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Most of you know me by my handle Lockergnome. I started using this handle long before I came online. It was given to me back in high school and has stuck with me ever since.

While in Hawaii recently, I got the chance to meet another Gnome! He travels the World, and I was lucky that our paths happened to cross when they did. You all know him, I’m sure… the Travelocity Gnome! His lips don’t move, just like in the commercials.

We’re friends, I think. He travels a lot and I don’t, but we’re both Gnomes! I hope to have a beard like his within about the next two years. He also has a much cooler hat than I do. I need to work on that.

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Gnome and Gnome

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I’ve always wanted to see my heads popping in and out of virtual holes. Mitch programmed my head into a “Whack a Gnome” game, that you can play for free in your web browser.

You can go to my blog to find this game, along with others. I’m hoping that some more of you will create other cool and fun games that we can all enjoy. Here’s your chance to whack me in the head… and apparently, it’s addictive!

I also have links to documentation for gamer testing, learning to create your own games, etc. If these are things that interest you, be sure and check them out!

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Whack me in the Face – You Know you Want To

I’ve taken over a hundred flights in my short lifetime. Some experiences have been great (JetBlue), and others have been wildly less-than-mediocre. No matter what, I always appreciate the infusion of technology / entertainment options with mass transit. Boeing is sadly killing their Connexion service, and that probably means we won’t ever see wireless Internet access in airplanes. Delta put us on a newer plane last week, en route to Florida (to start our honeymoon). While there wasn’t WiFi, I had a personal digital concierge placed at my fingertips – literally. A touch screen system with plenty of options had been infused into the back of everyone’s seat. I watched a movie, flipped through some live TV channels, then decided to play some Galaga. Without warning, the unit locked up – and I tried everything to restart the buttonless, pinholeless PC. I couldn’t believe what I saw next:

World’s Highest Linux Distribution

Everybody went ga-ga over the video I linked to the other day – showing XGL running on KDE in some random flavor of Linux. Some of you suffered from motion sickness after watching the entire thing, but I don’t think typical usage would require or necessitate that much desktop movement in such a small amount of time.

No matter, I went on a quest to find a live CD distro with XGL pre-infused – just to see how well it would work. Because of GPL violations, most XGL-enabled live CDs have been taken offline. I tried installing XGL on my own, following “simple” instructions I found for various distros online – and wound up remembering why I dislike Linux so much in the first place: it’s not easy, no matter what anybody leads you to believe.

GNOME makes Linux easier to navigate, which is why I think so many people have fallen in love with Ubuntu. If Linux is ever going to win over the hearts and minds of the status quo, the GUI must continue to improve. I think XGL gives power users enough eye candy to give Linux another stab – but I couldn’t come close to recommending Linux over OS X for reasons other than economics at this point.

I scoured the BitTorrent directories for XGL-enabled live CD ISOs. Wow, that was probably the geekiest sentence I think I’ve ever written. Anyway, I discovered an XGL-enabled distribution called Kororaa. You can download, burn, reboot, and run Linux without installing it on your hard drive. Grab the torrent for Kororaa Linux Xgl LiveCD 0.2 before it disappears.

Go ahead, try XGL on your own PC – you’ll be amazed. I ran it on Ponzi’s laptop, which has a lame-ass Intel video card. Every one of the XGL effects I tried ran smoother than I ever would have anticipated.

And yes, I believe GNOME looks and works infinitely better than Vista (especially with XGL enabled) for common, everyday tasks.

Rubbing XGL in Windows Vista’s Wounds

So, why is it called Gnomedex, anyway? As “pointed” out by the recent entry in the YPN blog, And Don’t Forget Your Pointy Hat, we have our reasons:

“What’s the opposite of COMDEX?� asks Web entrepreneur and Lockergnome.com founder, Chris Pirillo (see Polls, at right). “Gnomedex�something small that’s really big, something people want to attend instead of being mandated to attend, something where everybody gets treated like a VIP.�

Before the question changes to another, you might try your hand at YPN’s current poll (found in the sidebar on their main page). Why is Chris Pirillo’s website called “LockerGnomeâ€Â? and his conference, “Gnomedex?â€Â? The real answer will surprise you:

· Chris’s favorite book is “Gnomes� by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet.
· Chris’s favorite Disney movie is “The Gnome Mobile.�
· Chris’s high school senior nickname was “Gnome.”
· Chris is originally from Nome, Alaska.
· Chris prefers GNOME to KDE in Linux.
· Chris wears tall, pointy hats when he’s in Internet chat rooms.
· Chris was arrested for stalking Noam Chomsky in 2001.
· Chris wants to go where “Gnome man has gone before.”
· Chris was a German Folklore major in college.
· Chris won the Midwestern Gardening Open Championship in 1998.

What’s your guess?

Why is it Called Gnomedex?