About

Hello and welcome to my website, or web garden, tinkering space, whatever you want to call it. My name is Mikael Myyrä (English pronouns they/them or he/him), known online as Molentum. I am a PhD student in computational science at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and a hobbyist creative person. On this site you'll find graphic art and writing about my various projects.

My education is in computer science, and I've previously worked as a web developer. I consider myself a highly skilled programmer, but my current work is more mathematical in nature — my PhD research considers the simulation of various physical field theories using a discretization scheme known as discrete exterior calculus. I've really thrown myself into the deep end with this, as my previous math education is somewhat limited, but during these studies I hope to reach an advanced skill level in differential geometry, numerical methods for differential equations, and general mathematical literacy.

I've been fascinated by physics simulations for as long as I've known how to program, and my oldest still ongoing hobby project is a game engine called Starframe containing a custom physics engine. I'm also sporadically working on various game and graphics projects utilizing it.

These days my most important hobby is graphic art. I'm mostly known for drawing flowers and pretty ladies, but I try not to limit myself to any one subject matter or style. I like art nouveau, surrealist horror, realistic rendering, stylized shapes, inky lineart, lineless painting, abstract backgrounds, naturalistic landscapes... Too many influences to count, which keep pulling me in new and conflicting directions.

In recent times I've been building a more cohesive fiction around my art and characters, called Yon: a fantasy-meets-solarpunk world where I'm working to improve my landscapes, writing, and design, as well as explore some political ideas. I'm also slowly branching out from digital painting into traditional media, particularly ink and gouache.

I've also been known to play heavy metal with my guitar from time to time.

I'm a big fan of open source software. Some that I use particularly often are Krita, Blender, Neovim, Rust, and NixOS.

If you'd like to talk to me, you can send an email to mikael@molentum.me or ping me on Mastodon.