Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho was born on November 2, 1977 in Jyväskylä, Finland. He spent his childhood in Jyväskylä, then moved to Tampere for four years to complete his secondary schooling, and finally returned to Jyväskylä to study mathematics at the University of Jyväskylä. He graduated in Information Technology and Mathematics in 2001 and continued postgraduate studies in Software Engineering, getting his Master’s Degree in 2002. He is now a postgraduate student preparing a programming languages related doctoral dissertation. He also teaches several courses in the university related to theoretical computer science and programming languages.
During his teen years, Antti-Juhani became active in the green movement with his childhood friend Oras. While his friend went on to eventually become a member of parliament, he himself dropped out of the activism game for about seven years. After graduation, Antti-Juhani activated himself in local politcs, ran for a city council seat in the 2004 elections, lost barely, and participates now in some lesser committees. As a by-product, he ended up as a lay judge in the local district court. Recently, he got promoted to a deputy councillor in the city council, after one of the original councillors left town, promoting one of the deputies to full councillor status and thus leaving a deputy seat empty.
Antti-Juhani is a geek of all trades. Everything that can be thought about interests him. His primary geeky interests are computers and writing. He has been a Debian developer since 1999 and won NaNoWriMo in 2005 after two previous failed attempts (but he still considers himself a wannabe in writing). He used to do music, but the lack of an audience has discouraged him, and now he merely listens – most of the time. As unusual it is for both a geek and a lay judge, Antti-Juhani finds law and legal things utterly fascinating.
Antti-Juhani’s biggest problem is not his unusually mild cerebral palsy (spastic hemiplegia); it is his considerable weight.
