Cream'i kızlar kullansın.. eek..

Workrave, telling me to stop hurting myself.

Halen öğrenci olduğumu hatırlatan sınavlarımdan dolayı önümüzdeki hafta sonu Ankara'da olacağım. Üstelik Devrim beni eve(!) mi atacakmış, öyle birşeyler duydum?

Listening to that young Croatian pianist, Maksim Mrvica for a while now (thanks a lot, dude). The music I already knew very well, with a different sound. It's amazing. He even played Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto in Zagreb last year, I should have been there.

I've just installed Evince (a Postscript/PDF viewer) and I'm a happy user of it. Compared to gpdf, which was just a Gtk+ port of some features of the xpdf codebase, it rocks really hard. Here are some features:

• Type-ahead-search and search highlighting
• Document Index
• Page thumbnails

It's available in Debian/unstable. This made me apt-get remove --purge acroread. Yay!

Chomsky'nin Batı'nın Yeni Standartları adlı kitabını okurken yazarın Kosova ve Doğu Timor'u birbiri ile kıyasladığı bir paragrafı aktarmak istedim:

Bütün bu gelişmeler yaşanırken, birkaç ay önce Novi Sad, Belgrad ve Pançevo'da nokta atışıyla sivil hedefleri gözünden vurabilen hava kuvvetlerinin, ABD ile ondan daha az sinik olmayan müttefiklerinin eğitip silahlandırdığı Endonezya ordusu tarafından dağlara sürülen; açlıkla karşı karşıya kalan yüz binlerce insana havadan gıda yardımı yapma kapasitesine sahip olmadığı anlaşılmaktadır. ABD yönetimi, Batı Timor'daki milislerce alıkonulan yüzbinlerce tutsağı kurtarmak için de anlamlı bir çaba içine girmiş değildi. Tabii herhangi bir şekilde harekete geçilmesi çağrısında bulunan tek bir Allah'ın kulu da çıkmamış, özellikle de aylar boyunca kendi kendilerini tarihte görülmemiş ahlâki vasıflarından dolayı kutlayanlarla bir olanlardan böyle bir çağrı gelmemişti.

"C# Nedir?" adlı site Edd Dumbill ile Mono ve XML hakkında kısa bir söyleşi yapmış.

Önceki gün İstiklâl'de yürürken, birkaç metre ileride yürüyen bir arkadaş grubunun kısa sohbetine kulak misafiri oldum istemeyerek; çok güldüğüm ve durumu en iyi açıklayan bir tek cümleyi bozmadan aktarıyorum:

"Ulan olm, sevgililer günü geliyo.. senin de sevgilin yok, benim de yok.. Bize gel, bizim evde kutlayalım ehehehe"

Ayakta alkışlıyorum... Neyse, aranızda kutlamayın . Gloria'dan sevgiler..

Burak az önce bir fıkra gönderdi:

Osmanli zamaninda bizans donanmasi ile osmanli
donanmasi savasacaklar. Bizans 10 gemilik muhtesem bir
donanma hazirlar ve denize açilir. Donanmanin basinda
Andropolos vardir. Andropolos en öndeki geminin burcunda
elleri gögsünde heybetli bir heykel gibi durmaktadir ve 
hemen  arkasinda yaverleri vardir. Hep birlikte Osmanli 
donanmasini beklemektedirler.Yukaridan gözcü bagirir:
"Komutanim Osmanli donanmasi 3  gemiyle göründü".
Komutan yaverine döner ve: "bana kirmizi gömlegimi
getirin, eger savasta yaralanirsam kanim belli olup da
askerlerin morali bozulmasin." der. Hemen kirmizi
gömlegi giyer ve ayni ihtisamiyle yerinde durur.
Gözcü yine bagirir: "Komutanim o 3 geminin ardindan 30
gemi daha  göründü." Andropolos tekrar yaverine döner ve:
"Bana kahverengi pantolonumu getirin."

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth, oh never mind, you will never understand the power and the beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in twenty years, you will look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now, how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future or worry that know that worrying is as affective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind. The kind that blindsides you at 4 PM on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other peoples' hearts; don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealously, sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.

The race is long and in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the "Funky Chicken" on your 75th wedding anniversary.

Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either.

Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can, don't be afraid of it or what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but your own living room.

Read the directions even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go. But a precious few, who should hold on.

Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, for as the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain alible truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old and when you do, you'll fanaticise that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse but you'll never know when either one will run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're forty, it will look eighty-five.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of wishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

(Photo courtesy of Ebru Selçuk using her Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P52)

Okay, our way back from airport to home on Friday it was raining. Today, which is Monday for no surprise, I woke up and saw something like this:

(Photo courtesy of Can Burak Çilingir using his Siemens-SX1 gadget from the meeting room.)

Folks at Uludağ have released the very first super-nitro-pre-alpha-dope-smoking version of their brand-new (a)live-cd which I gave a spin today (on VMware, sorry guys). Although the first thing you'll notice is impressive graphics, it's worth to cheer-up the whole team.

To cheer this up better, I thought I should bring some nice drinks and so did it, as I promised to Erkan Tekman (The Legendary Tango Couple have not got forgotten yet!).

If you're awaiting other domalshots, it has been reloaded for you:

(Photo courtesy of Giray Pultar using his Tee-Six-Ten -- ouch.)

Tell the girls that I am back in town, by Jay Jay Johanson -- Fits very well here. Enjoy!

Looks like some weird people have been searching for other weird people, and they have found me on top of the Google search results. I simply have no idea who they are, but they absolutely caught me on that. Damn.

Artık İlker Gökhan da aramızda!

Yarın Aerosvit'in 12:45 Kyiv-İstanbul uçağı için biletlerimizi aldık, yarın muhtemelen 15:00 gibi İstanbul semalarında olacağım.

Görüşmek üzere

Rostropovich'in eşi ile birlikte kurduğu Vishnevskaya - Rostropovich Foundation, Rusya Federasyonu ve Sovyetler Birliği'nin çöküşünden sonra bağımsızlığını ilân eden devletlerdeki çocuklara verilen sağlık hizmetlerini geliştirmek amacını taşıyan bir dernek.

Bu gezegende (biraz da olsa) hayat var, birilerine rağmen.

Son günlerde kabarıp şişen klasik müzik damarım hayat şartlarımı olumsuz yönde etkilemeye devam ediyor.

Can Burak Çilingir'in yardımı ile edindiğim Yo-Yo Ma albümünden konuma da uygun parçalardan Slavonic Dance-Dvorák, Libertango-Piazzola ve Bach'ın Cello Suite No.1'i zevkle dinliyorum.

Sözlükte insanların bu konuda yazdıklarını okurken Jacqueline du Pré ile ilgili çarpıcı bazı bilgilere ulaştım. Kendisine armağan edilmiş olan Stradivarius Davidoff (1712) adlı çelloyu (multipl skleroz nedeniyle) ölmeden kısa bir süre önce Yo-Yo Ma'ya armağan ettiğini, hakkında Rostropovich'in sonunda çalışmalarını devam ettirebilecek birini bulabildiğini söylediğini de belirtmeden geçemeyeceğim.

Kapı zili bile çalmayacağım bundan sonra, benim gibi beceriksizler başkalarının yeteneklerini taklit etmekten vazgeçip işi erine bırakmalı.

Dönüş tarihi belirsiz yine. Herkesi özledim. İlk fırsatta görüşmek üzere

They are called Murphy's Laws for a reason. You'll get caught if you ever forget. And if you don't forget, you'll get caught anyway.

1. If anything can go wrong, it will.
2. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
   Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.
3. If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
4. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
5. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
6. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
7. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
8. Mother nature is a bitch.