Ubuntu 11.04 - the Natty Narwhal Now Available!

A new Ubuntu Linux version only shows up every six months, and this one will prove to be a more significant one with the appearance of version 11.04, the Natty Narwhal. Canonical has dropped Gnome as the default window manager to use a customized version of Unity instead, and I have had it installed on my laptop while still running 10.04 (the latest LTS version.) I still use gnome as my default desktop, but I set Unity as the default for my son's account as well as for another account which I aptly named "hughnity". I will have to admit to having used Gnome now for years I am accustomed to it and find unity a bit confining. However, Unity seems to be easy enough for a 13 year old middle school boy to navigate (a Mac zealot at that), so it can't be too bad. I have him learning to program Java on my laptop using Judo, so perhaps he is not your typical middle school child since he is comfortable navigating on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. His goal is to learn to program in Java so that he can hack the Minecraft server code, so maybe he is not that typical. I mean, he is my son and I may not be that normal! Of course, my daughter is a student here at Washington University majoring in computer science too, so maybe it is just my family as a whole.

Skipping to a completely different subject, I noticed the sign on the house on Lawn and High School says it is finally SOLD! Checking the cbgundaker site shows that it is really "contingent no kickout" which means it may still fall through, but hopefully it has finally found a buyer. I will have to check the revenue.stlouisco.com site in a few months to see the final sales price on that house. Incidentally, if you are looking for a even better St. Louis MLS search site than the cbgundaker.com site, try search.hermannlondon.com. The site is for Hermann London, a small realty firm located in Maplewood, and they seem to have a very modern and sophisticated MLS search system. To get full access you need to give them an e-mail address but I gave them one and they do not spam me much at all. Of course, the address I gave them was a Yahoo! Mail account, so I cannot check it anyway since Yahoo! Mail appears to be down right now. And why does Yahoo! Mail not like Firefox 4.0? What is their problem over there at Yahoo?

With the rash of tornadoes that have hit the St. Louis area, you would think the local housing market might actually tighten since owners of any totally destroyed homes should be buying hew homes with the proceeds of their insurance settlements. Plus in the meantime they will likely rent a home while looking, as would anyone who merely had a damaged home who must wait for major repairs to be completed before they can move back in. I am curious how quickly their insurance companies can pay them since it would be a major pain and hassle. We in St. Louis should definitely feel lucky, however, compared to the tornadoes that just hit the South yesterday where over 250 people perished. To think that nearly 3,000 homes were damaged here in the St. Louis area and nobody was seriously injured is just amazing.