Ilyia Kaushansky

Last night(June 24) me and a few friends went to see DJ Paul van Dyk(Ranked number 2 DJ in the world) perform at Guvernment nightclub in Toronto. I didn't go to the party with many expections. First of all I was worried that Guvernment would be overpacked with people(it's usually impossible to move, forget dance - that's how packed it gets), but most importantly I was worried that Paul van Dyk would play the same set he played 2 months earlier in Montreal, and everywhere in general for the past 6 months.

To my big surprise Guvernment wasn't overpacked and Paul van Dyk played a completely new set. Not sure why people didn't come for Paul van Dyk, after all PVD is as popular as Tiesto here in Canada, and Tiesto's party two weeks earlier had way more people.

Paul van Dyk played mostly hard driving techno and tech-trance. Not much emotional banging Trance that he is well known for. My friends were somewhat dissapointed since they expected more melodies. I was actually quite happy with the set, since it was a good refreshment from a typical Paul van Dyk. Paul played for almost 3 hours.

This was definitely a great party. Possibly the best party at Guvernment yet.

Finally got a Gmail e-mail account today. For those who've been living in the dark for the past 3 or 4 months, Gmail(www.gmail.com) is a free online e-mail service from Google that offers 1GB of e-mail storage (compared to 2MB offered by Hotmail) and a bunch of cool, new features. Right now you can only sign up by invitation, but soon the service will be available to everybody.

Upon first inspection, I must say that Gmail is indeed incredible! User interface is very simple and effective. Nothing too fancy, which is great: KISS(keep it simple, stupid) principle at play here.

So far I find Gmail to be lot more usable than Hotmail. Everything that can be done with 1 or 2 mouse clicks in Gmail, requires 4 or 5 clicks in Hotmail. Pretty big difference if you ask me.

Gmail is also a lot faster than Hotmail. For Google's sake I hope that they will be able to maintain such high speeds even when the service goes public.

Unfortunately, since the Gmail is still in beta version there are bunch of nasty bugs. I've already sent Gmail guys some feedback about that, and I expect those bugs to be fixed soon.

Well, just trying out this cool new service. This post is mostly a test.
More blogs will be coming soon !