my nerd story

Hi! I'm Oona Räisänen, and following Crystal Beasley's example, this is my nerd story.

[Image: A plastic robot toy standing next to a My Little Pony.]

As a kid, I was always fascinated and surrounded by electronics. My parents worked in electronic music research and carpentry, so there was a bit of a DIY mentality at home. A Philips cassette player was among my first toys. I would take things apart to see how they worked, like how the tape winds itself around the heads in a reel-to-reel recorder. I didn't necessarily know how to put everything back together though. I borrowed children's electronics books from the library and hoped to one day build my own circuit.

Among my favorite books were Kuinka kaikki toimii (How Stuff Works) and Keksijän käsikirja (Science Fun).

Signals came into play a little later. Our family used to spend summers at our summer place that had a radio with a shortwave band. Of course, the band was full of beeps and boops that I was eager to find an explanation for – a perfect way to spend rainy days. Eventually the sunny days, too. Pranking truck drivers with illegal Russian walkie-talkies was among those activites as well.

I saw the movie Contact which inspired me to start listening to mystery signals even more.

As a teenager I saved up for my own SW radio and started listening to numbers stations and other mysterious signals.

This wasn't a popular children's hobby where I lived, and coupled with my social awkwardness it didn't bring me too many friends. But it didn't really matter.

[Image: Part of a screenshot of a program; boxes with text in them resembling programming instructions, and lines connecting the boxes to each other.]

As a 10-year-old, I had started programming with Max (pictured), a visual programming language that I used for making simple text adventures and blinkenlights. Max was a Macintosh program intended for realtime music and signals programming, but it happened to be quite accessible for children to play with. I even borrowed one of the Usborne children's BASIC game books from the library and tried translating the code listings into visual Max diagrams, which worked to some extent.

Later we got our first PC and I'd learn QuickBasic, which I soon s///'d with Perl, after someone caught me writing CGI web pages with it. (Yeah, QB CGI, it's possible.) I still use Perl for quick scripting and prototyping.

An electronics class in eighth grade taught me the basics of soldering and DIY PCB manufacturing.

I went to a science high school, majoring in physics. In college I took some classes in computer science, but wasn't extremely enthusiastic about it; my major was in biosciences, though I never graduated. New signals needed decoding, and I studied digital signal processing for fun at home. Worked as a coder at the same time.

During the past couple of years I've learnt there's a scene full of hackers like us, and they're quite a funny bunch.

26 comments:

  1. Another inspirational story. There can never be too many of these. Unfortunately not every hacker with potential find their way during their childhood or even early adulthood. I think I've mentioned this before, but reading blog and following your YouTube videos has helped me rediscover myself and the joy of hacking stuff. :) Thanks.

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  2. keep yourself curious, keep on sharing your findings, keep inspiring people ;)

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  3. you wrote:"I would take things apart to see how they worked, like how the tape winds itself around the heads in my dad's reel-to-reel recorder. I didn't necessarily know how to put everything back together though."
    I did the same with my father's tape recorder! (Unfortunately, he lost his temper one day, and threw out many of my audio tapes including one of my musical compositions played by a then-7 year old cellist named Yo-Yo Ma.) My favorite place as a child was the laboratory of Lovett Garceau (co-inventor of the electroencephalograph) up in Vermont in the late 1950s-early 1960s. You seem to have made a pure pursuit your interests without any impediments, and the results are a joy to read. You're way beyond me, but I understand enough of what you're saying to find this one of the most fascinating sites I've ever come across.

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  4. Juuri luin Hesarista tuon juttusi, kun puoliso hihkui aamulla että siel on juttu Jaakko nimisestä naisesta. Ymmärsin vitsin kun luin artikkelin - taisin nimittäin lukea omaa elämääni, ei muuta kuin s/Oona/Jaakko :D Keksijän käsikirja, Salapoliisin käsikirja, kaikki muut mahdolliset kirjaston 61/62 luokituksen alta ja netistä lisää.

    Ja se isosiskon radio jonka purin osiin vaahtosammuttimen kokoisena elektroniikasta kiinnostuneena? Vieläkin osissa :)

    Mahtava blogi, mielenkiintoisia juttuja vaikka (D)SP meneekin yli ymmärrykseni ja kyllä huomaa että joku on löytänyt "sen juttunsa" <3

    Mikäli tietotekniikan salauspuoli ja mekaaninen lukitusturvallisuus kiinnostaa, niin LockCon on syyskuussa Hollannissa ja voin suositella sinua jos kiinnostusta on :)

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  5. Yes, I also think you'd like LockCon. Lots of lock geekery, and with the incoming wave of networked and, in particular, Bluetooth enabled locks, I'm sure your DSP background would lead to some interesting exploits.

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  6. Hi Oona, you rock!!
    Found your pages by chance. Was looking for RDS decoding. Very impressive....
    73 de Roland DF3LZ

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  7. Awesome blog - bookmarked, I'm going to lose some time reading your articles and cross reading so I can understand them!

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  8. I enjoy reading about your discoveries and your development.

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  9. Yeah,

    but do you like Synthesizers ...of the Musical variety? eh? :]

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    1. I used to make MIDI music but haven't had an inspiration for years. For me, synthesizers aren't interesting per se if I don't know what to do with them.

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    2. Thanks again for sharing,
      I used to enjoy the numbers stations too.
      Sadly too many states have changed and many are off air. Maybe to return soon? But the messages are still sent thru other means. Maybe like your whistle example?
      Victor

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  10. Good story! Follow your heart.

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  11. Good to read your stuff. Don't stop!

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  12. This is a great story! Brings back memories of me taking things apart as a kid. Thanks!

    You are beautiful and smart. :)

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  13. Greetings Oona
    We have just one word to say to you and about you.
    Talent.
    And you have lots of it.
    G8 site btw.
    Stay in touch and thank you for following us on T.
    All our best
    AnonymousScandinavia
    Expect us

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the kind words, wishing great success and all the best.

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  14. Hienoa shittiä.

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  15. Thank you for being you......It's hard to find like minded people among the sea of people and to be publicly open to such...Thank you!

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  16. Just read some of your stuff - really enjoyed it. Thanks for writing.

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  17. Great GNU Radio Conference 2020 Speech!

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  18. Hey :) I follow your posts for quite some time now and always it's something new to learn. I admire your curiosity to tinker with interesting stuff. I was always into in electronics, coding and signals (I tried to fix a CRT TV when I was five, but it was over ten years later when I was able to fix a CRT monitor with a soldering iron; also as a child I was amazed how my mum was able to get TV signal with nothing but a bit of soldering wire), but your articles inspired me to experiment some more with RTL-SDR and HackRF One. I try to make some more time to play with signals, but I struggle with my day job (porting games from PC to consoles or vice versa) and a day only 24h long... I guess 32h would be appropriate. I have yet to find my place in the hacking world, but I'm quite optimistic about next few years.

    PS: Did you play Disco Elysium? I am sure the NPC 'Soona the Programmer' was inspired by you :P

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    1. Hi! Happy to hear people getting inspired to play with software radios. I can definitely relate to 24h being too little to fit both a day job and hobbies. Good to take a little vacation every now and then to play with the interesting stuff.

      I haven't played the game but heard about the character and that the connection was, to some degree, intentional :) Good luck with the radio adventures!

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  19. awesome story! I recently came across your blog and really like it since I also have a burgeoning interest in signals and music. i loved taking apart radios and listening to dialup sounds as a kid so I feel like your posts speak to me :-)

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    Replies
    1. Glad you found the blog inspiring :) Good luck on your deep dive to the world of signals!!

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