Patrick Aalto's Home Page

Last update December 26th, 1999.
My face with an insane smile here

Okay, first a picture of me. (See my Photo Album for pictures where I might look a bit more sane... :-)

My Bio, 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 about 20 kilometres north of Jyväskylä ever since, first in Tikkakoski and currently in Palokka.

In 1985 I began my studies at the University of Jyväskylä (jyu), my major being Computer Science. I have been working at VTKK Regional Government Systems since February 1st, 1991. My job there is to develop Information Systems for Public Libraries. One of my most recent projects was to develop WWW-interface to our library system. This is in use at Tampere Public Library, for example. (NEW)

My Interests And Hobbies

I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, as a birthday present in 1982 or so. Before that I had been building radio-controlled model ships (a JPG photo of one of them, 640x480, 62K), planes and cars as a hobby, but that present woke my enthusiasm for computers. In no time I was coding space flight simulators and other games, using almost all of the 3.5 kilobytes of RAM available on a VIC-20. :-)

After a few years I got an Amstrad PC1640, and began coding PC programs. I have collected my projects, of which the PC game LineWars II is perhaps the most notable, under their own subdomain at linewars.patrickaalto.com. There you can also find my other projects and music compositions.

My main "passive" hobby is watching movies. And, although I am not a very sporty person, I do play volleyball several times a week, and occasionally (during winter) play ice hockey.

WarBirds!

My latest addiction is an online WWII air combat simulation called WarBirds!. It is a 3D game that can be played by up to 100 players around the world simultaneously! As of today (30th of August, 1995) I have been playing for a week and a half, and I am totally addicted! Most of the time I fly a green P-51D Mustang. My call sign in WB is "pate--". See you in the skies!

My Photo Album

I have a Photo Album online! Especially if you are from abroad, I suggest you look at some of the pictures, since there might be interesting stuff about the Finnish nature etc. hidden in there... :-)

Links to other interesting (IMHO) places

First some general links that might interest many of you.
o The Yahoo, of course.
o The current What's New With NCSA Mosaic page, for example.
o Here is a page containing information about The Best of the Web.
o Or how about The World Wide Web Power Index.

Then some sites that contain information I find interesting, like
o the Epic MegaGames WWW site, or
o the excellent compilation of Movies and Animations by Esa Kuru, or
o the Games Domain home page (under which is a link back to my LineWars II page, by the way).
o An extensive list of sites about Music is here.
o An extensive list about Computer Graphics is here.
o Ziff-Davis Publishing WWW Server.
o The Star Trek page, including Star Trek Voyager.
o My next car might be a Volvo...
o Some palindromes (in Finnish, by Juha Helin).
o The World Birthday Web (WBW).
o Even Federal Bureau of Investigation has a homepage.
o Program listings for the Norwegian satellite channels.

If you like pictures, you might be interested to know that
* The Playboy Magazine is on Internet, and that
* the excellent drawings by Sorayama Hajime are also available via FTP.

If you are building your own home page (who isn't?), you might find some inspiration from the homepages of people on
o this machine, or on
o the Personal Home Pages of The Mother-of-All BBS.
o Be sure to also check out PC Week Labs List of Best Home Pages.

Here is a list of homepages made by friends of mine:
o The homepage of my sister Pia-Maria Pohto (NEW).
o The homepage of my old high school and university friend Vesa Lehtonen.
o The homepage of my old friend Kim Heino, alias Grand Master B.
o Another old time friend of mine is Mark J. Cox.
o And yet another old time friend, Pekka Koivunen.

Comments are welcome to
ap@co.jyu.fi (Patrick Aalto)