Patrick Aalto's Home Page

My Biography (the Short Version)

I was born in Helsinki (the capital of Finland) on the 17th of September 1966. My parents, my sister and me moved to Central Finland just before it was time for me to go to school, that is, in the summer of 1973. I have been living within 20 kilometres of Jyväskylä ever since, first in Tikkakoski and currently in Palokka. In 1985 I began my studies at the University of Jyväskylä, my major being Computer Science. I graduated in 1990, and thus I have a Master of Science degree, however it is in Economics as my studies focused on using computers and computer software for business (instead of only for fun :-).

I started my career at VTKK Regional Government Systems on February 1st, 1991. My job was to develop Information Systems for Public Libraries, and that is still what I currently do for living. I have actually worked for the same company and with the same colleagues for more than 20 years now, but the name of the company has changed almost a dozen times during these 20 years. Currently it is called Axiell.

My Interests and Hobbies

Volleyball (1980-present)

I am basically a nerd, so I sit in front of the computer for much of my days, both at the office and at home. Thus, I like to start describing my hobbies with the only slightly non-nerdy hobby I have, playing volleyball!

The picture on the right was taken a few years back by a work colleague, who also played volleyball with us for a few years. I have been playing pretty much with the same group of people for over 27 years now. I have also played with various other "teams", but never in any official clubs or such. I like to keep playing volleyball just for fun and exercise, not take it too seriously by actually competing against some other teams.

Although, I did actually take part in a "Palokka Volleyball Cup" for several years, until they stopped organizing the whole cup, perhaps partly because our team always won so the other teams got fed up with always losing. :-)

Warbirds (1995-1999)

WarBirds is an online WW2 flight simulator that can be played by hundreds of people simultaneously via Internet. It became pay-by-play on the 15th of December 1995, after being in free beta-test for about six months. I joined it when it was still in free beta and called "Confirmed Kill", in the summer of 1995. I played it on and off until 1999, and I even joined again for a few months in the spring of 2009. Some of the same players were still online after over 10 years! It did not keep me interested enough to continue playing it, though.

I have dedicated WarBirds pages at http://warbirds.patrickaalto.com. There you can read about my adventures in the WarBirds scenarios, see more gun camera footage, screen copies, etc. The animated GIF on the right is from the Blitzkrieg scenario from 1999, where I flew a Hawker Hurricane and the mission of our wing was to defend France against the German Junkers JU-87 "Stuka" attacks. I ran a software on my PC that took screen copies around the crosshairs area whenever I pressed the joystick trigger, so it effectively created gun camera footage from the scenarios.

Computers (1982-present)

I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, as a birthday present in September of 1982. Ever since that time I have been working on computers, building and programming them.

On the right is a picture of the "Computer Graveyard" I have in my attic, where I have stored all sorts of old computers I have used, including even the VIC-20!

My various hobby programming projects are listed on a separate page. Many of those I have released on the net, and some people have actually found some of them useful! Many are nowadays obsolete, but I like to have them listed on my web pages just for nostalgic reasons.

Scale Models (1976-1982)

Before I got interested in computers, my main hobby was building all sorts of scale models, from various materials. On the right is a picture of my latest (from 1982) radio controlled model of the German destroyer D187 Rommel. There are more pictures of this model in my photo album, along with more pictures from our island cottage on the Gulf of Finland, where this picture was taken.