Inside The Geek

Setting up your computer for inside-the-geek communications

1. Open a terminal, run “sudo apt-get install xchat”
2. run “sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin”
3. Run Xchat (Applications > Internet > Xchat)
4. A window will open called the Network List. Find the entry “Ubuntu Servers”, select it, and press Edit
5. Check “Auto-connect to this network at startup”
6. in “Channels to join:”, remove “#ubuntu” and add “#inside-the-geek”
7. press Close
8. at the top of the Network List, fill in the appropriate information. Nick should be something logical (like “recieving” or “tech-support”), second and third choice should be the same as the first two but slight different (add underscores to the end or similar). Note that nicks should be under 16 characters and not have spaces. Username can be anything, real name should be a nicely formatted name (like “Thrift Store Front Desk”, this can be long and have spaces)
9. Check “Skip network list at startup.” Xchat is now set to automatically connect to the thrift store channel when started, without showing the Network List as well.
10. Click Connect.
11. To set up alerts, click Settings > Preferences and select Alerts on the left.
12. The options here are fairly straghtforward. By default, whenever someone mentions your username, you are “highlighted” and it will use the options in the Highlighted Message column. The Channel Message column will be used whenever any message is sent. In one of the text boxes below, you can add other words that it should highlight on.

I recommend turning on everything for Highlighted Message and leaving the Channel Message column blank.

Whenever you want someone's attention, just say their nick (the nicks of connected users are listed on the right). This will “highlight them”, causing their client to take whatever action they've set for highlighted messages.