- <title>Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Germany is a core area for the
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
-user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
-Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
-Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
-"<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
-Dortmund</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
-the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
-examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
-second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
-or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
-
-<p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
-blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
-information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
-teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
-school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
-the end of April this year.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
-attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
-Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
-using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
-2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
-clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
-reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
-Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
-two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
-known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
-Skolelinux.</p>
-
-<p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
-better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
-clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
-was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
-and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
-the admin teachers.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
-Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
-So it was a perfect choice.</p>
-
-<p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
-possible to point teachers and students to programs like
-OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
-high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
-a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Nothing yet.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
-Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
-Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
-LibreOffice.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
-that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
-interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
+ <title>Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
+<img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
+
+<p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
+common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
+But the last ones have not really been up to the task. My last
+cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
+time, and cutting my head took forever. And the one before that did
+not work very well either. We have looked for something better for a
+while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
+discovered that there are indeed better tools available. But these
+are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers". The hair saloons
+can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
+companies. The models they sell, are very different from the ones
+available from Elkjøp and Lefdal. The main difference is their
+efficiency. It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
+minutes required by my impotent Braun. The hairdresser I visited had
+a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
+producer. But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
+
+<p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it. This was not
+straight forward. The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
+did not want to sell anything to me. But searching for the model on
+the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
+around NOK 4000,-. This was a bit much. We kept searching and
+finally found a Danish supplier
+<a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
+it for around NOK 1800,-</a>. We ordered one, and it arrived a few
+days ago.</p>
+
+<p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
+to use it, so we left it charging over night. Normally it will only
+need one hour to charge. The following evening we successfully tested
+it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
+cutter. The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
+toys.</p>