I was bored looking at weather stuff tonight since we are getting pummeled with snow tonight in Chicago and found a new desktop wallpaper application called Weather Wallpaper. It runs great and looks great, so here is the complimentary screen shot.
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/ChicagoTeam/PackagingJam
Sunday, December 16th from 10am until 4pm, the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo team will be holding its first ever Packaging Jam in order to teach users how to correctly package for Ubuntu. Tomorrow will be an introduction to get new packagers familiar with the tools and operations of the MOTU and Ubuntu packaging in general. If you would like to make it out, check out the link above for more information as well as complete the instructions located on our mailing list in this post. Hope to see you there tomorrow!
I can’t help but sit here right now, while KDE 4 is building away on my new computer just for KDE 4, and think about the past 13+ years with Linux.
In 1994 I bought a Packard Bell computer from the Navy Exchange. This computer had all of the bells and whistles. A super large 15″ CRT, a 10 pound keyboard, a 2-button mouse, some big time non-surround sound speakers, a 28.8k v.32 modem, and Windows 3.1. After a week of using the computer, I had nothing but problems with the Modem and the sound card. So I went and bought a killer external modem, about the size of one of today’s PCs and got it to work somewhat. Well after another week of tinkering, I decided to use the superfast Internet connection on base and search for fixes. My search query was “how to fix microsoft windows,” and one of the first links I came up with was Slackware. After reading up on it over the next couple of nights at work, I decided to use some of those floppy disks and downloaded everything I needed. I went home, installed Slackware, and within 6 hours I was up and running, with sound, and my modem even let me connect to my ISP. I was in heaven.
Over the years I have played with many distributions and different desktop environments, but there were those few distros that always stuck in the back of my head, and of course my favorite DE, KDE. I have used KDE since that lonely day it came out in 1996 and created one hell of a buzz. I have seen it go through good, bad, really bad, better, and ooh that’s nice. Distro wise, I was typically a 3 or 4 distro kind of guy. First and foremost, it was Slackware. From Slackware I fell in love with Debian, then Suse, and so on. But one distro has really stuck out in my mind, not because I got a free Tux doll, but because I thought it was the greatest KDE system I had ever seen. Anyone remember Corel Linux? Came with Word Perfect and all of that goodness. It was the first distro I had work out of the box.
Well now I am sitting here playing around with my KDE 4 desktop and just reflecting back over all of the upgrades I witnessed with KDE and all of the releases. Maybe it is the holidays that have me reflecting back, but it is kind of neat to see where you started and all of the changes that have occurred since then. Nowadays many people have heard of Linux, and I remember back when I started using Linux, nobody had even heard of Microsoft really. Pretty cool stuff.
Oh well, just a quick reflection on the past as I sit here and wait for the building to finish 
Everyone have a safe weekend and happy hacking!
This Sunday, December 16th, 2007 from 10am until 4pm, Central Standard Time, myself and the Ubuntu Chicago group, as well as help from the College of DuPage Linux Users’ Group, will be holding our first ever “Packaging Jam.”
What exactly is a packaging jam? It will be an all day session in which a couple of Ubuntu MOTUs, myself and Mario (superm1) will teach the essence of packaging for Ubuntu in order to get new packages into the repositories, how to merge, how to submit patches, and then some. Mario will be traveling the day prior, so we are hoping that he will be there, if not, then you have to look at my ugly mug all day
The location of this packaging jam will be at the College of DuPage main campus in Glen Ellyn. Here is the address:
College of DuPage
427 Fawell Blvd.
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
You can find directions HERE. The room is in the Student Resource Center, the big white building, and is in room 1544.
There is a train to Glen Ellyn from the city, so if you need a ride, pop into #ubuntu-chicago on irc.freenode.net or send an email to our list at ubuntu-us-chicago AT lists DOT ubuntu DOT com.
Hope to see you there!
Thanks to tlayton_at_work in the Ubuntu Forums, there is a handy little work around for the Sun Java 6 issues in Hardy.
$ echo "export LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK=true" >> ~/.bash_profile
Works like a champ, and now I am back to creating GUIs with Netbeans, and running my code in Eclipse. Thanks tlayton_at_work, you rock!
Are you getting 403 errors when attempting to comment on a post? If so, update your Bad Behavior plugin to 2.0.11 ASAP.
HERE is a link to the updated plugin.
For those of you who tried to reply earlier to my FREE JAMMIE post, I apologize, and all is well now as I just posted a comment.
