Ubuntu Wiki

About Me

I am Jo-Erlend Schinstad, a 31 year old man who lives in Oslo, Norway. My professional life has centered around sales and coaching. I have a passion for communication, music (guitar and vocals) and computing.

I started using computers at a very early age, about 1986 when I was six years old. My first experience with computer networking was with a 300Baud modem connected to various BBSes, and my first WIMP system was GEM on MS-DOS. My father taught me to program in QB45 when I was about nine, I think. I later moved onto Visual Basic, a little Delphi and C, before moving onto Java and PHP. In 2005 I discovered Python and Ruby, of which Python quickly became my favorite language and has been so ever since. Quite recently I discovered Vala, which I think is an awesome language for a large number of reasons.

I first heard about Linux in 1994 after a Norwegian computer party called The Gathering was held in my home town. My first (painful) install was RedHat 5.0 in 1998. I used that until moving onto Mandrake Linux. I used that for about a year, then had a couple of seasons with Fedora Core until I finally moved onto Ubuntu in 2005. It was the ethical and moral aspects of it, coupled with the focus on making GNU/Linux more beginner friendly that most attracted me. It was my first experience with a Debian-based system, and I rather quickly fell in love with it.

I've had technical support as a hobby since around 1995 when I started using mIRC. I've participated in IRC support of mIRC scripting, HTML & al, VB6, Java, PHP, Python, Fedora Core and Ubuntu. I suppose what I love the most about it is exploring the fresh perspective that non-experience brings to the table, and the challenge of explaining complicated things in the easiest possible way.

Personal motto: it's better to drown your sorrows than teach them how to swim.

Team Memberships

List memberships you have or are apprenticing in (i.e. if your a padawan in Beginners Team).

• Bullets are good for lists.
  • Indent more and they change.

Future Plans & Projects

What are you planning on doing in imediate and longer future? Doesn't have to all have to do with linux, looking at a degree or certification? Looking for membership to a team?

Current Project & Goals

• Some people like to list short term goals.

Contributions to the Ubuntu Community

Note: Often people like to list their major contributions, so people know the good work they've done. When you apply for membership to restricted teams, the senior members usually like knowing what you've done before. In this example, several subsections exist. The more work you do, the longer this section will become.

Support

• On Ubuntu Forums (link to account) as, I do....