Don't say I don't rhyme

I got a D+ I got a C from Calculus. Yep, that’s true... I don’t want to sound like a dork but I do like Calculus (I know nobody will ever want to be friends with me for saying this.). I am planning to get a scholarship at the end of this year. So I won’t have to work for school. I will maybe move to a better house or focus on school 100%. But a scholarship requires me to be the first in the rankings of our department this year. Bilgi is kind of ungenerous about scholarships. Now with a D+ in my bag, it would look a bit hard for me... But the good thing is that every course I have been taking this semester is 0 credits. The reason behind it is that Bilgi CS has a new course outline this year. They decided that all the courses in the first semester should be 0 credits. So they could fine-tune the course outline in the second semester without effecting our GPA.

I didn’t get that D+ because of their mistakes though. I simply didn’t study enough Calculus. Now I have to fix it in the second semester (Doesn’t that sound like familiar pattern?)... My mistake was that I studied only on the last two days before the final. I knew everything but there were so many chapters I had to cover that I didn’t have any time to solve/practice any exercises. Anyway, if I can’t get a better grade next term I’ll be in depression for sure. Mostly because of this blog post (I know I am referring Steve Yegge a lot. But deal with it, this blog exists because of him in the first place.)...

Now the stress of the finals are over and I have some time for myself, I decided to finish those movies and TV shows I’ve been piling on my desktop PC. Last week I watched Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. I am a huge fan of Jack Black and the whole “mock rock” thing. And I think Kyle Gass is the perfect match for Jack Black. The main difference of Tenacious D from other comedy-music duos is that their songs are awesome. They actually play some masterpiece mama jams during the movie or the TV shows. Yeah, they also starred on their own TV show. You can find more info but The D here. After watching the movie, I got the soundtrack as well. I have been listening to it everyday for the last 5 days, mostly on the way to the work and back home. The funny thing is, since the movie is like a funny-music-videos-stitched-together-with-regular-movie-scenes (I am not sure if “musical comedy” is the right word...), by listening to the album you can actually feel like watching the movie again... I mean, at least if you try to imagine the scenes... In short, I have been spending at least 2 hours a day watching/imagining about the movie for the last few days.

Next in line is the The Office. Now I am going to watch the final episode of it. People have tried to convince me to watch the series for a long long time. I remember watching a few episodes and not liking it before, for some reason, so I always refused. After my finals were done, I couldn’t find anything else to watch because of the writer’s strike. I decided to give it a shot and I watched the whole thing in two weeks. It was amazing. I wish I have watched it before (or maybe I wish I haven’t, so I could watch it from the start now... Hmm...). I’ll write about this in detail later. This is too long for a newbie blogger anyway.

That's what she said.

Mobility is a part of life

Because of my work and my studies, I have to carry my laptop with me almost all the time. I need it at work, I need it at school. If I am staying over at a friend's I have to take it with me because I will need it for work or school the very next day. When you carry it around enough, it becomes a real problem.

I have been trying to find an effective solution for carrying my MacBook. I have been using a few different bags. I used an ordinary laptop bag with my old 15” laptop. And after a while I realized it was way too heavy on one shoulder, so I switched to a huge laptop backpack. It was a lot better than the messenger bag but I couldn’t find a backpack (for laptops) that I really liked. For some reason all of them are lacking flavor. They all have ugly colors and weird designs. So I decided to buy one of those sleeves and carry it in my regular JanSport backpack. And after carrying it around for a while, I came to a conclusion: When it’s summer it’s a lot better to use a messenger bag. Even though it’s too heavy for one shoulder, you shouldn’t be walking around too much when it’s that hot anyway, it’s better than a backpack. Because backpacks makes your back sweat way too much... So messenger bag during summer and backpack for winter is the best for carrying a laptop.

It was working great until I switched to mac and bought a 13.3” MacBook. Now I am still using the same 15” sleeve. The problem is that I noticed some scratches on my MacBook and I think it’s because of the sleeve. I don't think it's doing a good job protecting it from pens and other weird stuff I am carrying all the time (I'll go into detail about this later.). It’s way too big and I think the MacBook is moving in it when I am carrying it in my backpack. And another thing is, an 15” sleeve is way too big to carry with my messenger bag. It barely fits in and there is no space left to put in anything else.

Now I am planning to buy an 13.3” sleeve. But, there are so many different brands and they are talking about a lot of different “shock-emitting technology” and stuff. This is one of those things that shouldn’t be too complicated. So I decided to buy the one that has the best looks. I am considering to buy this one or this one. I think I'll go for the black/red one.

Leave a comment if you have any suggestions.

Why I should blog

I finally decided to start a blog. Maybe the reason is this blog post. I am a big fan of Steve Yegge (his more recent blog). He is quite famous with his really long blog posts.

The main reason behind me starting this is, I consider myself one of the programmers who know how online communities and social networks work. But I realized I am a lurker. I lurk in mailing lists, I lurk in online forums. I lurk in open-source project wikis. I rarely contribute code and I never talk. So I decided to make my own contribution on this blog and my website naysaying.com. I chose this domain because I am a naysayer. That is it. I always comment about the things that, I think, are wrong and I rarely speak when I like something. I almost never find myself criticizing something when I really like it.

In this blog I am planning to talk about things that I don't like about software, web development, gadgets, video games, books and other things I am interested in. And I will also try to talk about things that I like and go into detail about them.

After reading a lot of blogs and articles I finally accept the fact that the things we consider obvious may not be so obvious at all. So, in that context, I will be talking about "obvious stuff". It may be boring for some of the readers and useful for others. I am not here to make everyone happy. If one thinks that this blog is boring, then one can read another blog that suits her. Internet is an ocean of blogs just as it's a series of tubes. I am also planning naysaying.com to be a site for my portfolio, projects and a place for me to exist online.

I am a Turkish web developer and Turkish is my mother tongue. If you wonder why I want to blog in English, that is because I am a Computer Science student. Most of the people I want to work with and the online communities I am interested in, are not consisting of Turkish speakers. The papers I will be releasing and all my work will be in English because, currently, it is the default language for science (which means I also have to improve my English writing skills.).

I have been avoiding this for years. I didn't want to join the horde for some reason, but I finally accept that one should have an online presence (Facebook is not enough, belive me.).

And... Well... Here I am.