some refactoring + some work on making updateImages(...) non-blocking...

Signed-off-by: Alex A. Naanou <alex.nanou@gmail.com>
made images load without a blackout (pre-caching), still a bit slugish...

Signed-off-by: Alex A. Naanou <alex.nanou@gmail.com>
some tweaking...

Signed-off-by: Alex A. Naanou <alex.nanou@gmail.com>