About

I am interested in a number of subjects in different disciplines. So better to divide them into different sections.

• Software development
• Photography
• Film making
• The History of Everything (THOE)
• Music
• Miscellaneous

Software development

• My first computer was a Pentium II and I was fascinated by the magical internet. In prep school (2000), I learned HTML from a Mongolian exchange student, Enh Badral.
• HTML was cool, but I wanted something more interactive. That curiosity lead me to Flash 4. I was both interested in ActionScript and making animations.
• But I new that I needed to store data, that lead me to learn about Perl and MySQL. I bought the book CGI programming with Perl and MySQL in 2002 and started to spend more and more time in front of the computer.
• A friend of mine offered me a job in an advertisement agency (Maske Reklam) in Istanbul in 2003 where I have started to build simple sites for the clients.
• I built a simple framework with Perl to mostly generate HTML pages, barely used MySQL.
• Then in 2006, I built my own Content Managment System with Perl and MySQL and built two big portals with it for two different clients.
• I used the same framework to build numerous websites, until I met PHP.
• Late 2006, I built a social networking website and had a huge attention in the university, hit 2000 members in the first night. That made me understand about the importance of deployment processes.
• In 2007, I have started to work for a Turkish Careers site, the third biggest one in Turkey. I was a part of the software development team which was responsible for product development, bug fixes, generating reports and developing new products.
  • I have mastered my PHP abilities while working in there, since everything,
  • Met SVN for the first time and started to get familiar with code repos, branches, commits, checkouts, check-ins…
  • Met Javascript libraries which was very popular by the time, developed with MooTools and later met with jQuery,
  • I was absorbing information like a sponge because that was the first time I was working with a group of people, I learned something new from each member,
  • Having a huge DB gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about MySQL, data structures, relational databases, complicated SQL queries, indexes…
  • Generating reports was taking a lot of time, so I have decided to create an “Index DB” for the sales team to generate the reports by themselves. With a simple UI, it was a success.
  • Most of the CVs were nearly empty, so I thought it would be a good motivation for the members to complete their CV’s if I would show their rank in a group of people coming from the similar backgrounds. So I have developed the CV rank product, which was another huge success by the time.
  • I also started a simple project to search jobs by position using Google Maps. That was probably my first third party service integration.
  • Having a huge database like that was amazing, that was the first time I heard about the terms Data Mining and Neural Networks. I did a lot of data mining, but never was able to train a successful network by myself.
  • Because of my university studies, I quit the job after a year.
• In 2008, I have started to work for a small ad company in Istanbul where I have met with Drupal. By the time, every developer who were in building small size client websites had their own CMS, including myself. Most of them were chaotic. Drupal made a lot of sense.
  • I probably built 20-30 websites in various sizes in a year with Drupal 5.
  • First time I have tasted giving support to 20 different clients at a single time.
  • We had to employ more developers, so we hired 3 more people to the team, that was the first time I led a team.
  • I quit the job to serve in the Turkish army (which is obligatory)
• After I came back from the army in 2010, I have started to work as a freelancer. After a few jobs, I finally rented an office in Moda, Istanbul and started my own company Piyote.
  • I was mostly working for the big Turkish agencies, but the projects were mostly massive. In 2011, I have switched to Drupal 6 and started to develope custom modules for various needs.
  • In 2013, I have started to work for a Canadian agency, this was the first time I have started to work for a foreign company.
    • I have learned a lot from the company, their products were all high traffic sites, so making a small mistake had hugely costs.
    • This was the time that I have mastered Git, since the deployment process was very strict and we had a big team of people working on the same code base.
    • I built numerous custom modules while I was working on a crowd sourcing content serving project. We needed to show the members the analytics of their contents, how much favourited/viewed/commented etc. This project probably took around 12 months to build.
    • I also built the backend of a mobile app with a headless Drupal 7 and this was the first time I built something on Drupal 7. This project helped me a lot to develop my REST skills.
  • In January 2015, I had an offer from another Canadian (well, a north american) company, so I have started to work with them.
    • I was workin both in Drupal builds and giving support.
    • We had 30+ clients so it was getting harder to keep track everyday. That’s how I met Vagrant. The idea was to simply to install every support project with a single command line. Having a virtual machine was also eliminating environmental differences, so a front-end developer was simply able to install the project into their locals without complicated processes.
    • Working on tens of different websites gave me the opportunity to meet various technologies like Open Atrium, SAML, Microsoft Azure, E Commerce, memcache, varnish.
    • I was responsible for the server administration as well, which helped me to develope my bash, python, apache skills.
    • Many projects were hosted in pantheon or acquia, so I mastered their deployment processes as well. Other clients had their servers on an Ubuntu or CentOS machine on Blackmesh, Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean or Media Temple. Well, my personal choice is Hetzner, but these were all north American Companies so having the data center in Europe didn’t make sense.
    • I built a UI to keep track of core and module updates of the projects we were giving support to, the communication were made by JSON mostly.
    • I have built a lot of custom modules for different projects, you can see ome on my sandbox on my drupal account
    • It was time to start working on Drupal 8 because it was happening. So I have started to practice more with composer, npm, sass, bower, gulp, grunt… We never built anything on Drupal 8 on that agency by the time though, I was getting myself ready for the future.
    • In the beginning of 2017, I moved to Paris and it created differences with the agency, so we seperated our paths.
  • In May 2017, I have started to work for another North American agency.
    • Drupal 8 was already here so I mastered the API, new OOP style module development, composer way of installing and updating core and modules. The most important thing I learned here is probably the nazi strict kanban process and agile development. Understanding JIRA, bitbucket and agile software development was a requirement to survive in this company.
  • In December 2019, I moved to Victoria, BC, Canada for a year and started to work for Student Ally project. I am still managing a development team for the product and a shareholder on SA.
    • This project has a complex infrastructure on AWS with a complicated socket management, location history encryption and a complex user database with a crypto technology.
  • In 2021 January, I got back to Turkey and continued working on Student Ally development.
  • In December 2021, I have co founded Wodo Platform and still working on it.
    • Wodo is the most complex structure on cutting edge technology, probably in it’s field with a hollistic approach.
    • It’s difficult to summarize what it does, that’s why I will simply direct you to the docs site .

Photography

My father always had an amateur soul for a photographer. Actually my whole family was interested in taking pictures. We never had an SLR camera though. So our adventure continued with Kodak cameras for a long time.

When I was 13, my older sister started her photgraphy classes in the art school and that was a huge leap for all of us. She had a Zenith camera, was talking about “Exposure”, “Lens”, “Diaphragm”, “Focal point”… The depth of the pictures she took was fascinating. She was taking us to daily trips just to take pictures, she had the soul of an artist, that’s why I registered photography as a form of art in my consciousness cause I was simply mimicking her.

In the summer of 1996, I worked in a photographer as an apprentice, at the age of 14. The master tought me a lot about the light, composition, colors, cameras and tabbing the photos. We had a huge machine to bath the films first with the chemicals, then to convert the films one by one.

I hadn’t had a camera until 2004, until the digital cameras have started to become affordable and have acceptable resolution. I bought my first personal camera, FujiFilm s5500.

I took tens of thousands of pictures with that camera, it was a real joy to roam around the city, take as many pictures as I liked without having to pay for the tabbing. I was uploading my work to deviantart with the nickname damdakisuvari.

Later I had the chance to play with many amateur Nikon and Canon cameras, but had a huge break untill I bought my beloved camera Nikon D750. As you can guess, one of the reasons that I chose that camera was to take videos as well.

Having a full frame camera with a good lens is just amazing. It is expensive, true, but after years, I think I deserved to have one after spending years studying the technics.

With this camera, the raw images are very rich in the information they capture. So it lets me to adjust the lighting in a software like Adobe Lightroom. The above image normally would be dark on the bottom and way too bright on the above.

Another method I love to play with is merging 40-60 photos of an interior to generate a huge image.

I am uploading my photos on:

• Instagram
• 500px.com

And of course on here:

• Photography

I have never considered myself as a photographer or a film-maker, that would be an insult for the people calling themselves photographers who have devoted their life time to gain that titre, but I can say that it’s more than a hobby for me.

Film Making

I love cinema, watching an original story which is told properly is one of the most enjoyable things in the life to me. As I told above, after I bought a full frame camera, now I am able to fullfill my long time plans to make movies. I have already finished a few projects which you can see on my video page. It is a long process to make a film, everything I did so far are even short projects, but I really enjoy watching the result in the end.

The History of Everything (THOE)

We all have a way of learning new thing. But knowing the story of the subject we are studying helps a lot to remember. Seeing the events on a timeline is absolutely a luxury. That’s why I have started THOE, to show the events of any subject in the history on a timeline. The concept is very simple, yet the project is very powerful. It is a massive task to build such a project, so it will take some time to turn it into a product.

You can see the Demo here.

Music

Music is a part of my life, it always was. I can play a few instruments very amateurly, but my main interest is to find the precious pieces and expose myself to them. That’s why I can’t stand listening to trash. Like every other subject I am interested in, I have some projects in this field too.

• Turkish Jazz: I love jazz, I wanted to give back to the Turkish Jazz community by creating an online encyclopedia. You can browse the events, albums, artists and turkish jazz news.
• Turkish Jazz Radio: Using the data from the turkishjazz.org, I have built an internet radio only for turkish jazz music.
• Music is open: The aim of this project is to produce music collaboratively via internet. It’s not open to the public yet and will continue to be a private project until the concept is proved.
• Roll.io: A simple tool to turn your text list into a youtube playlist.

Miscellaneous

• Hunter/Prey simulation: This is a simple simulation of life.
  • The squares represent hunters.
  • The circles represent preys.
  • The little green dots represent plants.
  • Every animal has a DNA made out of attributes. You can click on one of them to see their attributes.
  • They reproduce by mating, the offspring’s DNA is a mixture of it’s parents.
  • They hunt, sleep, roam to search for food, mate and escape from the danger.
  • I only set the environment and the rules, I haven’t programmed the animals at all. Their behaviour is completely defined by their DNA.
  • You can simply enjoy watching a fast forward evolution.