Albert of Pu-239

I'm Albert of Pu-239 (Pasi Ojala). I got the handle Albert by accident,
I didn't actually choose it myself. When I was in Finnish Lukio in 1985-88
(three years of high-school, 10th to 12th grade, whatever it is called
elsewhere) we were to make a presentation about historical characters
for a history class. I selected Albert Einstein and did the presentation.
Because of this some of my school mates started calling me Alpo,
which can be considered a Finnish version of Albert.

When Lukio ended in 1988 I started my studies in Tampere University of
Technology. Me and a couple of my online friends decided to put together
a demo group (January 1989), so I needed a cool handle for myself.
So, my nickname Alpo was reverted back to its original form and I became
Albert of Pu-239. I've been Albert ever since, even got my account
changed in the university (from po87553 to albert@cs.tut.fi).

Back to the early days then. I was born in Viljakkala, Finland in
the year 1969, 26th of August. As of 1997 I live in Hämeenkyrö, Finland.

The first computer I got my hands on was a friend's Sinclair ZX-81,
which had a whopping 1K of RAM memory and a 22x20-character screen
(although I may remember that incorrectly). The funny thing was that
the screen memory was RLE-compressed. If you wrote a program which
printed too much stuff onto the screen, you run out of memory pretty
quickly. This was probably before the 7th grade, i.e. before 1982.

My first computer was a Sinclair Spectrum 48K, but it had an
unfortunate accident with its expansion port. I admit it, I
was stupid and young then and tried something I shouldn't have.
Anyway, after a year or so it was finally sent to be repaired,
but didn't quite work right even after that.

I also played with another friend's VIC-20 trying to create
games that I had done for the Spectrum.

Some years later (1986, or 1987?) I had enough money to buy a C64 and
a disk drive for 5000 FIM (approx. 1000 US$ back then, I presume).
Later I also purchased a tape drive, simply to be able to play
Trollie Wallie.

Back in 1988 I was quite active in the small, but fun BBS scene in
Tampere, Finland. I had my own BBS, running on a C64, with my own
software. I started writing it in basic and then added bits and
pieces of assembly code to make it tolerable. As my assembly-coding
abilities increased, I started writing demos. I got a big push
from a couple of acticles in the Finnish Commodore magazine,
C=Lehti. Also, I found another demo coder (Karri Ranta-aho) from one
of the BBS's and we just started to compete with each other.

The BBS community was our scene, and the founding members of
Pu-239 met there and we first became online friends and later
we met face to face (which always is a shock, small or big).
Pu-239 was founded 10.1.1989. We were more a group of friends
doing all kinds of crazy things together than a 'real' demo/cracker
group.

I also wrote some C64 articles for C=Lehti, but it was killed
off before any of them were published. I translated the articles to
English and they have been published in the C=Hacking net magazine.

The group was never officially disbanded, but we just went our
separate ways. I still try to keep my C64 (and lately also VIC20)
skills (programming mainly) alive and well. Other things interfere
though, and the last demo I have officially released was
"Megademo 92" in 1992 (and it is already 1997). However, I have a
couple of demo parts almost finished (for C64 and VIC20), so maybe
they'll get release when the time is right.

I have two specialty effects I might be famous of. The first one
is sprite stretching. The second one is 'copper' scrollers, where
the screen is blanked. Everything you see on the screen is done
using only the border color register.

I graduated (MSc degree) from the Tampere University of Technology
(tut.fi) in August 1996 (my Master of Science Thesis was:
"A Pre-emptive Multitasking Operating System for an Embedded Emulation Tool"),
and worked in some of the TUT's research projects before and after
my graduation.

Currently (1997) I'm a software engineer in a VLSI design company
called VLSI Solution Oy (albert@vlsi.fi). This means that I'm doing
both high-level (tool programs, development tools for e.g. digital
signal processor cores) and low-level programming (device drivers,
embedded system programming). I'm also continuing my studies
(albeit slowly) for a Licenciate of Technology and/or a Doctor of
Technology degree.

My hobbies (besides computers) mainly consists of science fiction
in written, movie or television form. Babylon 5 is the highest
ranking television series right now.