About Me

So, about me. I’m Esa, a programmer of sorts from Oulu, Finland. I have an MSc in Computer Science and Engineering because that’s what’s always important. I also like to use sarcasm in writing, which often tends to backfire. I wrote my thesis about optimized fuzzing, but unfortunately after the thesis, I have done zero things in my life related to it (as I guess usually happens with theses).

I moved into the active worker pool in 2016, and started my career as a Linux developer trainee, because it was the first position I got accepted into. The first year or so felt a bit meh, but my first task involving bootloaders got me hooked on that line of work. The low-level side of things started to intrigue me more and more. The deeper I went, the more interesting the things got. Maybe that’s some sort of Stockholm syndrome.

After that, I’ve done quite a lot of things revolving around embedded Linux, mostly with Yocto. Besides that, I’ve been doing C & C++ programming and some shell scripting & Python programming as well. Also, I have more experience with Jenkins than I would like to have. Over the years I’ve even been paid to do some websites and Android apps, but that’s a looooong time ago (I think Android Nougat was a new thing back then). Currently, I’m interested in cyber security, and I’m trying to get a bit different perspective on embedded Linux from the security point of view.

My free time programming projects usually are either Unity games that I start but never finish, or some semi-random audio/music related stuff. Lately, I’ve been getting into plug-in programming with JUCE, and that’s been interesting. Besides programming, I make music under the alias Surku and irregularly do a few different kinds of sports. I also like tasting beers, but my tastebuds are a bit poorly calibrated, and often the only thing I can say about a certain beer is “this tastes like beer” or “this doesn’t taste like beer at all”.