- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 9th March 2012</div>
- <div class="body"><p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
-interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
-interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
-more international audience.</p>
-
-<p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
-Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
-Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
-from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
-and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
-work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
-and am happy to share the response with you. :)
-
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
-and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
-Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
-teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
-Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
-I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
-primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
-so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
-also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
-to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
-appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
-server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
-samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
-Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
-did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
-and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
-there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
-problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
-previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
-Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
-downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
-Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
-my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
-workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
-ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
-designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
-doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
-school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
-Japan.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
-have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
-make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
-who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
-important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
-instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
-default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
-kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
-Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
-second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
-customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
-multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
-took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
-I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
-help.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
-studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
-(customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
-still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
-house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
-the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
-have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
-day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
-installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
-have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
-and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
-and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
-popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
-to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
-file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
-also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
-Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
-budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
-compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
-is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
-are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
-doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a></div>
+ <div class="date">18th December 2012</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>A few days ago I came across
+<a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
+Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
+hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting. I found it
+interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
+accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
+the different web based systems we use. I find it hard to find what I
+look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
+the systems. Ledger seem different. The accounting data is kept in
+text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
+
+are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
+different implementations</a> able to read the format. An example
+entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
+generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+2004-05-27 Book Store
+ Expenses:Books $20.00
+ Liabilities:Visa
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
+look for others using it. I found blog posts from
+<a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
+Spang</a>,
+<a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
+Keen</a>,
+<a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
+Cantino</a> and
+<a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
+Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
+<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
+M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy. All seemed like good
+recommendations fitting my need.</p>
+
+<p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
+package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
+package only is available in Debian Sid. As I use Squeeze, ledger
+seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
+
+<p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
+<a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
+the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
+play with the data set. I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
+am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
+using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command. But I will have to
+gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
+for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff