Linux Mint
Based on Ubuntu/Debian, Linux Mint is designed for ease-of-use. Give it a try (possibly on Sun VirtualBox).
Sun VirtualBox
Free VMWare alternative from Sun: VirtualBox
Try the latest Open Solaris on it or obtain already installed images here.
Karacaoğlan
Karac’oğlan şiirleri de koymaya başladım. Again, poems are in Turkish only.
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.
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.
Mevlana
Mevlana Celaleddin (Jalaluddin) Rumi’den seçmeler:
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!
Fıkralar
Sevdiğim bazı fıkraları bir araya toplamaya başladım. Canınız sıkıldıkça girip
adresinden bakabilirsiniz. Kafama estikçe yenilerini ekleyeceğim.
Ömer Hayyam
Ömer Hayyam’dan seçtiğim şiirleri
http://omerhayyamdansecmeler.wordpress.com/
adresinde bulabilirsiniz. Böyle büyük insanları gerçekten takdir ediyorum.
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.
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 
)
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:
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.
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
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.”
Yunus Emre
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!!!
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.
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:
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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
