Pixel forest by a river, a man standing on a rock

Welcome to my little corner of the digital world.

Whoami

Pixel portrait of Heikki Mastokangas

My name is Heikki Mastokangas, and I’m someone who has always been interested in technology — especially electronics and computers. My first encounter with electricity was in early childhood, when my father showed me how a light bulb lights up when you connect it to a battery. Not long after that I burned my finger experimenting on my own, with a thin wire between the battery terminals.

Besides electronics and computers, my hobbies are photography, video production, music, and graphics. I’ve used cameras and drones for photography. AI has become part of those hobbies too — making images and videos, or helping with programming. The Commodore 64 and Amiga were a big part of my youth, and after them I gradually moved on to PCs in the mid-1990s. Today, I also run my own virtual servers on my own hardware, using Proxmox.

I have some background in programming, though these days I would call myself about 95% a vibe coder.

So why is there pixel art at the top of this website? Partly nostalgia: computer graphics were still young, and screen resolutions were nothing like today. The picture is inspired by classic adventure games, and by a place I like in the municipality where I live.

What do I think about AI

I know there are fears and problems around AI, and also real benefits. For me, AI is a tool.

I have some background in programming, but I never really had the time to go deep into whichever language I was using at the time. As AI has grown, it has become a tool that lets me turn new ideas into something real, and also breathe new life into older projects.

I’m not a professional programmer. I mainly build things as a hobby, and in that setting I’ve seen huge benefits from AI.

I do wonder how people who write software for a living feel about it. I hope they also see AI as a useful tool — something that can speed up programming and help with problem-solving.

I also use AI to make images, videos, and music, and to poke at all kinds of problems. I run models both locally and in the cloud.

Links

back to top