Sunday, December 13, 2009

First Ubuntu Hour in NC

Our fist one was a roaring success! We had hundreds of people walking through over the course of two hours from 10:30 am until 12:30 pm yesterday. It was absolutely amazing!

But many of them were there for the Crafts Fair that Krankies was hosting that day. The "Mountain People" arrived first. Folks that made the drive down from the Asheville and points south area. Arriving early they grabbed prime seats right beside the coffee condiments section: good choice as anyone fetching custom coffees or their own fixin's had scooch right by us. These "Mountain People" were (should I use real names or IRC nicks, hum, maybe first names only) Amber, Daniel and Jeremy.



Daniel is the closest to my camera and little did he know that his life was in danger.

I arrived fashionably early for an 11:00 am event around 10:45. I would have been there earlier but for the huge crowd I couldn't find a parking place.

My old bud Dewey was already there waiting on his caramel coffee (shudder) chatting with the "Mountain People". Once I got my light roast black (more caffeine that way) I moseyed over and joined the Ubuntu bunch. I met Daniel and Jeremy for the first time; I met Amber at SELF, greeted Dewey and hinted two customers out of their table.

We were just talking away when Adam arrived from Sanford. He reported an hour and a half drive from Sanford and it was very good to meet another person that I'd only known before by an IRC nick.

Daniel and Dewey started hacking away at some kernel mod that would allow hibernation to work better on Dewey's laptop.



We were having a great time. I went and got a refill during a lull from the incredible crowd that was there for the Ubuntu Hour, er Craft Fair. When I came back something had happened to Amber. I'm not sure what happened but she was well attacking Daniel but Dewey was laughing. I missed something....



It was just amazing! Then she calmed down like nothing had happened. Everyone in the joint was looking. I mean hundreds of people just looking to get some good coffee and buy some locally made crafts. Yall, you really have to watch out for this woman. She may have sanity issues, er problems.

Dang, she drove the "Mountain People" to Winston...gosh guys I hope yall made it back home okay!

Seriously we all had a great time getting to know each other face to face instead of just over the internet. It was very good to meet Jeremy and Adam. I've had several "I meant to get there's" and "it was too busy" messages via IRC personal messages and IM's.

I had a great time yesterday and hope to meet some more people next month when we do it again on January 9th, 2010.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Ubuntu Hour

Next Saturday, the 12th of December, 2009 we are going to have the first Ubuntu Hour event in North Carolina. It will be held at Krankies Coffee in beautiful downtown Winston-Salem from 11:00 am until noon. I suppose longer if folks hang out longer.

Actually Krankies isn't in a real pretty part of downtown Winston but it is a pretty cool place. Not only do they roast their own coffee beans but they also have an ABC license so beer is available too. 11:00 am might a bit early to have a beer but it is a Saturday.

Look for a post from me about this time next week for a report with photos. It's going to be a smashing success with a couple hundred people in attendance. I'm just kidding about the size, two will be cool but I'm expecting a dozen or so.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Titlebar Rollup

The default for current Gnome is to maximize the window when one double clicks the titlebar which to me seems redundant as there is a maximize button.

Why have two actions do the same thing?

Well with current Gnome in Ubuntu Karmic the behavior of double clicking the title bar of a window is easy to change.

Just go to System > Preferences > Windows and click the drop down menu under Titlebar Action. Select Roll up and close the dialog window.




Now when you double click the title bar the window will roll up. If you are using Compiz you can have some cool animations when the window rolls up.

I find this just as easy to use as minimizing a window, well actually probably a little faster and it looks cool to have a bunch of title bars floating around ;-)