About

About me

My name is Olli, although online I go by the name Panther. Most would describe me as a weird person, but usually they mean it in a positive sense. My interests include music, technology, space, sports and working out, photography and other visual arts - basically this and that. I'm infinitely curious to explore the world and all its aspects, and I'm constantly developing new skills and myself as a human. I am also a longtime Linux user and a software developer, hence the tech blog. I like to work with Bash and Vim, but my skill set is full stack. My day job is a software architect.

I have a master's degree in science and engineering with software engineering major from Tampere University of Technology. I wrote my thesis during trainee and research assistant programs at CERN. I also have a secondary level teacher certification from University of Tampere for information technology, mathematics and physics, and a classical line of study diploma from Pirkanmaa Music Institute.

I've played the trumpet since I was nine years old. After the bands at the music institute and a win at a national brass instrument competition, I've mostly been associated with the bands Poutatorvi and Utopianisti. With the former my stage persona Trumpenator was born. With the latter I've had the rare opportunity and pleasure to also play for audiences abroad. I also have some experience playing the trombone and electronic drums.

Flexing Trumpenator

Professional information

I am a super versatile software developer, with experience not only in the ICT industry, but also in the academic world and system administration, especially in Linux environments. In the software industry I've worked a lot with tasks typically done by a product owner, a scrum master, a technical team lead, or an architect. I also have some eye for graphical work because of my artistic side. My educational background is heavily on the mathematical side, and I also have a teacher's certificate, which probably relates a bit to my capability to interact with different kinds of people.

Writing down my skill set is hence almost impossible, but tech-wise I am in the full stack category. Some of the technologies I'm familiar with include (in bold those freshest in memory):

  • Linux, Windows, macOS
  • Shell (bash, dash), PowerShell, C++, C, Fortran, Assembler
  • .NET (C#, ASP.NET), .NET Core, WPF, Windows Forms, Entity Framework, Razor
  • JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, PHP, React, Angular, CSS, HTML5
  • Java, Kotlin, Spring Framework, Gradle, Maven, Android
  • AWS (EC2, ECS, Elastic Beanstalk, Route 53), Azure
  • SQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, InfluxDB, SQL Server Management Studio, Oracle Database
  • Apache HTTP Server, Apache Tomcat, Microsoft IIS, Nginx, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Docker, KVM, XenServer, VMware ESXi
  • SAML, Suomi.fi e-Identification, UML, MATLAB
  • Communication

With professional experience starting already in the 2000s, I've dealt with so many technologies that I usually don't consider the technical side a problem. I've discovered that most difficulties in projects stem from inadequate communication skills along with lack of vision and common goals. When those are in order (I'm very good at making it so), writing technical specifications becomes much easier. And with good specs, writing the code becomes largely (obviously not always) trivial. In my everyday work I'm not only known as a competent senior software developer, I've also many times been described as a project saviour. This has to do with my capability to figure out even the most abstract of challenges, break them down to manageable parts, write down the problems and create a realistic plan to solve them. And finally, go hands-on and actually code the implementation.

Because of this versatility, I decided to establish my own business, GainIT, in case interesting small IT project opportunities arise. For some project samples, see my GitHub profile.

Myself

Contact information

My website can always be found at https://www.iki.fi/olli.helin - it redirects to whatever my current service provider is. Similarly, my email is and always will be olli.helin(at)iki.fi. I'm found in IRCnet by the nickname Panther. Other than that I can be reached from the social network sites listed below.

My social network sites

About this website

This website was made using GainCMS, a flat file blog engine/CMS made by me. The source code (without content and maybe some small tweaks) is available at GitHub.

GainCMS uses Parsedown and Bootstrap, which are MIT licensed. The social media share icons are CC by Aha-Soft Team. GainCMS itself is GPL-3.0.

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