About me
I was born in Luxembourg, a small country in Europe probably best known for it's doubtful political practices*.
I grew up in Bettembourg and Berchem and went to primary school in Crauthem. Both Christian Jeanpaul, aka Chris and Tanja Schaeffer, aka Tascha were in the same class back then, both have become locally known artists.
Then I went to college in Luxembourg city where I had to accept the fact that our education here is indeed total crap, something later accredited by the PISA programme.
Computers & software
I already wanted a computer when I was 10 years old - I never really wanted to play games as my friends did, I wanted to become a developer - but I had to wait until age 15 when I finally got my Commodore 128D. As I didn't have a computer I started developing software using books, pen and paper at the age of 12. To test my programs I had to ask friends to let me use their computers, you can image how difficult debugging was for me back then :-) I wrote several programs and software libraries for the C128, including a GUI and a windowing library, a VIC/VDC converter and a hierarchical file system.
Music
Since the days in primary school I wanted to make music, and at the age of 17 I finally had the money to buy a Dixon Stratocaster electric guitar -which was total crap, but it was good enough to start with. Soon I played in a band with Christian Jeanpaul, known as Chris today, we called ourselves "Burning Black" and we were quite horrible. Other band members were Serge Nickels, Daniel Lammar and Bob Morhard (who is now working at the Conservatoire de Musique in Luxembourg city). Somewhat later I played in our school band called "The Backyard". Other band members were Steve Colin (vocals), Philippe Kohn (guitar), Olivier Ludig (bass) and Laurent Dura (drums). After the band split up I started my first metal band, we first called ourselves "Black Reign" and later "Morbid Noise".
Movies
I also planned to produce a horror movie with to friends, Freddy Bohler and Tom Flener. I wrote most of the screenplay, but we never began production as we didn't have the required money.
Studies, Pagan Lorn, graphics, Stag Wards, ... (1994-2000)
In 1994 I finished college and I didn't really know what to do. So I went to the I.S.T. (Institut Supérieur de Technologie, which is now part of the University of Luxembourg) to become a developer, but soon I quit as I realized this was not what I really wanted to do. To earn some money I worked as a replacement teacher for some months, I liked that and so I started pedagogical studies at the I.S.E.R.P. which has now become a department of the University of Luxembourg too.
In 1994 Christian called to tell me that a band called Pagan Lorn was looking for a new guitarist. That's how a really cool period of my life began, we wrote some really crazy songs, played a lot of concerts and recorded a demo tape as well as two albums. Other band members were Sascha Georges (vocals - yes, the one who's now doing the news on RTL Luxembourg), Patrick Hurt (Keyboards), Vladeta "Vlatsch" Maksimovic (bass) and Stephen Misquita (drums). Today I'm still running www.paganlorn.com and you can download all Pagan Lorn recordings and the Beaufort concert video for free on that site.
Studying at the I.S.E.R.P. was completely boring and it was no problem to pass most examans without attending the courses, so I had enough time to study graphics design and working as a part time graphics artist at home in parallel. I did a lot of CD booklets, books, posters and other media for Linster Studios during that period too.
In 1999 I also began to create my first 3D animation movie called Stag Wards.
Teaching
In 1998 I began my job as a teacher in Roeser. During this period I learned a lot about learning processes, but even a lot more about social aspects and problems. Maybe I'll find the time to write about this one day...
OLEFA & EducDesign
In 2000 I created my first major software project called OLEFA, a CMS with wiki and online library management features. In 2002 I co-founded the EducDesign s.a. company with Pino Fiermonte and Frank Trierweiler, OLEFA then became a commercial product. Today most people think that OLEFA was created by EducDesign and that it had been designed for education, but that's just a myth as it existed a long time before EducDesign and the first sites to use it were www.kirps.com and www.mensa.lu and NOT www.roeserschool.lu.
EducDesign became rapidly the number one online software provider in the education area in Luxembourg. I'll write more about that as soon as I find some time...
Animals, Nature &, Hobbies
I always loved animals, as a child I had a guinea pig called "Lucy" and a bunny called "Nengi" (stupid name, I know). I always wanted a dog, but my parents didn't want me to get one.
Today we have a lot of pets - English Bulldogs (a dog breed, for those who don't know :-), bunnies, guinea pigs, turtles, bearded dragons and fishes (we also had rats some years ago). The number of animals in our home varies between around 10 and 20 - we don't purchase most of our pets, we get them by people who don't want them any more, and we try to offer them best possible environment, appropriate to the species.
For the moment we have 2 dogs, 2 bunnies, 7 guniea pigs, 2 turles and 1 bearded dragon, so that's 14 (we never count the fishes though). If you wish to learn more about our pets please visit our www.wildlife.lu website (german language only).
In our garden we're also running a garden railway, check out my page on wildlife.lu or my garden railway portal for more info (both sites are german language only).
Today
I'm now focusing on two major areas, one being the rather traditionally managed EducDesign / OLEFA, the other being the agile Joopita / CorneliOS / Galaxiki domain.
Most of the time I'm working on OLEFA at EducDesign, as well as on related projects such as OLEFAschool and Biblioni for example.
In parallel I'm working on some cool agile projects - the conceptual framework here is the Joopita Project, the software result is the CorneliOS virtual web OS and application framework and the resulting community project is Galaxiki, the science fiction galaxy that anyone can edit (a site that allows to write sci-fi stories, and you can also name a star in an online galaxy).
I'm a big supporter of the open source movement as well as modern managements concepts and development methods, so take a look at my related pages:
*) During the last few years I made a lot of experiences in the commercial and political domains in Luxembourg, and I can tell you that corruption, nepotism and camouflage are just omnipresent around here. To succeed here you need money and/or connections, or else you're simply fucked. The inacceptable situation here is also the reason why Joopita will probably be the last company I'll found in Luxembourg, all further projects that are not EducDesign or Joopita related will be managed by companies outside of Luxembourg (creating a company in other EU countries has become really simple and is absolutely legal, and I can only recommend this to anyone in Luxembourg who doesn't have either political connections or a large amount of money - believe me, I rather prefer paying some more taxes in other EU countries than to mess around with certain civil servant dickheads here in LU).
By the way, there are some funny lines about Luxembourg in the Starsky & Hutch movie featuring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, where the gangsters compare themselves to Luxembourg when asked about their illegal weapons:
Starsky: "Hey, champ. You got a permit for that weapon you're carrying?"
(...)
Hutch: "Come on, stop it. He's kidding."
Starsky: "No, I'm not kidding. I wanna see some permits right now or I'm confiscating those weapons."
Huggy Bear: "Hey, hey, hey, slow up, man. Around here, we govern ourselves. Think of us like uh, Luxembourg. You dig?"
Starsky: "No, I don't dig."
Lamell: "You see, Luxembourg's a contitutional monarchy, an independent sovereign state established after the Treaty of Vienna."
Leon: "Technically, it a part of Europe. But in reality, they govern themselves. Like us."
Lamell: "Just like us."
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