About me

Quick overview

Since you've come here, you're maybe wondering who exactly is this me. Well, I am a Finnish 20 year old/young visually impaired man called Tommi Kivistö. I'm an active internet person on a few select forums and IRC channels. I'm known as Ishmael, Matti_Rapula or Zlorth around the internet. The reason for such a multitude of names is that every name I've ever chosen is either already taken, or has been picked at a spur of the moment and I simply don't like using it anymore.

Interests

Things I usually list as my hobbies are computers, movie making, playing guitar, drawing and photography. I've been involved with computers since I was seven or eight years old, and I've grown as a fond fan of classic first-person shooter games such as Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. I still play a lot of games and try to fiddle with attached sort of activities, such as making maps for them. So far I've only truly figured out some of the secrets of map making for Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, Half-life, Jedi Knight III and Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. Another important aspects of computer use to me are the internet and game making. I'm using Chris Jones' Adventure Game Studio (AGS for short) to creat more or less classic-style point and click adventure games. More on these can be found in the games-section of this site.

I've played guitar for about four years now, but I have so far only got the hold of some basics. I've been on only a few guitar lessons, and the rest is very lasily self-learned. I'm hoping to get a grip of myself and study a bit more to evolve into some direction. Me and two of my friends have a band, but we all live a long distance from each other, so rehearsal opportunities are rare, and we're still searching for our true form. I'm holding the post of guitarist, singer and songwriter, and doing slow progeress in each field. I also like drawing, but because of my eyesight this is somewhat a limited hobby for me. I also like photographing, which is even more limited by said factor. And that, conveniently, brings me to...

Achromatopsia

My eyesight, then, is a whole subject on it's own. I'm technically, at the moment, 88% blind. But that does not alter any of my daily habits, as I've adjusted to living with this condition. I have a genetically inherited condition called achromatopsia (complete achromatopsia in wiki terms). In my case this basically means complete colour blindless, reduced visual accuracy and rather great sensitivity to bright light. For daily life this means most 'colour coded' things are beyond me, and that I need to read any text from a shorter distance than other people. To some people this might seem weird, but to people who know me it's perfectly normal.

During the years I've been more and less involved with visually impaired people, depending on the time. I've been to normal school, but I have attended short periods of specialised teaching for visually impaired people. I've also been on several summer camps arranged by the Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired (FFVI). Along the years of involvemend with blind people I've learned to read and write braille, the writing of the blind. My skills are a bit rusty after several years of not having anything to do with it, but I do not wish to completely lose this skill.

For those interested, I can tell you that the world of the blind is a whole new dimension of 'seeing' things. Nothing is judged as it looks to the eye, but instead how it feels to the hand and how it's described. Nobody looks at you strangely if you want to look closer or touch something to know what it's like. It's truly a whole new level of understanding.

Serpent Pictures

Making movies is at the moment one of my greatest interests. I like writing scripts, making music and acting, all of which come in handy in a little indie movie team, Serpent Pictures me and a few friends have set up. The site and all our productions are in Finnish, but we hope to get some English subtitles set up for the stuff, at least.