alpkup

Alptekin Küpçü

Linux Mint

Based on Ubuntu/Debian, Linux Mint is designed for ease-of-use. Give it a try (possibly on Sun VirtualBox).

May 5, 2009 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Sun VirtualBox

Free VMWare alternative from Sun: VirtualBox

Try the latest Open Solaris on it or obtain already installed images here.

May 2, 2009 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Karacaoğlan

Karac’oğlan şiirleri de koymaya başladım. Again, poems are in Turkish only.

http://karacaoglandansecmeler.wordpress.com

March 23, 2009 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

ask.com

I was looking for an alternative to google for a long time, and I finally found it
www.ask.com

First of all, the search results are good enough and very similar to google. Also, try to search for the following to have fun:
“washington dc weather”
“seattle wa events”
“what is the height of mount everest”
“europe news”
or perform a video search for “obama” and see their built-in player

Lastly, go and explore city.ask.com
Tip: perform a regular web search for “providence ri movies” on ask.com and let it show you the cinemas and time table on the map.

November 25, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Turkish-English translators needed

Hey,
As you probably have noticed from my earlier posts, I am putting some very nice poems online. To be able to reach more people, they should be translated to English. Some of the poems already have translations (which we need to find out), but some others don’t.
If you are interested in this voluntary translation effort, leave a comment.

November 8, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Mevlana

Mevlana Celaleddin (Jalaluddin) Rumi’den seçmeler:

http://mevlanadansecmeler.wordpress.com/

November 2, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | 2 Comments

MicroID broken

Chris Erway, one of my friends and colleagues, one day approached me and said there’s this MicroID thing which reveals users’ email addresses on some web sites (which at one point included Digg and Last.fm). He has written a nice article about how MicroID is harmful to users’ privacy here:

http://www.cs.brown.edu/~cce/microid/

Have a look at it. It’s sad to see that such things can even become an IETF draft. Luckily, due to his pressure, most of those sites stopped integrating MicroID. Thanks!

August 29, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Fıkralar

Sevdiğim bazı fıkraları bir araya toplamaya başladım. Canınız sıkıldıkça girip

http://fikra.tumblr.com/

adresinden bakabilirsiniz. Kafama estikçe yenilerini ekleyeceğim.

August 3, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Ömer Hayyam

Ömer Hayyam’dan seçtiğim şiirleri

http://omerhayyamdansecmeler.wordpress.com/

adresinde bulabilirsiniz. Böyle büyük insanları gerçekten takdir ediyorum.

August 3, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Turkey – Euro 2008 (continued)

So, last time I said it was luck. Yesterday, it wasn’t. We played really well against Germany, with 9 players either injured or suspended. I really believed that we’d win. But alas, this time they were the lucky side. I cannot complain.
But I’m not sorry. It’s like Galatasaray in the year 2000. Every game we play, I believe in my team that they’ll win. I don’t have doubts. This is soccer, you may lose from time to time. But once you get the feeling that you’ll win, it’s so hard for your opponent.

June 26, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Turkey – Euro 2008

An early comment, I know. But I couldn’t resist the temptation, while everybody I know was writing about this.

The past week was a wonderful one. Actually, it was full of wonders.
Boston Celtics became the NBA champion, after a win that made into the NBA history.
But this week’s topic is Turkey in Euro 2008.

Why? OK, let’s see. The game against Switzerland was good, winning in the second half. I always believed that’d be the case.
The game against Check Republic was unbelievable, although I always believed we’d win. But winning in the last 15 minutes, not even the penalty shoot-outs… It never occurred to me.
Finally, the game against Croatia. What else can be done. They scored at the 118th minute, and we scored in the 122nd. Of course, they couldn’t win during the penalty shoot-outs with that low morale.

Yes, it’s a combination of mostly luck and Turkishness. Turkish people know what I mean. That belief, that last minute try, that coming out stronger from anything that doesn’t kill us…

I cannot describe it (neither in Turkish :) )

June 21, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

hulu

I just discovered this new web site that let’s you watch some TV shows and movies for free. It is legal since it puts 30 second ads during the shows and movies. This is perfectly reasonable. Check it out:

www.hulu.com

June 18, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Portal PC Game

This game is incredible. I have played hundreds of games in my life. And Portal easily made to my top 10 or maybe top 5 list. I had so much fun, not only playing, but also listening. You’ll see what I mean if you play it.

I’d like to thank the developers for coming up with such an innovative game when all the game design was reduced to cool graphics. Play Portal.

May 10, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Summary of Yunus Emre’s philosophy

İlim kendin bilmektir
Sen elif dersin hoca, manisi ne demektir
Hepisinden iyice, bir gönüle girmektir

Knowledge is to understand who you are
You say “alpha” (incomprehensible), preacher, what can it possibly mean?
The best thing is a visit to one’s heart

May 4, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

The philosophy of my life

A saying states “Do not leave today’s business for tomorrow.”
One of my friends say “Do not do tomorrow’s business today.”
Combining these, one of my relatives say “If we manage to satisfactorily accomplish today’s business, we need neither to worry about the future, nor to question the past.”

April 29, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Yunus Emre

Yunus Emre’den seçmeler

Bu sayfa sadece Türkçe olacak. İleride belki İngilizce bir benzerini de hazırlarım. Kendi seçtiğim şeyleri koyacağım. Arada bir bakın, ama bir anda çok fazla okumayın, şiirleri anlamadan, onların üzerinde düşünmeden geçmeyin.

March 21, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

GALATASARAY

It is the best Turkish soccer team on the Earth. There is no debate about it. It was once one of the best in the whole Europe too. Due to poor management, it suffered lots of performance losses. Also, being far away made me forget supporting my team.

I’m going back to my old days, hoping that my team will return back to its glorious days. The greatest champion: GALATASARAY!!!

March 2, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

iobit

This is an interesting company. They have very few but very nice products. I strongly recommend them. At the moment, I’m waiting to see their spyware defender program too.

www.iobit.com

February 18, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

musicopat.com

I had this idea, and as in many other things, other people with possibly more resources implemented it before me. Nevertheless, I waited a long time for this web site, and it’s pretty cool. Check it out:

www.musicopat.com

It is FREE and LEGAL music that cannot be downloaded but played online. Most importantly, they have almost all the Turkish labels. Let’s support them.

February 18, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Yunus Emre

Yunus Emre hakkında pek çok şey koyacağım buraya. Bu ilki.

I’ll put some Yunus Emre poems here, but I cannot translate the poems. I’ll try to translate some other related info though. So, let’s start with this one.

Sabahattin Eyüboğlu says the following about Yunus Emre:
“Despite all his religious personality and devotion to Islam, Yunus was not a man from any religion, any sect; he was not even a man of the religion. On the contrary, he was beyond all different religions, mosques, churches, sanctuaries; he was especially against strict religious people. His religion did not have a book, a worship ritual or direction. The only rule, dogma of his belief was love: the widest, limitless, the most humanist love; pure love. When you asked Yunus about his religion, his God, he would say nothing but LOVE, ATTACHMENT, and COMPANIONSHIP.”

February 16, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Who

We. We should be compatible, but different. We should like similar stuff to eat/do/go/etc., but know different things. We should have similar world views, but from different angles. We should be discussing, attacking each other’s ideas fiercely alas gently, so that when we sum up, we make more than 2 people.

January 15, 2008 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Turkish

Two years ago, a friend told me that Turkish sounds very melodic, like song lyrics. I only managed to understand it now.
In Turkish, every syllable contains a vowel. So, it is really easy to elongate them while pronouncing. In songs, you need to fit the syllables to the music, so this is where that property comes into play. This is not applicable to English actually.

November 12, 2007 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | 3 Comments

New Photos

September 8, 2007 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

Brown banner is THE WORST web site I’ve ever seen

How can my university pay some people millions of dollars (which was millions more than the anticipated amount) to create the world’s worst course registration service. Even the naive paper-based service and boca was better. I can list the bad sides of it, but I don’t want to fill my blog with it.
I want my money back. Actually, even I could have designed a much better one for much less money. I am sure someone got rich without deserving, most probably only by using his/her connections. I’m also sure the connection got richer. Yet, I’m not accusing any particular person. They are already aware of this fact.

September 5, 2007 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet

ipod rocks

Interesting news: Sony gave up its fight against Apple in the music industry. The old giant is replaced by the new one. I tried some sony mp3 players before buying my ipod two years ago, but they had only 3 levels of volume: low, medium, high. You can easily tell how shitty they are. Read the news about their defeat:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136659-c,onlineentertainment/article.html

September 2, 2007 Posted by alpkup | Uncategorized | | No Comments Yet