"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

Well since Michael Hammel was our featured speaker for the evening we had our obligatory snow storm (grin). It is amazing that every time he attends one of our meetings this happens. Nevertheless, we still had 24 people in attendance.

For those of you who don't know Michael, he writes the Graphic Muse column for Linux Gazette, maintains the Linux Graphics mini-HowTO, helps administer the internet Ray Tracing Competition, coauthored the UNIX Web Server book, designed the magazine cover for the November issue of Linux Journal, and is also the author of a four part article "The Quick Start Guide to the GIMP" now running in Linux Journal.

His presentation started out with a demo of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) showcasing many of its features, and perhaps more importantly giving us all an idea of what it could do. The discussion then turned to GUI builders. The group discussed their experiences, likes, dislikes, advantages, disadvantages, and general opinions of many different GUI design software packages. Supporting this discussion, Michael showed us examples of GUI building using XForms (I hope I've got this right) and Visual TCL.

After this discussion, Michael showed a 10 minute video tape of Toy Story animated shorts done by Pixar. I think that everyone got a few good laughs from this. We then held a drawing for two CD's from the Internet Ray Tracing competition, and a copy of the November Linux Journal. As usual, we wrapped up the evening with a general discussion of Linux related topics.

Since Michael is moving to Dallas next week, I particularly want to thank him for his support of our group!!! I have appreciated him taking the time to talk to us, and have always enjoyed his presentations. I want to wish him the best of luck at his new job. It might be a good idea to warn the North Texas Linux User's Group of an impending change in their weather though (very big grin). Perhaps he can continue to participate in our discussions on the mailing list?