---
title: Five Tidbits You Didn't Know About Me
date: '2007-01-31T22:00:00Z'
categories:
- Personal
summary: Five random, trivial tidbits about me, from the header photo of my website to my Finnish origins.
original:
  url: http://bendiken.net/2007/01/31/five-tidbits
  archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20080509192648/http://bendiken.net/2007/01/31/five-tidbits
---

I’m honored to have been [given
license](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://codecraft.info/index.php/archives/73/)
by [Kevin Barnes](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://codecraft.info/)
to indulge in a brief egotrip, as one more felled by the infamous [5 things you
might not know about
me](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://www.google.com/search?q=five+things+you+might+not+know+about+me)
meme which is, evidently, still making the rounds. I’ll save you the complicit
rhetoric regarding the justifications for partaking in this exercise in mutual
self-aggrandizement, and, without further ado, just proceed to divulging five
random, trivial tidbits about yours truly:

> 1.  **The header photo (above) on my website is of the [Atlas mountain
>     range](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Mountains)
>     in Africa, as seen across the [Strait of
>     Gibraltar](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Gibraltar)
>     from the [Pillars of
>     Hercules](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Hercules).**
>     For all those who have asked about it, that’s your geography lesson for
>     today.
>
>     [Costa del
>     Sol](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_del_Sol),
>     where I’m located, runs along the Mediterranean coast towards Gibraltar,
>     and picturesque sights are the norm in this landscape. Looking out from my
>     office window on a clear day, those same African mountains are quite
>     discernible on the horizon — I really can’t complain about the view.
>
> 2.  **Though I live in Spain, I’m actually of Finnish origin.** Apparently the
>     notion of mobility within the EU isn’t all that widespread yet, as people
>     often enough make the obvious, but incorrect, assumption that I’m a
>     Spaniard. When you’re talking about Costa del Sol, all bets are off: this
>     region is as cosmopolitan as it gets.
>
>     Not that I’m at all bothered to be mislabeled, as I don’t particularly
>     hold any irrational nationalistic sentiments towards the country that I
>     happened to be born in. To me,
>     [Finland](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland)
>     is merely an authoritarian, anti-entrepreneurial backwater welfare state,
>     located quite literally at the edge of the world, and [chained at the hip
>     to
>     Nokia](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2587),
>     with which the country’s fortunes will rise and fall. Like many young
>     ex-Finns, I was born with an instinct for an exit strategy.
>
>     Still, if I must be categorized based on national origin, I’d prefer to
>     simply be called European — a term suitably vague and all mixed up, yet
>     more accurate as a descriptive label than either of the aforementioned
>     monikers.
>
> 3.  **I built my first own, top-of-the-line PC at age 11 with the money I
>     earned from trading second-hand computer hardware.**
>
>     Basically, I struck good deals on heaps of “scrap” hardware (motherboards,
>     casings, expansion cards, hard drives, monitors, and whatnot) at
>     bankruptcy auctions as well as from computer shops’ trade-ins and with
>     private sellers wanting to get rid of “broken” or “outdated” computers.
>
>     I dismantled what I bought, and reassembled any functioning components
>     into the semblance of proper computers, selling them at a profit in the
>     local classified ads paper. While it was a fair bit of work, it was also
>     worthwhile enough to subsidize purchases such as the kiloeuro I dropped on
>     a then-impressive 32 megabytes of RAM (perfect for playing
>     [Doom](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://www.idsoftware.com/games/doom/)).
>
> 4.  **As it happens, I’m entirely self-taught: I learned neither English nor
>     programming at school.** Blame a voracious literary appetite combined with
>     strong streaks of independent hardheadedness and disrespect for
>     established authority — not traits predisposed for survival through the
>     snail-paced, conformist machinery of public school education in Finland.
>
>     In fact, I dropped out of [the
>     system](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland)
>     a bit early on: 7th grade. I wanted to dedicate more time to my budding
>     computer business, which by that point had expanded to include creating
>     websites and custom applications for local small businesses, so I sat in
>     on only the final exams that were compulsory, by law, in order to finish
>     up the 7th to 9th grades. Major time saver: three years compressed into
>     some two dozen exams.
>
>     I did enroll at an evening high school for a couple of years, but, amidst
>     long and much more interesting work days, never quite found the time to
>     jump through all the hoops needed to obtain the final diploma. Can’t say
>     that I’ve needed it.
>
> 5.  **I’m something of a modern-day nomad.** At last count, I’ve lived in 28
>     locations in 4 countries — that’s more new addresses than I’ve yet
>     accumulated revolutions around the Sun.
>
>     As a result, I’ve developed a casually cavalier attitude towards
>     unnecessary material possessions — do you actually own your stuff, or does
>     it own you? — and would consider an ideal mode of living to be an
>     [RV](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_vehicle)
>     parked on a sand beach by the Mediterranean Sea. The sun, the beach and,
>     when you want it, the open road — what more do you need? (Well, mustn’t
>     forget the satellite net connection, of course.)
>

That concludes my exposé for today. Lest I become a leaf node for this
experiment in [contagious
media](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://www.contagiousmedia.org/),
I’m hereby passing the torch on to [José Antonio Ortega
Ruiz](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://jaortega.wordpress.com/),
[Jens Axel
Søgaard](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://www.scheme.dk/blog/),
[Alejandro Forero
Cuervo](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/weblogs/azul/),
[Roman
Menyhart](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://www.menyhart.net/blog/)
and [Matt
Henderson](https://web.archive.org/web/20070131/http://matt.makalumedia.com/).
Gentlemen, you know what to do: five facts, and tag five more people — or else…