just the stuff I will be blogging about; the major transitions I won’t be covering include (but are not limited to): new church (or rather new congregation within the same network), new house, new school for the girls, new kindergarten for my son, my wife quitting her job, and me landing a new contract just before all of the above 😅. So I promised myself that this first post-vacation blog post would be an easy one. Let’s go!

(Btw, I’m full of peace, energy and His grace and presence is always enough; the point was just that I haven’t had much time for blogging yet!)

While I’m already in the mindset of season change Link to heading

But hey, while we’re at it; why not take the opportunity to do some long overdue migrations and upgrades in other areas as well? Lo and behold, I present to you Volume 1 of my New Season Upgrades series: Going from Gmail to Protonmail!

It all started when I accidentally opened the network tab on my idle Gmail index and saw to my horrors that the number of requests were well into the thousands(!), sending an abominable amount (and type, actually) of data while doing nothing! Not a reason for migrating in and by itself, but it served as a fine reminder on how much crap we put up with from various big tech companies just because migrating to something else is a bit of a hassle. Btw, I’m not here to tell you all the reasons why you should ditch Gmail, if you’re reading this blog I almost assume at least some part of you already want to, but the hassle of it all seems overwhelming. My deepest sympathy to you, and further: I even tried to transition to Protonmail a few years ago and went back because I never managed to finish! The unknown unknowns out-bullied my capacity for friction, I guess. There was always one or two accounts or contacts I never quite reached with my filter-jitsu and labeling-fu.

But these days I find it’s quite easydoable (again, with Protonmail – there’s even an official migration guide covering the whole ordeal). Here are some encouraging highlights

  • You can connect your Gmail account, making your Gmail stuff available within your new inbox
  • You can even (if you want/need) send messages from your old Gmail
  • Filtering is better than it used to be, and the included “Newsletter view” (available if you turn on Beta features as of writing) is quite promising

What it doesn’t give you is auto-filtering so sophisticated that you forget that your account gets filled up with junk you never read anyway (Gmail default content tab bars, I’m looking at you). And that involves being a bit more intentional and actually unsubscribing and/or making filters to REMOVE stuff from your inbox (instead of just labeling and letting rot); but – I keep telling myself – I think it’s worth it.

Good to be back all y’all!