About

My first passion has been music since I was 7 years old. I still remember asking for a drum set from my parents after my cousin taught me to play a basic beat to accompany his interpretation of Nirvana's "Smell like Teen Spirit" on an electric guitar. I never got the drum set, and I didn't start in music until later in life, but this is where it all started.

Around the time I was 10-11 years old, Bomfunk MCs were a big thing in Finland, and that's when I learned about breakdancing; I became obsessed with it and ended up taking a beginner's class, which eventually led me to join a competitive group at a local dance school. The group had a lot of variety, and I got to practice a lot of different styles, from locking 'n popping to modern dance.

Around 15 years old, I got my second introduction to music while ditching school at my friend's house, who had gotten an electric guitar as a Christmas present. I spent countless hours hanging out with him and learning the guitar. This kept going on for a couple of years, and after I graduated from upper elementary school, I ended up in a vocational school to learn about software development.

This is where I met the people that really got me into music. I had a classmate who was into heavy metal and was the most talented player I had met at that point. We ended up forming a group together and playing death metal; yes, you read right, death metal. Throughout the degree in software I spent most of my time practicing guitar. After graduation, I applied to read CS in the uni and got in. My motivation wasn't there. I flunked basically every class I had signed up for, and after the first year, I applied to a conservatory to study guitar and music technology.

I was chosen for the music technology degree, so I moved cities and enrolled in the program. For the next three years, I was immersed in music and practiced the guitar most of the time. This time, I met a lot of new people in music and joined a Swedish/Finnish reggae band, The Meänland. However, due to some personal issues, I never graduated from the program.

Around 2013, I moved back to Oulu, where I'm from, and began regrouping after the hardships. I was still somewhat involved with the band, but not as actively as before. The artist's life had taken a toll on me, and I needed to find a new way to live. I started thinking about going back to University since I was still eligible for the program I had dropped from.

After the summer of 2014, I decided that I was going to go back to Uni, but something strange happened while I was refreshing my basic coding skills at Khan Academy. I ended up watching a linear algebra video for some graphics transformations and got sucked into a rabbit hole. 3-4 hours later that night, I decided that instead of going back to computer science, I was going to become an engineer and apply for computer science and engineering.

There was a problem, though: I had no maths background. I never went to high school, and the entrance exam was going to be purely maths and physics.

I didn't let this bother me, and I started learning math from the ground up, starting from the most basic things taught in elementary school. After a few months of self-study, I had proven myself committed enough, so I called my grandfather, who had a long academic career as a math professor at the local university.

From there on, I started having weekly tutoring sessions where he guided me through the high school math and physics syllabus for seven months before the entrance exams, and lo and behold, I got in. You can read more about this story on my tech blog here:

https://tonitalksdev.com/reflecting-on-a-masters-degree-in-cse-without-a-high-school-diploma

Before I started my studies, and sometime after, I was still working in music. I had occasional gigs as an audio engineer, and every now and then, I joined the reggae band for a gig. One trip of these is etched into my memory. We were in northern Norway playing a gig in this log cabin in high elevation, and the next morning, I was having a chat with a bandmate who had been living in Paris for a while. I thought it was one of the coolest things you could do: live abroad and experience life in a different way. The same day I decided that I'm going to move somewhere as soon as I possibly can.

After returning home, I started learning Spanish on my own, and I was determined to get out of Finland through my studies by joining the Erasmus program.

After two years of studying, I made this a reality and moved to Barcelona for a year in 2017. This is when I dropped from the band and left the semi-professional music life behind. At this point I was already working for the Uni as a research assistant.

Even though I didn't get paid for music anymore, in Barcelona I was actively playing on the open stages of small clubs. This is how I ended up meeting my wife. Long story short, we ended up moving together to Spain to see "if this is gonna work". She was there for two years, and I was only for one. In the summer of 2018, I had to move back to Finland to finish my studies and kickstart my software career while she stayed behind for another year.

For the first nine months back in Finland, I was still working for the University, finishing my master's thesis, but when I was about to finish it, I jumped from the University to the industry and got my first software consulting gig. During this time, I worked on multiple projects, but the one that made me grow the most was a remote project to the States, where I had to level up my game quite a bit, this project lasted around 14 months. I stayed in the first company for exactly two years before moving to my current role, which I've had now for 4 years.

When I was interviewing for the job, I already knew that I wanted to move away from Finland, so I asked my future boss, "Is it a threat or an opportunity if I move closer to the States?"

It was an opportunity.

I was still working on finishing my master's degree when I switched companies, and even after finishing the degree, I was stupid enough to try to start another one, this time in mathematics. It didn't take long for me to understand that it wasn't a good idea to keep studying and working at the same time. I had been doing that already for 3 years with a full-time job, and it was starting to weigh on me.

I dropped out of the program after six months and switched my extra time to CrossFit. I've been at it for two years now, and it's probably the healthiest obsession I've had so far. After a year of doing CF, I also picked up Olympic weightlifting.

Now, in March of 2025, I have a five-year international posting contract with my employer and one-way tickets to Panama, and I'm ready for the next chapter of my life.

Last year, I started learning to make videos on Instagram and YouTube, and I started two channels: Slanted T and ToniTalksDev. I wanted to prepare to document the move to Panama and expat living, and I had the idea of starting a podcast related to technology. I made more than 40 videos during 2024 just to practice and hone my skills in public speaking and presenting.

This site is for putting all of this together, what I'm doing now, and what I'll be doing later. Learnings from expat living, getting fit in Panama, working as an international software consultant as a digital nomad, making music, and practicing guitar.

The tech content is still going to be on ToniTalksDev.com, but I might cross-post something here as well. I'm also thinking of sharing my etudes and guitar exercises as digital products, but we'll see.

phew... that's a lot.

Thanks for dropping by, I appreciate it! ✌️