Who I am

I was born at a latitude of almost 70 degrees north in a city called Tromsø, in the month of March when temperatures can reach below -20 degrees Celsius. My name is Eirik Lillebo, and I’m a 22 year old student, web developer and graphic designer from Norway. Despite the hostile climate, the viking warlords and roaming polar bears scattered throughout the land, Norway apparently isn’t such a bad place to grow up.

Not long after I came into being, my family and I moved south and settled in a small town along the western coastline called Kristiansund. If anyone from outside of Norway have ever heard of this place, it’s probably because this guy was born and raised there. Nevertheless, this was my mothers hometown, and her mother and father (my grandparents), and brother and sister and their families still lived there. At almost every holiday, birthday and any other special event, the entire family could gather and celebrate the joyous occasion with home cooked food and delicious cake, sing songs and play games. Ah, life was good.

In the same year I reached the age of eight my father bought our very first computer. I can’t remember what kind of a computer it was, but it was big, grey and made all kinds of funny sounds when I pushed buttons. Eventually, pushing buttons became a more or less full time activity in my life, but we’ll get back to that a little later. My first big personal breakthrough with computers was at an age of nine when I was introduced to computer games and figured out how to hit a green pixel-gorilla on one side of the screen with my yellow banana from the other. This naturally resulted in a fanatic obsession with computers and computer gaming. To this day I firmly believe that (some) computer games significantly help develop the creative and logic abilities of children who play them, and anyone who says otherwise should be forced to play Civilization III (or IV), SimCity 4, Age of Empires 2 (a classic) and/or Monkey Island I and II until their eyes starts to bleed.

When I reached 18 years I was draftet into the Royal Norwegian Airforce and stationed at Bodø Main Air Station. In Norway the draft is mandatory and about 70% of all boys at age 18 to 19 are selected to serve in some way or another. During my service to the military I was promoted to Corporal and was chosen as team-leader in my squad. After about seven months I got transferred to the Air Station Headquarters where I served out the remainder of my term under the Chief Information Officer.

After my stay with the people in green, I moved to Oslo and begun studying Digital Media at the University of Oslo's Institute of Informatics. I'm now at the end of my second year there, with just one more year to go.