turker.out.println » Personal

Schmap Destination Guide

Turker — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 06:38:55 +0000

I learned about Schmap Destination Guide when I received an email for a request to include one of my photos posted on Flickr in Schmap Nashville Guide. Schmap is described as a dynamic destination guide. You download a free player that displays an interactive guide complete with pictures and maps of landmarks of a city or a country that you select.

This picture, which I took in the Opryland hotel is included in the Nashville Guide. I honestly don’t know how many people are downloading Schmap guides, but I am pretty happy that my amateur photo is included in the guide. I have downloaded their free player and viewed the Nashville guide. It seems like a pretty interesting idea since it provides a complete solution for learning about important landmarks, hotel picks in different areas of the town and such. There is information about available tours, where to eat, in addition to historical background of the destination.

On the right is a screenshot of their free player with the Nashville guide open and my included picture showing up on the right hand column when Opryland is selected as the region.

I decided to include their little Schmap picker on my sidebar if anyone is interested in playing with it. If you are making travel plans, this may come handy. I have not completely used it and cannot really comment on how useful it would be for travel planning but it sure has strong potential. Let me know if you have ever tried it and liked it.

Technorati Tags: schmap destination guide, nashville, opryland, travel guide

[tags] nashville, personal, travel guide[/tags]

Area Paper Defense

Turker — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 19:13:29 +0000

Last Wednesday, October 25th, marked they day that all the work that I have put in to writing my area paper gave its fruit. After a successful presentation (more about that later) and defense, my committee agreed that I could keep on working what I proposed. This is a big relief because the amount of stress that was associated with the process was very high and I was working on this constantly for quite a while. I have to relax a bit now, and concentrate on finishing the work that I proposed to do. I will also start looking for a job as soon as possible.

Now, as my adviser humorously put it right after the defense, the bad news is, I have to do it now.

Technorati tags: area paper, phd, proposal, grad school

[tags] phd, personal[/tags]

Guns N’ Roses Concert Postponed

Turker — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 01:56:59 +0000

As I excitedly blogged here, we were supposed to be at the Guns N’ Roses concert at the moment. However, it turns out that the event was postponed and has not been rescheduled yet.

Oh well, this is actually kind of good because I am still not done preparing for my area paper defense.

Technorati tags: guns n’ roses, concert, nashville

[tags]guns n’ roses, concert, personal [/tags]

Guns N’ Roses in Nashville

Turker — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:54:46 +0000

Guns N’ Roses are coming to Nashville on October 22nd and we will be there. They are going to be rocking the Gaylord Entertainment Center.

It is just 3 days before my area paper defense but I figured this is something not to be missed. I am just hoping to be ready for my defense by then but even if I will not be, it will be a great boost before the defense.

We are very excited about it and looking forward to a great show.

Here is a short video of them playing Sweet Child of Mine at Bilbao Live festival:

Technorati tags: guns n’ roses, nashville

[tags] personal, guns n’ roses, concert[/tags]

Sleepless …

Turker — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:44:22 +0000

Not in Seattle, but in Nashville. Well, it is 7:42 am now and I just sent a final draft of my area paper to my advisor. I guess I can go and have a couple of hours of sleep now.

Technorati tags: sleepless in nashville, phd

[tags] phd, sleepless in nashville, personal[/tags]

Summer is Over

Turker — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:11:03 +0000

Well, it has been over three months since I posted an entry here. It must be my record to date. First of all, I want to report that I am well and alive. I spent a good chunk of summer in Turkey visiting family and friends and doing the things that needed to be done. Ah, of course I had a nice vacation for a little while. It is like yesterday and I never wanted it to end. There are lots of nice pictures to be posted.

Of course, I had to return to real life after that short halucination of comfortable, lazy life style. We came back early August, but honestly I didn’t have the slightest will to post anything and I let it be that way. Work is way over my head at the moment. My main thing is coming up with a proposal and finishing up my area paper. I don’t have much time left but it is not progressing too bad. I am trying to stay positive and concentrate on the work other than being overly stressful about it.

Anyway, actually, what prompted me to write an entry is the FIBA World Basketball Championship being held in Japan in the recent days. Turkey is participating and before the tournament there was a big discussion going on after NBA players Hidayet Turkoglu and Mehmet Okur announced they do not want to be in the team because of their exhausting NBA schedules. So, Turkey formed the team from mostly young players who barely missed the European Championship title in July. How did it turn out? The group matches are over and Turkey had 4 wins in 5 mathces loosing only to Greece in the last group match. This is a great accomplishment with a roster whose average age is 24. Turkey will face Slovenia in the second round match. I hope they will go as much as they can and play with their hearts out in all games as they did in the group matches.

[tags] personal, Turkey, FIBA World Championship 2006[/tags]

Technorati Tags: FIBA World Championship 2006, Turkey

Night Club at Neighbor’s Backyard

Turker — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 06:20:49 +0000

As we are working on a Saturday night which I am sure is abnormal for many people, our neighbors are having an engagement party in their backyard. Probably that is what is normal on a saturday night, no? Loud hiphop and dance music is hitting the walls in our house. Ok, I will admit we danced a bit to some of the sounds But it becomes annoying after 4 hours of constant hipping and hopping. I hope they will stop soon.

I wonder what the rule is for these kind of things. I mean if someone is being disturbed like this, would he be able to complain about it to somewhere?

[tags]personal, neighbors[/tags]

Technorati Tags: neighbors, noise, dance

F’ing Time

Turker — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 02:21:45 +0000

I want to grab the time, pause it, smash its head to the wall and tell it to quit f’ing with my brain. I just don’t want to say this, I want to scream to its face.

Technorati Tags: time, anger

[tags]personal, anger[/tags]

Piece of the Berlin Wall

Turker — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 06:54:41 +0000

I came back from Germany on friday night. My presentation at the workshop went pretty well.

I am trying to adjust back to the time zone. I had 2 Europe trips in 3 weeks and it was very exhausting even though it was fun. Now I am working on my PhD proposal full speed. I am trying to keep a positive attitude and keep the stress level moderate but it is not always easy when you have a hard deadline.

berlin, germany, berlin wall

Hande’s Prelim

Turker — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 23:30:52 +0000

Hande is in the prelim exam at that very moment which is three days short of a year from my prelim exam. I hope she is doing great in there. It sucked that I was not with her for this last week when she needed the most support during preperation. It sucks even more that I wasn’t able to ease her nerves right before the exam. Hopefully, it will all end well today and she will be able to move on with her Phd without worrying about a prelim exam ever again. I am very glad I will be back home tomorrow evening.

[tags]personal[/tags]

Technorati Tags: prelim exam, phd

Snow in San Francisco

Turker — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 19:44:07 +0000

The news story goes as Rare Snow Covers Bay Area but I am not sure “rare” is enough to describe the snow that came after 30 years. It must have been an interesting day for the people of San Francisco as they saw everywhere covered in white. Personally, I can’t imagine the situtation when ice covers those steep hills of San Francisco streets. I know for sure that I would not want to drive.

After learning that news, I thought there would already be images of snow in San Francisco on Flickr. To my dissappointment I was only able to find this picture which shows the snow forecast. I might have not searched for the right tags but no snow pictures were returned. If you find some, let me know in the comments.

[tags]random_stuff[/tags]

Technorati Tags: snow, san francisco

Amazon Customer Service Experience

Turker — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:36:20 +0000

I have ordered many things from Amazon for the last 5-6 years and never had a single problem. So, I didn’t have to deal with the customer service.

I think I was destined to have a problem in one of those years and it happened in my last order. Actually, I am not sure where if Amazon is directly responsible for the problem. Basically, what happened is that although Amazon notified me about the shipment of the item and provided me a tracking number, USPS tracking site does not show any information about the package since day 1 of the shipment. The order was shipped on February 10th and I don’t see any information about it. I wanted to call and check with Amazon about what the problem could be.

I immediately made a search on customer service phone numbers and found the famous The Amazon.com Customer Service Page where the numbers are listed. Now, I am on hold for the last 18 minutes.

This is pretty funny actually, as I was typing the 18 minutes of wait time above some representative picked up the phone and I had to stop writing this. I explained him the situation and I was wowed when he offered to send a replacement with expedited shipping. I will get my package on Friday. I must say this was my best customer service experience to this day. I am very satisfied and I am glad I decided to call and do something about it.

amazon, customer_service,

Long Time, No Post

Turker — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 02:46:45 +0000

It has been too long that I have not written anything. One reason is that I was very busy. The other reason is that I have not felt like writing anything. This is partly to do with the change in my feed reading habits. I have not been reading my feeds for a long time now. I am mostly checking memeorandum for news but I am starting to feel like it used to be more useful to me. My reading off memeorandum also declined lately. My other source of news has been Digg but I have also started to question the quality of the stuff posted there as well. I think the change in my feed reading habits effected my blog posting habits. I am hoping to get back on posting here.

In all that time that I was not posting anything, a lot was happening. My research work is progressing nicely lately. I have also been traveling a bit. I have been to Chicago for a research meeting in mid November and we took that opportunity to stay couple more days to enjoy the “windy city”. Two weeks ago, I went to Geneva, Switzerland to visit CERN for 4 days for another research meeting. I did not have time to wander around the city but the meetings were very productive.

In other news, I have now about three months to write up my area paper. My research problem is clearer now but there are of course some vague points which I will need to clarify. As you can imagine, I still have lots of reading and researching to do, I am currently busy working on a workshop paper due on January 5th. I still have a lot of working to do on that paper.