miksi.net - personal

A bit of historical background

Way back when (like 1994-1995, about 25 "internet years" ago) I used to have a massive personal web site when I was still studying and had nothing better (i.e. work) to do.

My web site had it all: I used all the latest and greatest (at the time, of course) web page techniques; all the web browser (at the time Netscape was the word) specific fancy HTML tricks, colourful graphics which I spent hours and hours tweaking, Javascript, even Java applets (with Java v1.0, take a look at games for a sample). Massive number of pages, massive amounts of digital pictures scanned from photos, my own hand-drawn computer graphics, fantasy art picked up from elsewhere in the net (couldn't do that today, copyright etc, you know...); basically my whole life up to that point published on the net. Real early pioneer web stuff, the same kind of stuff that everybody else was doing. I think I may have that site still stored on some floppies gathering dust in some corner at my place, so if I can find it, I might publish it here, just out of historical curiosity... :)

Anyways, then I graduated and pretty soon ran out of time and interest in sitting in front of computers tweaking HTML and graphics for hours on end. It's a typical case of "hobby becomes work and the hobby dies". Additionally, since I had graduated, the school eventually shutdown my site and I just didn't bother setting up a new one. In any case, at the time getting your own domain was not as easy or cheap as it is today, so I just dropped the idea. It was also a little bit a case of "been there, done that" as well, "who does personal web sites anymore, anyway [yawn]. I did that x years ago already.".

So, several years pass... Me busily at work, following the rise and fall of various internet technologies (both wired and wireless), products and business models (especially the latter ones...), until recently when I happened to buy a (my first real) digital still camera and I start wondering what the heck am I going to do with all the digital photos I've already taken and will take in the future??

Well, wouldn't you guess it; of course I wanted to publish the "best" photos on the net. Hence the need for new personal web site. The photo web sites of a couple of colleagues also inspired me to act on the impulse; take a look at:

So that's a brief history of my web site(s). What else is there to know about me? A lot, but I'm not going to tell you a whole lot, because a) the net is not a safe environment (anymore) to publish all my personal details and b) it's none of your business really. :) If you want to know something specific, ask me. But anyway, a few basics...

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Early life

I was born in the town of Hyvinkää, in Finland, many moons ago. I lived there through my early years, and went through the elementary and high schools there as well. I got into computers in the 80's like many of my friends at the time, but unlike most of my friends, the computers were not "just a phase" for me. In addition to playing games, I started exploring the creative opportunities offered by computers; I started practising programming (first copying source code manually from magazines, then writing my own from scratch) and computer graphics (even programmed a few different kinds of computer graphics applications myself during the years).

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Education

After having graduated from high school, and having worked a bit ("blue collar" type of stuff) to get a taste of what working was all about, and having done my military service, I realized that I had some extra capacity for more studying (and realized also that the blue collar work wasn't really for me), so I went for "business studies" at the Turku School of Economics and Business Administration (in Turku, Finland). I originally went there to study foreign trade (due to some talent and interest in foreign languages), but didn't get on that program, which was probably for the best, since I realised that I could also study information systems science (ISS) there, which turned out to be my major (and pretty much only) subject. I also briefly considered studying something technical (read: computer science) at a polytechnic or at a university, but dismissed those as too much "unnecessary details"-oriented. At the time I didn't really think computers might be a viable career option...

During my studies at Turku I also took some computer science courses at the Turku University and spent one semester as an exchange student at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität at Münster, Germany. I was supposed to study ISS in Germany, but due to too rudimentary German language skills I ended up skipping any and all lectures and concentrated on doing a software project on distributed and parallel processing of fractal graphics. The logo fractal of this site was created with that application. That fractal image has followed me as a desktop background image through all these years on pretty much all the computers I've had... :)

Considering where I work and what kind of work I do, most people can't really believe I have a "business" background, but I do... sort of... at least on paper... Hey, I do have a master's in economics! But guess what my master's thesis was about...? "Virtual reality technology and its potential business applications"! That was fairly forward-thinking stuff for a business school graduate in 1995... :)

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Work

So, despite the supposedly "business" background, I've done very little of what might be considered business-oriented work. Instead, all my work career so far I've worked as a technology consultant for one of the major "management consulting and systems integrator" firms, progressing from a fresh-out-of-school analyst to an executive level. All along I've been doing more or less technical hands-on work using various technologies and architectures from client/server through web-based to mobile applications. During the past few years I've been working mostly with Java and mobile/wireless technologies. The products, tools and languages I've used are too numerous to mention here, but there's been many, I can tell you that. Industry-wise I've mostly worked in the telecommunications and high-tech industries, a fair bit (but that was in the beginning) in the government/public services area and a bit even in the financial services sector.

My project roles in the many projects during the years have varied from simple programmer and tester through designer to technical architect and even to a project manager. The latter ("manager manager" roles) I found not to be my thing, I much more prefer hands-on technical roles and developing myself as a subject matter expert, rather than going for a "faster and higher" career rocketry.

But enough about that. If you want to know more, ask me.

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