Prologue

Traveling abroad and experiencing different cultures was something that I had wanted to do all my life. I've achieved the first milestone of my dream when I visited Japan in December 2025. That was my first time abroad.

I really liked Japan, but it felt too familiar. I had spent most of my middle and high school years consuming Japanese media. And when I finally went there, everything felt exactly as it was supposed to be. I also think that Turkish and Japanese people are really similar. But still, it was the best experience ever and I will do everything in my power to visit there again and again. Nevertheless, it wasn't quite the uniquely foreign experience I was looking for.

Then I visited Northern Cyprus. Everyone there spoke Turkish, which is my mother tongue. And their culture was almost the same as Türkiye. I also had a great time there, but I still wasn't able to get the feeling that I am in a completely different place.

That's why I was so excited when the laboratory I work at asked me if I would be interested in visiting Estonia with them as a dissemination assistant. I wanted to visit Europe for the longest time, especially countries that are in the European Union. But to go there I would have to apply for a Schengen visa, which is notoriously hard to get for citizens of Türkiye. When going with the laboratory, there wouldn't be a need to apply for a Schengen visa because I would be on a service mission to my university, and in turn, to my country. When you are on a service mission, you get a special short-term passport. And when you combine that passport with a service acceptance letter, you are allowed to visit your destination country.

I, of course, jumped at the opportunity as it would be a great chance for me to visit Europe.

Part 1: The Entrance

After an unnecessarily long entry process, I saw a European city for the first time, or at least the airport of the city :)

It felt a little bit weird. Because everything was almost the same. The people looked the same. The architecture looked the same. Only difference I could find was the language difference.

Explaining what I felt back then this way may seem extremely surface-level. But because of my lack of experience, every time I travel to a different country I always expect everything to be drastically different. And every single time, I am pleasantly surprised that people are almost the same wherever you go.

There is a Turkish idiom, "Aklın yolu birdir" which translates to roughly "The path of reason is one". When I visit different places I always think of this idiom.

But I soon realized that these similarities were only to a certain extent…

Part 2: The Cultural Differences

The first difference I noticed was when I arrived in Tartu. There was a river going through the center of the city, which has the beautiful "Mother river" name. And when I walked alongside this river, I noticed that the locals were utilizing this river as much as they could. They were kayaking through the river, running alongside it, having picnics, riding bicycles, and generally having fun as much as possible while being in nature. The river wasn't just a sight that added to whatever activity people were doing, but the main actor in a play where people want to be side characters.

Türkiye has a lot of rivers, and many of these rivers are running through major cities. But most of the time, they are either seen as props or a way to promote the city to the tourists.

When I talked with people that lived there, I learned that Estonians have a general philosophy of revering nature. They have a rich history of being really close and in-tune with it. And you can really see this when walking into an Estonian city. It is really hard to not get caught up in this spirit. I also learned that Estonia experiences harsh winters for half the year. And because on those winter months there is barely any sun, when sun comes out they make sure to savor every minute of it.

I also admired their relationship with work. When they are working, they take their job seriously and give the necessary effort. But when they are off the clock, they are off the clock. They stop thinking about work. And this result in people not defining themselves as their profession or as the work they do. This is a big problem in Türkiye. You can almost always guess the general type of work a person does within a few minutes of talking to them.

Part 3: The Architecture and My Local Life

I really liked the architecture of traditional Estonian homes. From my experience, they are either restored buildings from the early 20th or 19th century, or buildings that have the style of old houses.

Other than that my days mostly consisted of doing street photography, going to local bars, and riding a bicycle alongside the river.

In these local bars, the thing that caught my attention the most was the local beer of Tartu, A. Le Coq. While it wasn't the best beer I've tasted, it has a light and sour taste that goes great with the local scenery. I really enjoyed drinking it and would love to have it again if I ever encounter it.

I also visited Fotografiska Tallinn, a beautiful photography museum. My visit there made me incredibly emotional as I both saw the most impactful photographs of our history as humans and looked at an exhibition called "Places Called Home". The exhibition featured a collection of photographs, taken by Inta Ruka, that showed the everyday lives of the people in her native country. I can only describe the exhibition as real, lived, and human.

Part 4: The End

I can easily say that my first time in Europe was great. I am really grateful that introduction to the continent was through Estonia.

As a side note. I am going on a bus trip at the end of June. And on that trip, I will visit 8 different European countries. Since I've had such a great time in Estonia, I am much more excited about the bus trip. I hope I will be able to take lots of photographs and also share my experience there with you.

I've been practicing acting with intent for a while now. I think we, as human beings, are naturally prone to turning off our heads and giving control to routines.

In my case, this behavior is mostly a coping mechanism. For example, I just let go and entrust my body to routines when I am overwhelmed by responsibilities. It feels like a sacrifice, an equilibrium. I let go of my intentionality and in return, skip over parts of my life that I don't want to deal with.

But this has started to bother me. I've been getting headaches over gone by moments. Time is starting to feel like a lump of sand that I've been desperately trying to hold onto. This has slowly been cracking me like a mud teapot that's been neglected. And rather than mending, I've just been taping over the cracks. And my tape of choice has also been letting myself fall into routines.

Like I said, I've been practicing acting with intent for a while. I've been taking things slowly and think before I act. Stop and ask. Look inside and see. Of course, there are times when I fall into old habits, but it is a journey, and that's what a journey is.

I think this is why I've been so into photography, capturing an otherwise fleeting moment and halting it forever. Feels good to visit old memories that you might otherwise have a problem recalling. I also started journaling. I think writing is the most important form of intentional expression, and intentional expression is as essential as eating or breathing for a soul. That's why I've been trying to write more.

Writing helps me see the big picture and understand myself better. For the last couple of months, I've been writing poems and journals. But I am not the kind of person who can write only for himself. That's why I've been wanting to write more blog posts.

To reflect upon the past a bit, my blogging journey started with writing technical posts. Mostly about Emacs and everyday tools, and when I wrote everything I wanted to write, it evolved into personal philosophical pieces. I am really happy with this change. Because I love writing about my thoughts, opinions, my reasons for living, and my general philosophy.

I hope I can continue my pursuit of intentionality and I hope I can give the love my blog deserves to have. As it marked the beginning of a whole new chapter of my life.

I honestly don't even know where to begin. 2024 has been, by far, the hardest, the most packed, the most adventurous, and the most rewarding year of my life. I was able to grow so much this year and venture into tons of different areas. Here is a rough overview of my year in semi-chronological headings.

ismailefe.org

While this blog is not even 1 year old, it feels like I started it just a month ago, yet at the same time, I feel like I’ve been running it for decades. I’ve sunk countless hours and countless commits (417 as of the time of writing). Starting this blog, without a doubt, was the best decision I’ve made after deciding to learn Emacs and Org.

This blog has also been the spark that led me to all the awesome things I’ve done this year. I don’t even want to imagine what my life would be like if I didn’t pursue blogging, as it led me to make incredible friends in the blogging space, work with amazing people in both real-life and online projects, and have a fulfilling part-time job where I learn important communication skills every day.

I plan on making a more detailed post about my adventure in blogging around the one-year mark of this blog.

Starting my career as a social media manager

It all started when I proposed a redesign of a blog our faculty managed. After a few meetings, we decided that my skills would be more valuable in starting a new social media platform for our faculty with a research assistant who ran a few similiar projects before. And we did! It’s been a great initiative, and I am also proud of the fact that we are one of the few faculties in METU that has a plethora of active and official social media accounts. Thanks to Yasemin and Berkcan Hoca for the wonderful opportunity.

I learned a lot during the growing phase, which came in handy when I got a job offer from a laboratory in METU. I’ve been working there part-time for almost two months, and I couldn’t be happier. My job title is Assistant Communication Coordinator, and my job description includes the maintenance and post creation for three different brands. I also do some behind-the-scenes work, which I sadly cannot talk about. Our Communication Coordinator has been a wonderful mentor to me. I do tons of things I’ve never done before, and she tirelessly helps me every time. I honestly can’t thank her enough.

My look on life

I had a 2-month period where my family and I faced some serious health and personal issues. However, I was fortunate that, while these issues were really hard to deal with, in the end, they were things that could be overcome. I lost none of my family and our future seems very hopeful.

In these two months, I learned very important lessons. The first lesson was "never postpone being happy". You can always make excuses for when to be happy. For example, you can say that you will be happy once you get over your midterm week, or you can be more dreadful and say that you will be happy once you have a lot of money or a significant other. During those two months, I was sad to lose my health but was happy that I even had it in the first place. I was also scared shitless when I thought that I would lose my father, but was grateful that I had a person in my life whom I loved so much that I would be devastated to see them go.

A subheading of the first lesson is enjoying the hardships of life. Things will rarely go the way you want, and how you want to look at it entirely depends on you. Personally, I look at hardships as chances to grow as a person. I am fairly young, and I am fortunate that I am able to make wrong decisions and suffer very little from them in the long term. Every time I overcome a challenge, I grow proportional to it. And the everyday distress grows smaller day by day. That's why I embrace and enjoy hardships, I know that they will shape me into a better version of myself.

The second lesson I learned is the art of letting go. I’ve been a very obsessive person all my life. I used to worry about everything and would always think obsessively about my next move or future interactions. I would tirelessly try to change things I clearly had no control over. This behavior became a lot more relaxed when I came to university, but I know for a fact that it remained in some of my relationships.

After going through so many hardships, I learned that you have to pick your battles and let go of the ones you have no control over. If you have big goals, which I do, and want to achieve them in your limited lifetime, you have to allocate time properly and not lose time on the uncontrollable.

I feel like I’ve taken these lessons to heart and am grateful that I was able to grow from my challenges. I am much more in peace with my life and body than I ever was.

TÜBİTAK Proposal

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) is responsible for promoting, developing, organizing, conducting and coordinating research and development in line with national targets and priorities. - tubitak.gov.tr

When I started my blog, I was lucky enough to come across wonderful resources that highlighted the importance of accessibility on the web. Accessibility is not a "nice thing to have"; it's a must thing to have. That's why I do my best to adhere to WCAG standards.

During my course selection week, I came across a selective course called “Inclusive Education.” It really caught my eye, and I was fast and lucky enough to get it. I’ve been taking this course for the last 11 weeks, and it’s really been an eye-opening experience. I learned a ton about different types of learning disabilities and how to act as a teacher when those students are present.

And when the professor for this class recommended that we apply to a TÜBİTAK-funded “Research Project Support Programme for Undergraduate Students,” I jumped at the chance. I had been wanting to do research on web accessibility for a while as I've been very passionate about inclusivity and accessibility. The funding they provide is very minimal, but doing research under the TÜBİTAK name will surely make the research more credible. While the research sample will be narrow on purpose, I plan on conducting a much larger study as part of an MA degree.

For my research to be accepted, I had to write a proposal, which took around three weeks. The proposal and the research has to be in Turkish. It was quite hard for me to write an academic proposal in Turkish because all of my academic work so far has been in English. But thanks to my professor’s continuous iterations and feedback, I was able to finish it well before the deadline.

Whether my proposal is accepted or not, it’s been a wonderful journey, and I learned a lot. I want to especially thank my professor for recommending this programme and for her support.

Body building

I wanted to run ever since I was a kid. But every time I tried, I would get out of breath seconds later. I never pushed the start button on getting serious about running. Even though I tried it for a few weeks at the beginning of 2024, I was ignoring the main problem.

And the main problem was that I was really out of shape, not just in terms of body fat but also in the cardiovascular sense. That’s why I’ve been building my body for the last two months with the goal of running a full marathon before I graduate.

I can proudly say that my efforts are bearing fruit. I can run for extended periods of time now, and my body has never looked better. I rarely get out of breath, and I feel much more energetic.

As an added benefit, my meals taste much better because of the hard work I put into my body. I would recommend everyone build their body in some way.

Photography

After two years of only shooting analog, I made the switch to digital just three months ago. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of analog shooting. But the price of film and the washing/scanning costs have almost increased fivefold, and I am honestly sick of people who try to take advantage of hobbyists just because something has become trendy.

One other reason I switched to digital is that I wanted to do conference and concert photography. Shooting a conference on film is not really a feasible choice.

And luckily enough, I was able to accomplish what I wanted in this period of time. I used my friend Onur's camera for a while (a big thank you to him), and in the meantime, I saved up enough money to buy a Fujifilm XT-5 with an 18-55mm F2.8-4 Lens.

Photography is probably the hobby that fulfills me the most. I love going on photography tours, and I especially love taking pictures of people and urban environments. I am really glad that I decided to pursue photography more seriously this semester.

I will probably write a more detailed post explaining my relationship with photography in a future post.

Finale

I really am proud of what I achieved this year, but I didn't achieve these things alone.

I first want to extend my gratitude to my family, who supported me in every way they could. Then, I want to thank the people who are/were a large part of my life.

It's a privilege for a person to not regret anything, and I wear this privilege like a badge of honor. Thank you for reading.

For me, there is only one answer to "What do you want to be?".

I want to be content.

I want to be content with what I do for a living, I want to be content with where I reside, and more importantly, I want to be content with who I am.

While I do have specific plans for my future, in the end, nothing else matters if I am not content.

I can't find true fulfillment in material things; it has to come from the work I put in. I have to work diligently, I have to always take the long road, and build myself with blood, sweat, and tears. So that I can cherish everything I have, as I will know for sure that they were deserved.

I also have to build my surroundings. We are reflections of our friends. That means I have to look up to and be proud of people whom I call friends. A fellow blogger, Marcel, has a great blog post called "Life-Affirming Choices". In that blog post, he says

"I want to be, and surround myself with, people who are willing to put in the effort to live a life their future selves will thank them for—people who make scalable, life-affirming choices because they know these actions grow and compound over time, leading to greater, unexpected benefits."

I recommend checking out his post as he has been a great inspiration for this.

While I am proud and happy with everything I've achieved up until now, I also know my potential. I know that I can do great things that can change the world for the better, and I want to live up to it.

In the end, our life is too fleeting not to do great things.

If you are familiar with frontend and backend development, you've likely come across tech stacks. You can think of tech stacks as a list of tools people use to create applications. People can share their stack and others can get inspired or learn about new technologies.

While it is common to find different stacks when working in the programming field. You don't see them utilized in other fields, such as design. Since I picked up a lot of design jobs and create a lot of slides, I wanted to create a design stack and share what I use and how I use them.

I am calling this the PCSG stack. Before I start explaining, I want to go over two things.

• I am a student on a budget and can't afford multiple subscriptions. I try to unnecessary avoid costs as much as possible, that is why all of my recommendations are free to use.

• I don't want to steal anyone's hard work. If a recommendation includes user-generated content, it comes with an open commercial license or is public domain.

Photopea

Photopea is a browser-based photo editor. Coming from Adobe Photoshop, I find it easy to work with, as Photopea draws heavily from Photoshop's interface, shortcuts and features.

Since there is a lot of different options when it comes to photo editors, I want to list the things I like about Photopea:

• Runs locally in your browser. That means you can open it on almost any device and run it offline.
• Can open PSD files flawlessly, it also supports a bunch of formats.
• You can use it for free with ads. -$5 gets you an ad-free experience, 5 GB storage, and some AI credits-
• Houses almost all of the Google Fonts library. -I will talk about Google Fonts in a sec-
• It has a large community that offers plenty of tutorials and technical support.

Colorhunt

Colorhunt is a website that hosts curated color palettes. I use this website very often; you can search for specific color palettes, sort by popularity, and add palettes to your collection.

Colorhunt comes in handy when I have to quickly select a contrasting color scheme for a slide or when I need inspiration for a project.

SVG Repo

I think I speak for all designers when I say SVGs are awesome! If you don't know what an SVG is, I recommend this video, as it does a great job of explaining.

SVG Repo is a wonderful way to get SVGs. It houses "500.000+ Open-licensed SVG Vector and Icons" and comes in handy A LOT when doing design work.

Most of them have licenses that enable you to use them however you want. I generally make use of SVGs in slides, posters, social media contents, and websites.

Google Fonts

Google Fonts is one of my favorite sites to use. It houses more than a thousand fonts, and all of them have open licenses. All the fonts hosted have unique personalities, and you can easily find one that suits your needs.

For example, my website mainly uses EB Garamond and Gentium Plus, which I found and got from Google Fonts.

Google Fonts also has wonderful articles that teach you how to select fonts, where to use them, and how to use them. These articles are a must-read for any designer.

If you are a webmaster, you can use Google Fonts on your websites without downloading or hosting anything. This can be achieved by getting embed links for the fonts you want to use and importing them with just one line of CSS.

Bonus

Accessibility is something I deeply care about. A lot of my design work comes in the form of web design. For more people to have the ability to view my website comfortably, I need to be operating within the W3 contrast standards. I use 2 sites for checking whether I am following this standard or not.

First is Colour contrast checker, this site lets me check the AA and the AAA value. If my color combination doesn't pass, I proceed to use the second site.

Second is Contrast Finder, this site helps me find a color that both passes the standard and is similar to my original color using an algorithm.

Closing Words

Thanks a lot for reading about my easy to incorporate but horribly named design stack.

I don't do any video, 3D, or professional vector work. That's why my flow might be lacking in these and some other areas, but I am sure that you can find something valuable to add into your own workflow.

If you have any suggestions or criticism, feel free to reach through my email.

I’ve been reflecting on life for the past couple of months, and my worldview has changed a lot. I feel like I have grown as a person, and I wanted to share the lessons I’ve learned during this time and throughout my life. Here are 5 life lessons from a 20-year-old.

Calling an ambulance

A lot of people my age tend to question if calling an ambulance is the right thing to do when faced with health and emergency situations. I can understand the reasoning, as these kinds of situations are almost always in gray areas.

Here is a simple trick if you want to decide if you should call an ambulance; call 911.

If the situation escalates into you thinking you might need an ambulance, that's all the reason you need. Even if you think the situation might be minor and you think you might waste a first responder's time, you should call. Because this is what first responders are for and you won't waste anyone's time.

911 operators are trained professionals and will know what to do.

If they deem that an ambulance isn’t necessary, they will connect you to a medical professional who can guide you on what to do next and will advise you to call again if the situation worsens.

And, worst-case scenario, if you don't call 911, is the situation escalating and someone dying.

"Fake it till you make it" is a powerful weapon

We humans tend to think the worst of situations. We feel like we are not good enough, feel like we don't have what it takes, and so on.

And we act accordingly to this. Whether in a work or a school setting, we find ourselves in situations where we don't want to speak up or step on anyone's toes.

We also tend to feel like we are not good enough to achieve our dreams. Hell, sometimes we don't even dare to dream.

The best way to shake off this way of thinking is to fake your ideal mindset into existence.

In my opinion, while hard and sometimes cringe, it is the best way to deal with low self-confidence and self-worth.

Think of yourself as your ideal self, work hard, speak your mind on things, and dream big. Even if you are faking it and are well aware of the fact, with time, you will turn it into reality.

Books, textbooks, and YouTube videos

Let's say that you want to learn about investing;

Introduction to investing books/textbooks are 10 times slower than watching a YouTube video.

But… they are 100 times more effective.

Let me explain, if you are not watching an actual university lecture. What you are watching is a fast-paced tutorial that tries to cram as much as possible into the shortest possible amount of time.

In these kinds of videos…

• You are not able or encouraged to take notes because of its fast-paced nature.
• Rewinding is always a bother.
• And because you are not taking the lesson at your own pace, your brain may not want to absorb it.

And don't get me started on how distracting it is to learn something on YouTube where entertainment is one click away and everything else is one tab away.

Yes, reading about something can be really slow. But because you are the one deciding the pace, your brain has an easier time absorbing the information.

If buying books is becoming too expensive or cumbersome, investing in a nice e-book reader might be a great idea.

The only person you can truly depend upon: You

Family and friends are one of the most important things in the world. You should love, cherish, and trust them. But you can't lean on them for all situations.

There will be times where you need or have to go through something on your own. These challenges tend to be hardest, and being prepared is important.

Always work and invest in yourself. People can die, material things can perish. The only person you can depend on is you. Because if you are no more, then all is done.

I also think that life has a lot more meaning when you work on yourself regularly. When you eat healthy, read, exercise, or do anything that helps you become a better person. You feel like you are more in control and the things you cannot control become more bearable.

The only metric of success: happiness

Until this year, I thought that success would come in the form of money or fame. But it turns out I was extremely wrong.

Money doesn't mean anything if you are not happy. Fame doesn't mean anything if you are not happy. Career advancement doesn't mean anything if you are not happy.

Of course, you don't have to be happy constantly. But if you have all the things above and don't feel any happiness, then what is the point?

Everyone would choose being a happy person in a cheap car than be a sad person in a Porsche.

If material things bring you happiness, go for it. If traveling brings you happiness, travel. If being alone and doing your own thing brings you happiness, do that. Also, you don't have to do these things right now. Even dreaming about these things is a lot of fun.

In my opinion, having the people you love nearby, working on your goals and self, and having the insight to recognize what truly matters in life is the key to happiness and living a content life.

This article is about my relationship with Emacs as a 20 year old university student. First of all, Emacs is a text editor that has been around for a really long time, 48 years to be exact. It still gets updated regularly and has a thriving community that continuously grows. The main selling point of Emacs is how extensible it is. You can change any of it's part using Emacs Lisp.

That is all you need to know to read this article as I will talk about all of this in detail.

I envy people who can just pick up a tool and start using it right away without the constant need to perfect it. Small imperfections distract me, and my mind sways away to solve it. This usually prevents me from getting work done.

Up until 2022, I would start writing something in a random text editor, notice a behavior I wanted to change or disable, search it for a few minutes on how to change it, change it (if it were possible), and repeat this cycle every 20 minutes. A couple days later, I would find an unchangeable behavior that is a deal-breaker and try to find a new text editor.

This continued until I started considering Emacs as a serious solution to my needs. I learned the existence of Emacs in 2019 thanks to a DistroTube video. After a few months, I tried Doom Emacs, a kind of a starter-pack config, and couldn't see the point of using it as I didn't need anything other than a simple code editor at the time.

In 2022, for reasons I sadly do not remember, I gave Doom Emacs another try. This time was a lot better. My university lessons were getting serious and I needed a way to take notes efficiently and distribute them as I needed. As an added bonus I was really deep into vim motions and Doom Emacs was built around evil-mode, which "emulates the main features of Vim".

It took me around a year to get completely comfortable and I no longer feel the need to tweak my config frequently. But I should note that learning Emacs is a journey with no end. Every day I learn something new about Emacs.

Firstly, I want to give a brief explanation to what Emacs is for me, then talk about the limitations, and finally list the reasons why I like it so much.

For me, Emacs is a text editor that is infinitely extendable, keyboard-driven, modular, and immortal. It's basically a bunch of elisp file taped together. The best part is you can tape your own elisp code easily and it works as though it was always there. There is no "Emacs talks to your elisp code", your code is Emacs.

Emacs can easily be the best text editor, coding environment, or a Frankenstein that adapts to your workflow. For example, I turned Emacs into the ultimate writing environment that spellchecks, organizes, and converts my notes into beautiful word documents with custom styling or functional sites with html and css code bundled.

Limitations

Before I get into more about the reasons I use it, I want to talk about it's limitations.

Learning curve

For most people, Emacs won't be perfect out of the box. There will be tons of stuff that won't work for you. And to change those things you will need to read a lot of documentations, discussions, and github issues. Lisp is a foreign language for most people and learning such an alien language for customizing a text editor might be too much. Even if you don't mind tackling a new language, investing such a big time might be a deal-breaker for some.

There are a lot of good videos, documentation, etc. But the main issue is how much time it takes to perfect it. Because the options are endless, there are a lot of cool stuff you can do and you find yourself taken away by your creativity to execute those ideas. I have lots of cool functions that do bunch of useful things, which I will talk about them in the end.

Don't get me wrong, it definitely pays of exponentially. But if you are in the middle of a busy school year or you are working a really busy job, I would recommend you to start learning it when you have a time off.

Things breaking

Things sadly break a lot when you are a beginner. Most of the time it turns out the be your fault and you have a general idea of how to solve it. The worst is when an update breaks things. This usually happens when you install a lot of third-party packages. There are times when you don't know what caused the issue and there are times that even if you know what caused the issue, you don't know how to fix it. This rarely happens, but really sucks when it does.

A lot of the breakage goes away or becomes really minor when you have experience. But sadly, even the most seasoned among us experience these things.

Not great to use on mobile

While nobody codes on their phone seriously, a lot of people take notes on their phone. Emacs has a wonderful mode called Org. Org-mode is awesome for note-taking, schedule managing, and literate programming. I will get into more detail later.

Wanting to access your shopping list or any other note is important. And accessing them from your phone is not the best. While there are tons of org-mode apps for android and a couple for iOS, you can only do so much. Creating a system that works for you with small stuff is possible if you invest enough time but I personally gave up and use Bear for quick notes and to-do's.

If you want to try using org notes in mobile, I would recommend orgzly for Android and Plain Org for iOS.

Why use it

Now comes the fun part. Talking about the positives and what makes Emacs unique.

Flexibility

You can change a lot of things and I am not talking about changing appearance or ability to add extensions. Almost everything in Emacs is a function in an Elisp file.

There are also major and minor modes that activate according to the buffer you are on. You can combine modes together and create powerful workflows.

You can write functions or packages that talks to core Emacs functions and write anything you can imagine.

When using Vim or Neovim, there are some restriction that come from your terminal emulator. But because Emacs is a GUI application, you can have a greater control. For example, I like my text editor to look minimalistic as much as possible. To achieve this, I disabled line numbers, titlebar decoration, highlighting of the current line, and much more.

Here is the final result:

In most editors, to change a core functionality, you have to write a package that needs to follow a large set of guidelines and have bunch of formalities. In Emacs you only need an elisp file and load that file at startup. Nothing else.

Org

"A GNU Emacs major mode for keeping notes, authoring documents, computational notebooks, literate programming, maintaining to-do lists, planning projects, and more — in a fast and effective plain text system." -orgmode.org

This is a good introduction but I think I can expand more upon this.

Org documents are plain-text files that end with '.org'. Org can be used as a markup language like Markdown, but using it just as a markup language would be a bit wasteful. Org can help you organize your life with org-agenda, can be an interactive programming notebook like Jupyter, can help you do literate programming with org blocks, and can replace apps such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Mail, Calendar, and much more.

Now that we have a general explanation, I can talk about my personal use-case for Org.

Writing class notes and blog posts

Org has the habit of gently pushing you the way of correct note-taking. I know that there is not a single correct way to take notes but I think the default Org behaviors are a pretty general guideline to how you should take notes.

I took notes in Org for two semesters. These two semesters I had tons of different classes and mostly used Org in two ways: taking notes while the teacher speaks and writing long essays about different topics at home.

Thanks to how Org forces you to act in a certain way, the notes I take during classes comes out nicely structured and has no need to do post-cleaning.

And thanks to my Org related functions, I am able to write long essays without leaving Emacs.

Exporting

The ability to turn your .org files into .docx, .pdf, and .html files effortlessly might be my favorite functionality. If you give a little bit more effort, you can even export with a custom style-sheet. I have a whole post talking about this.

Literate Programming

While I love the idea of Literate Programming, I don't practice it except for one occasion; my Doom Emacs config. Having a config that explains itself is a godsend for both other people and future you.

You can write notes, add links, and create test areas in an Org file and make it tangle to a proper config file automatically at every save.

Packages I use for Org

• I use ox-pandoc, pandoc-mode, and org-pandoc-import for exporting.

• I use citeproc and org-ref for biblio. I configured zotero to auto export my bib files and these packages read from those file. So, I can easily add citations and end-texts to my Org documents.

• I use org-auto-tangle for tangling my config.org file.

Evil-mode

I mentioned evil-mode in the beginning but I can't emphasize how important it is for me. I have the complete power of vim inside Emacs. I can create macros and use all of the keybindings without any configuration thanks to Doom Emacs. Without evil-mode, I would have probably give up learning Emacs.

My custom functions

I have tons of functions that are mostly written by me and ChatGPT. Emacs community doesn't really condone the use of AI in general but I recommend the use of AI to beginners with the condition that they should question and research the output. AI can be dumb and give you bad code. Always ask for it to break down the output and validate the end result yourself while looking at documentation. After a certain point you should be able to write small functions and then you don't have to ask AI for a whole function but just help with small parts. I think this is the best way to approach learning elisp to configure Emacs. Here is a list of my most-used functions. -You can see the code in my config.org under the functions heading.-

• efe/google-current-word: This is a function that googles the word at point and opens it in your default browser. I use this when I encounter a new concept or when I misspell a word so hard that only Google knows what I mean.

• efe/first-result-url: Gives the word at point to a script called firstresult. This in turn copies the first result from a google search. Really useful when you want to create a hyperlink and need a link to the github repo or the official website without opening your browser.

• efe/tureng-(turkish/english): Tureng is a community driven dictionary. I use this function to look at different meanings of a word. It displays 10 different meanings in the echo area and goes away when you press anything. Sadly, I can't share how I get the results as it may or may not breach the user agreement.

• efe/open(-project)-in-vscode: Pretty self-explanatory, either opens the file or the project in VS Code. It uses the doom-modeline–project-root variable, so the function might not work in vanilla Emacs.

There are more functions in my config.org, feel free to check it out.

Closing Words

Thanks for reading my Emacs propaganda. I love this program so much that I feel the constant need to talk about it.

I really feel like everyone can benefit from using Emacs. It just takes time a long time to be efficient in it.

Feel free to reach to me about anything via email.

I love writing, it helps me empty my mind and improve my ability to express myself. While I enjoy writing digitally the most, I have to write to a paper often because of school and other circumstances.

I have a few friends that accompany me while I write. I acquired these friends throughout my life, each has their own unique stories and reasons. They make writing easy and fun for me. I will introduce them chronologically.

Rotring 500

If you want to learn more, you can check out my previous post where I talked about this pen in more detail.

This is a mechanical pencil that I bought by chance when I was preparing for university exam. I solved every test, mock exam, and problem with this pen. It is lightweight but has a nice build quality. While it is cheap, it doesn't feel like it. When I first saw this pen I fell in love with it's pure black body and it's italic red font.

When I look at it objectively, it may not be the most ergonomic pen, but I enjoy using it so much that any discomfort from writing for long hours doesn't bother me a bit. I usually notice the fatigue in my wrists after I am done writing.

I also used it a lot during my preparation year at university and my first year. I entered all of my exams with it and always carried it with me. I still use it from time to time but my newly bought Rotring 800 became the primary mechanical pencil I use.

I recommend it to everyone who wants a good-looking mechanical pencil that is light and long lasting.

Pensan Büro

While I haven't seen this pencil anywhere other than Türkiye, it is probably the most popular pencil here. It is a dirt cheap ballpoint pend that is usually in blue color. Every Turkish person probably used it at some point in their life. I can't stress this enough, this particular pen is sold and used everywhere. From government offices to sports-books.

In addition to it's availability, there is another big reason, this thing SLIDES. It is so smooth to write on any surface.

I use a ballpoint pen when I want to go crazy. Creating diagrams, writing questions in bold and sketching solutions. My main goal is writing ideas fast. And this pen is the best when it comes to that.

It is also really light and has a pen clip. You can attach it's cap to it's back and extend it. What else can you want from a pen?

HHKB Professional BT

I was really into custom keyboards from 2019 to 2023. I would follow custom keyboard youtubers and subreddits. I would listen to tons of typing tests and would dream of "end-game" keyboards like Keycult and TGR.

Luckily the dollar exchange rate was somewhat stable when I started the hobby and I got the chance to try a lot of custom boards and switches. While I did try a lot of different mechanical keyboards, there was a one keyboard that I wasn't able to try. It was a keyboard called Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) and unlike all of the keyboards I used in the past, it didn't have mechanical switches. Instead, it used a patented electrostatic capacitive Topre switch. These switches were produced by Topre Corporation in Japan and didn't seem to have a counterfeit alternative that I could order from Aliexpress to try.

These switches were used by a couple of different keyboard brands. The most popular one was the HHKB and they were praised as the ultimate keyboard because of their 'godly feel' and the layout. There were a lot of custom keyboards that used the HHKB layout. You can learn more about the HHKB layout in HHKB's official blog post.

Another characteristic of a HHKB keyboard is how expensive they are. The base model's price starts at 300 dollars and they are especially expensive in countries that don't have a official distributor because of the heavy import fee.

For a really long time I searched local second-hand sites for one and finally found it in Jan 2023. I bought it in person from a foreign guy that bought it a couple of years before, in his trip to Japan. He sold it to me for a fair price and I finally had a HHKB keyboard.

Was it as good as people deemed it to be? Yes, it was. The keys felt heavenly and the layout was great. I retired my custom keyboards and used the HHKB primarily. While I didn't carry it with me everywhere, it felt special every time I had the chance to type on it. I loved that thing.

After using it for a year I sadly developed carpal tunnel syndrome. I would get heavy wrist pain after a couple of minutes of using it. Even though it saddens me, I had to stop using it.

Logitech Wave Keys

While I was researching ergonomic keyboards like The Corne and Ergodox Ez, I came across Logitech Wave Keys. To be honest, this keyboard wasn't my first choice. But because it was tenth the price of the other keyboards I was looking at, I had no other real choice. I bought it second-hand and waited.

When I first started typing, I was honestly quite surprised as it felt similar to my HHKB. It was really large and the keys were dome-like and low-profile.

This keyboard's main selling point is it's wave pattern across it's keys. It's suppose to help people who suffer from wrist pain and people who spend a lot of time in front of a desk.

To my surprise, it almost completely eliminated my wrist and hand pain. It also felt great to type on. It honestly saved me from spending a ton of money on a split keyboard that I would have to import and pay additional taxes on.

Conclusion

While some of these got replaced, they will always be tools that I cherish. I see them all as milestones that helped me in numerous ways.

Ironically, I wrote this post with my laptop's keyboard. This is the case for a lot of my posts as I like to write outside. I did not include my laptop's keyboard because it is trivial and isn't anything special. Also, being mindful of when I use my beloved tools makes using them more special.

Thanks a lot for reading. It has been a lengthy post that I really enjoyed writing. Feel free to email me if you want to share your writing tools or anything else. I love getting emails from humans!

I recently found myself juggling a lot of hobbies. They take up almost all of my free time and I want to talk about them. I will mention the interesting ones as I don't want to talk about “How I like to take walks” or “How I like to discover new restaurants”.

Graphic Design

While I am not a professional, I did my fair share of design work. I designed and wrote my high school newspaper, I did Instagram posts for my department, and I did a lot of restoration work for my personal enjoyment.

I love minimalist design, there is something in it that speaks to me. Those neutral colors, big popping fonts and an inviting aura. When I approach a task I try to take away as much as I can. Only the needed should remain. In my opinion, the quote that best describes minimalist design is “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Maintaining a Website

Whenever I look at a personal website that I've never seen before, I try to look for different approaches the site owner took. Like is there a navbar, is there a table of contents, what color did they used, is there javascript, etc. That is something that I never done before I had my own site. This results in a constant cycle of inspiration and evolution.

Because I don't use a generator in general sense, I have to do a lot of things by hand. Like generating RSS, generating a sitemap, optimizing pictures, SEO optimizations, fixing errors made by the org to html converter, etc. While this takes manual labor, I love it. Some people enjoy writing blog posts and some enjoy making websites, I enjoy both!

Also, if I used a blog generator, I wouldn't have learned how RSS, sitemaps, and SEO worked. I recommend everyone to learn the basics of html and css, and then host their own blog with a free service like GitHub pages!

Visiting Flea Markets

I love wandering around flea markets, there are tons of great stuff that are dirt cheap. Old technologies that still work great, old clothes that can be made new with a quick trip to a dry cleaner, cool desk accessories, 35mm films, camera gears, and many many more.

Seeing things that were revolutionary when they first came out and talking with the people that sell them is a joy I get to experience every month. While there is a lot of good flea markets that I visit, the one I like the most is Çayyolu Antika Pazarı. I like Çayyolu because it is not as crowded as others and the things they sell are more high quality. Also most of the sellers are there to make friends and get to know new people, I like those kinds of sellers the most. Because their main goal is not to profit the most they can, their main goal is to have a good time!

While I do buy a lot of unnecessary stuff, the joy I get from talking with these people and seeing literal history makes visiting flea markets an irreplaceable hobby.

Configuring Emacs

I spent so much time configuring this program that I could even say Emacs is my part-time job. I definitely spend more time sharpening than cutting.

But Emacs has become such an efficient tool that I think it cuts the time I spent on homework in half. It formats, converts, spellchecks, gives synonyms, translates, it manages and inserts citations, prints references, and much more. And like maintaining a site, I enjoy working on my config. Even if I didn't, I would think of it as an investment because it is a tool that I will surely be using for a really long time.

Shooting Analog

I got into the analog world thanks to a friend more than a year ago. While I did make some mistakes that resulted in burned films, I think I learned my lesson.

I like shooting in color. My favorite film is Kodak Gold 200, the way that it captures the sunlight mesmerizes me. You can see some of the pictures I took at my photos page.

Other than that I use a Agfa Optima as my main film camera. I like compact analog cameras. For me, having a big lens that you have to adjust every time defeats the purpose.

Disclaimer: Emacs is necessary for being able to do the things shown below.

Excluding chats, %99 of what I write is written in org mode. I love org mode that much, but of course there are downsides. For example, while they are easy to access on my mac, if I want to view them on my iPhone, I have to jump through a bunch of hoops. And this is not the only obstacle I have to overcome. If I want to share my notes with my friends, good luck to me.

This would be my life if they weren't a handy program called pandoc. With pandoc, I can convert my documents into great-looking, properly edited word and html documents. For example, the blog post you are reading right now is completely written in org mode and converted with pandoc. Let's see how I achieve this workflow.

1. Setting Metadata

While it isn't always necessary, setting metadata is important for bunch of reasons like searchability and giving the general idea about the document. For example, here is the basic metadata for this document.

#+TITLE: My Org+Pandoc Workflow
#+AUTHOR: İsmail Efe Top
#+DATE: 2024-03-29
#+LANGUAGE: en
#+DESCRIPTION: How I use pandoc to transform my org documents to beautiful looking word documents and websites!

2. Pandoc Configuration for Word Documents

Normally, turning a org document into a word document is easy if you have the pandoc package. But I use a thing called reference template. In this use-case, I have a document called custom-reference.docx. This documents has all the changes I made to the default font-size, heading fonts, colors etc. When I tell pandoc to use that document as a reference. It turns my org documents into the perfect docx file. Figuring out how to use and automate this took a really long time but I am really glad I done the necessary work.

I use this automation everyday to turn my notes into a docx file and then a pdf. It is really useful when I want to summit a homework or share my class notes with a friend.

I use a function to achieve this, here is what you have to do to use my function.

Prepare a reference docx file

You can download mine and change it however you like. Put it in somewhere safe and note the file-path.

Install Pandoc, the pandoc-mode package and the ox-pandoc package

For pandoc, you can use homebrew or any other package manager.

For pandoc-mode, you can install the package with melpa and read more here.

For ox-pandoc, you can install the package with melpa and read more here.

Set the pandoc binary location

;; put this on your init.el or config.el
(setq pandoc-binary "/opt/homebrew/bin/pandoc")

I installed pandoc with homebrew, if you don't know where your pandoc binary is located you can run 'whereis pandoc' in your terminal.

Set the data directory for pandoc

;; put this on your init.el or config.el
(setq pandoc-data-dir "/Users/example_user/.config/doom/etc/pandoc/")

You can set this directory to wherever you like.

Prepare a docx.pandoc configuration file

This file goes into your pandoc data directory.

It is really important to use a proper configuration file, this file is what makes pandoc recognize the reference docx document.

As an example or a starting point, you can download my docx.pandoc file here. Don't forget to change the path of the reference docx file (reference-doc) to the one you noted at the beginning.

Custom Function

;; put this on your init.el or config.el
(defun efe/export-to-docx ()
  "Output to docx using pandoc-mode"
  (interactive)
  (pandoc-mode)
  (execute-kbd-macro (kbd "C-c / O W d b b r"))
  (setq pandoc-mode nil)
  )

When you run this function, it creates a docx file with the same name as your original file.

3. Turn Org Documents into Beautiful Sites

Here is how I turn my org documents into blog posts. Firstly, before exporting my org documents I run a function that adds the necessary html heads and bottom headers.

;; put this on your init.el or config.el
(defun insert-html-blog-template ()
  "Inserts HTML_HEAD lines at the first empty line and html code at the end of the buffer."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (let ((empty-line (progn (re-search-forward "^$" nil t) (point))))
      (goto-char empty-line)
      (insert "\n#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"webmention\" href=\"https://webmention.io/ismailefe.org/webmention\" />\n")
      (insert "#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"/templates/style.css\" />\n")
      (insert "#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"apple-touch-icon\" sizes=\"180x180\" href=\"/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png\">\n")
      (insert "#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"icon\" type=\"image/png\" sizes=\"32x32\" href=\"/favicon/favicon-32x32.png\">\n")
      (insert "#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"icon\" type=\"image/png\" sizes=\"16x16\" href=\"/favicon/favicon-16x16.png\">\n")
      (insert "#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel=\"manifest\" href=\"/favicon/site.webmanifest\">\n")))
  (goto-char (point-max))
  (insert "\n\n")
  (insert "#+BEGIN_EXPORT html\n")
  (insert "<div class=\"bottom-header\">\n")
  (insert "  <a class=\"bottom-header-link\" href=\"/\">Home</a>\n")
  (insert "  <a href=\"mailto:ismailefetop@gmail.com\" class=\"bottom-header-link\">Mail Me</a>\n")
  (insert "  <a class=\"bottom-header-link\" href=\"/feed.xml\" target=\"_blank\">RSS</a>\n")
  (insert "  <a class=\"bottom-header-link\" href=\"https://github.com/Ektaynot/ismailefe_org\" target=\"_blank\">Source</a>\n")
  (insert "</div>\n")
  (insert "<div class=\"firechickenwebring\">\n")
  (insert "  <a href=\"https://firechicken.club/efe/prev\">←</a>\n")
  (insert "  <a href=\"https://firechicken.club\">🔥⁠🐓</a>\n")
  (insert "  <a href=\"https://firechicken.club/efe/next\">→</a>\n")
  (insert "</div>\n")
  (insert "#+END_EXPORT\n"))

This function adds this on the top of the document (you can find my stylesheet here)

#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel="webmention" href="https://webmention.io/ismailefe.org/webmention" />
#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/templates/style.css" />
#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png">
#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="/favicon/favicon-32x32.png">
#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="/favicon/favicon-16x16.png">
#+HTML_HEAD: <link rel="manifest" href="/favicon/site.webmanifest">

And adds this on the end of the document

<div class="bottom-header">
  <a class="bottom-header-link" href="/">Home</a>
  <a href="mailto:ismailefetop@gmail.com" class="bottom-header-link">Mail Me</a>
  <a class="bottom-header-link" href="/feed.xml" target="_blank">RSS</a>
  <a class="bottom-header-link" href="https://github.com/Ektaynot/ismailefe_org" target="_blank">Source</a>
</div>
<div class="firechickenwebring">
  <a href="https://firechicken.club/efe/prev">←</a>
  <a href="https://firechicken.club">🔥⁠🐓</a>
  <a href="https://firechicken.club/efe/next">→</a>
</div>

With these snippets added, all I have to do is run the 'org-pandoc-export-to-html5' function in Emacs (this function comes with ox-pandoc). This creates a html file with the same name as the original file.

Conclusion

As you see, pandoc is a must for me when using org mode. While I invested a great time to learn these tools, they more than paid for themselves. I recommend everyone to follow a similiar path.

If you have questions or feedback, feel free to email me!

I started using Firefox in 2015, I installed it because the logo looked really cool. Of course, my reasoning did not stayed the same. A few years later, I became really interested in open-source software and migrated to Linux. In Linux, there are not many viable browser options if you want something open-source. The best option at the time was Firefox, so I kept using it.

I installed a bunch of css themes and a ton of unnecessary extensions. I had a system that worked. I kept moving my Firefox profiles throughout my Linux journey. Then, one last time to macOS.

I got my MacBook two years ago. Before than, I had never used any Apple products. While it was similar to Linux in some aspects, it also felt alien. When I installed Firefox and migrated my profiles, I encountered a bunch of problems with zero solutions. That's when I started looking at other alternatives. The first browser I wanted to try was Safari because I've heard so many people talking about how Apple's own apps were the best ones to use.

Safari did not stick with me, it was really hard to customize and installing extensions were unfathomably hard. The only good part was how fast it was. But in the end, I decided to stick with Firefox. I had solved a big portion of my problems and came to peace with the ones I wasn't able to solve.

Then, on March 7th 2023, I watched my first video about the Arc Browser. The video was a clip from the Waveform podcast, they were talking about the products they loved and one of them talked about the Arc Browser. This made me curious and I decided to do some research. It was apparently a browser made by a small team in New York. Then, thanks to my school being an accepted campus in Arc, I was able to join the beta and install Arc.

If I had to describe my first impressions in one word, it would be young. But not in a bad way. Yes, Arc was slow and there was a ton of missing features but using it felt like a new experience. It was colorful and unapologetically playful.

It become my default browser really fast. While sometimes I missed using Firefox, the excitement of using Arc made me not want to go back. There were new updates every week and frequent in-house Youtube videos. They also added a bunch of cool stuff like boosts and using different sites as search engines.

Everything was going great until the act II of Arc came. They introduced a 'new way to browse'. You would type what you wanted and an AI would visit different sites and compile a web page for you. Their motto was don't bother to search the internet; let us search it for you. Watching that made me worry about the Arc's future. Were they trying to make everything AI? Then, I thought about how Arc was going to profit. How were they able to get a ton of funding without taking any steps to make profit? Then, the popular phrase came to my mind, "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product". While the thought of leaving stayed in my mind, I kept using Arc for a while. The final straw was when I saw that they got millions of dollars in funding again and added more AI stuff as a result, it was time to leave.

I decided to return to my old friend Firefox. I opened it, removed my old profiles and themes, and started clean.

The first thing I noticed was how fast Firefox was compared to Arc. I had became so used to the slowness of Arc that I got really surprised when I switched back. With the excitement of returning to my roots, I began searching for good extensions. Some extensions may really slow down your system and introduce security vulnerabilities. So I tried to be minimal as possible.

• Zotero Connector for saving important articles to Zotero
• Vimium for having vim controls on websites
• uBlock Origin for blocking ads and cookies warnings
• cliget for having the option to install stuff on the command line via aria2c

Conclusion

I love fun software but hate capitalism. A company that currently has no way to profit, getting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding doesn't make any sense. Also, them pushing AI so much makes me much more suspicious.

While it has been a fun ride with Arc, I am glad to be back on Firefox.

Disclaimer: This blog post requires you to know what org-mode, Anki, and AWK are.

I use org-mode a lot for taking notes in my classes. There are not many classes that introduce a lot of new terms. But this semester, we are taking a class called 'introduction to literature' and as you can imagine there are tons of new terms.

My memory is not that good and I need to do a lot of practice to memorize. So, a flash card software like Anki comes handy.

My problem is that I don't know how I can turn my org notes into Anki flash cards.

What I Want

When I have a class that introduce lots of terms, I usually put a 'terms' heading on the beginning of my file. When we are introduced to a new term, I put that there.

My org class notes look something like this:

I need this system to also work for Anki. So, after a bit of thought, I decided I want something that can turn lines containing terms into Anki flash cards.

Let's search for solutions…

First Solution: Search Google

I found two projects that try to connect org-mode and Anki. These were anki-editor and org-anki. But after looking into them a bit more, I found that they have their own way of working and wouldn't be great for my basic use-case.

But if they interest you, I found a great blog post talking about them.

Second Solution: Make Your Own

Because I don't need anything complex, I think I can do something on my own. I know that Anki supports basic csv files. So, let's go with that.

Because I only need a term and a meaning, a csv file with two columns should be sufficient. First column should be the name of the term and the second should be what that term means. So, the resulting file should look something like this:

term_name;term_meaning
term_name;term_meaning
term_name;term_meaning
term_name;term_meaning

To turn my above org class note into a csv file that looks like that, I need to do a few things.

• I need to find lines that contain bullet points ('+' or '-')
• I need to clean those bullet points
• And lastly, I need to replace ': ' with ';'

In plain-text, my org class note looks like this:

Now that we have everything we need, let's get to work.

I normally would use python for this but I thought AWK would work better. I would strongly recommend that you watch this video to learn more. Let's start writing an AWK script to turn org files into csv files. We will start with…

• 'BEGIN { FS=": " }': This sets the field separator as ': ', that means that AWK will split the lines according to the field separator. For example, '- term: term meaning' will be '- term' and 'term meaning'.

• '/^[[:space:]]*[-+]/ && index($0, ": ")': The first part is a condition to check if the line starts with zero or more whitespace's that follow with '+' or '-'. The index part checks if there is ': ' in the line

• '{ sub(/[-+]/, "");': This removes the bullet point characters ('+' or '-').

• 'sub(/^[[:space:]]+/, "")': This removes any whitespace in the beginning of the line.

• 'printf "%s;", $1': This prints the first field and adds ';'.

• 'print $2': This prints the second field.

In the end, our command should look something like this.

awk 'BEGIN { FS=": " } /^[[:space:]]*[-+]/ && index($0, ": ") { sub(/[-+]/, ""); sub(/^[[:space:]]+/, ""); printf "%s;", $1; print $2 }'

When I feed my class file into this command, it spits out this:

Subject;What a text is about, usually short and general
Theme;What the text tells us about the subject. Goes more into the subject
End-stopped line;A metrical line containing a complete phrase or sentence, or a poetic line ending with punctuation
Run-on line (enjambment);When the end of the line is not marked by punctuation, and the sentence or clause carries on over into the next line
Personification;Talking about a non-human as a person
The poetic persona/speaker;The word writer isn't used in poems, instead poetic persona or speaker is used
Simile;Likening something to something else. For example, like a thunderbolt he falls
Sonnet;A fourteen-line poem
Quatrain;A stanza of four lines
Couplet;Two lines of poetry at the end of a sonnet, that have the same length and rhyme pattern

When I give this file to Anki, it creates all the needed flash cards.

Conclusion

I am really happy with the outcome. I learned a lot about AWK and I now have a easy way to turn my org notes into Anki flash cards.

My AWK script could definitely use some polish. So, if you want to give me any tips, I will gladly take them.

Edit: u/cottasteel wrote my AWK command in elisp. It works great! Here is the code snippet:

(defun anki/export-notes-to-csv (file)
  (interactive "FExport notes to: ")
  (let ((regex (rx bol (in "+-") " " (group (1+ nonl)) ": " (group (1+ nonl))))
        (buf (find-file-noselect file))
        (output ""))
    (save-excursion
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (while (re-search-forward regex nil t)
        (setq output (concat output (format "%s;%s\n" (match-string 1)
                                            (match-string 2)))))
      (with-current-buffer buf
        (erase-buffer)
        (insert output)
        (save-buffer))
      (kill-buffer buf)
      (message "Export done."))))

I wasn't always a good student, classes didn't interest me until I started university. Before university, every school year would go the same. I would tell myself that I only had to pass my exams and tough it out until the summer vacation. Then the whole loop would start again. I would daydream during classes and study exams the night before. While I had a goal, studying computer science, I wouldn't work properly to achieve it.

Because I wanted to study computer science, I had chosen the math and science major. For context, in turkey, there are 4 different kinds of high school majors and we have to select a major in second semester of 10th grade. Every university major falls into one of these 4 high school majors and you have to take the proper exam according to the university major you want to study. These high school majors are…

1. Math and science
2. Math and social sciences
3. Foreign Language
4. Turkish social sciences and literature

While these might not be the correct translations, you get the point.

For example, if you want to study computer science you have to take the math and science exam or if you want to study economics you have to take the math and social sciences exam. Now let's get to our story…

Even though I knew I hated the science part (chemistry, biology, and physics) of my major, I thought I would just stick with it for 2 years. And this made me hate my classes more. In my last year of high school, I started to sway to the foreign language section of the university exam because of my love for the English language. Also the fact that I almost aced the language part of the university exam helped a lot.

While I was researching my options, I came across foreign language education at metu. Ever since I was little, I admired people who studied there. In my mind metu was a university that only geniuses could go and I couldn't even imagine myself there. I thought I wasn't smart enough. While this opinion changed when I learned that I could get into it, metu always stayed my favorite university.

While my test scores at that moment wasn't enough to get me there, I knew I could get in if I studied enough. And that was my motivation. I wrote 'METU' in large letters on a paper and taped it to my TV. I started sleeping at 9 pm and waking up at 5 am. This way I could study before school and get the necessary sleep. I bought tons of practice exams and I was ready. Except for one thing, a mechanical pencil.

The morning I started this routine my favorite pencil broke. I didn't think much of it, after all it was a cheap pencil. My plan was to go to the stationery store before school and get the same pencil. So, I got into the stationery, picked my regular pen and just before I was about to pay I saw something behind the counter. There was a mechanical pencil that cost ten times more. Out of curiosity, I asked if I could look at it. The man took the pencil out of the display case and started to look at it carefully, it was clear that he admired the pen too. Then he gave that pen to me, I was shocked. It felt light and well-made at the same time. Nothing like the pencils I held before, it was clear that it was a machine that was purposely built for writing. I started doing the math in my head, "If I use the money from my savings, I can buy it. But I tried so hard to save that money". Then a thought came to my mind, "The only way this purchase can be justifiable is if this pen gets me into metu". With determination, I bought the pen and put it in my pocket for safekeeping. That year, I solved thousands of questions and studied hundreds of hours with it. And in the end, this pen made me achieve my dreams.

I am currently studying my dream major and I am doing it with the people I cherish. While I have no use for a mechanical pencil now, I still carry it with me almost everywhere I go.

I love Emacs because the possibilities are endless. What makes it so capable is definitely Emacs Lisp. Thanks to this language, countless functions have been created to meet the needs of us users.

As a student who uses Emacs everyday for writing, there are several and functions that I depend on. Here are some of them.

view-echo-area-messages

I remember when I first started configuring Emacs, I would get a lot of error messages. And the worst part would be that these message would fade after few seconds. I would try to take pictures of the error messages so that I could Google it.

One day I was having too many errors and decided to find a way to see those messages. That's when I came across 'view-echo-area-messages'.

This opens a messages buffer and shows a history of the things that was in your echo area.

describe-function and describe-variable

By no means is Emacs an undocumented text editor, but accessing documentation when you are a beginner can be hard. A lot of users are looking for information online and blaming the community when they can't find it.

Most of the time, documentation of the thing you are looking for is already inside of Emacs! If you are searching for a particular function or want to know what a function does, you can use the 'describe-function' command. And if you can't find what you are looking for you can always write your own function.

When you are writing a function that builds upon what Emacs already offers (this is the case most of the time!), you can use the 'describe-variable' command. This command tells you more about what that variable does and how you can use it. Both of these commands can also tell you their global and local states and much more.

ispell

I am definitely a fast writer, but not an accurate one. I always mess up words when I am writing my thoughts. So a good spellchecker is a must for me. A spellchecker should be fast, lightweight and customizable. So it shouldn't slow down my system when I am spellchecking and I should be able to add words to my dictionary easily. While I did spend some time using other spellcheckers I liked using ispell the most. It is built-in, lightning fast and easy to use. It is probably my most used command. I usually use 'ispell-word' for correcting words that I know are wrong. And use 'ispell' to correct all the words that I forgot to correct at the end of my writing.

I know ispell is even older than Emacs but it still works for me.

org-insert-structure-template

As the name suggests, this command inserts different templates to your file. I used this a lot when I was writing my literate config. With this command, you can insert code blocks, html export blocks, quote blocks and much more. It is easily customizable and definitely a time saver.

google-current-word

Currently, I am taking an introduction to literature class and learning a lot of words that I didn't know before. I best learn using different sources, so my first step is almost always searching it on Google.

Whenever our instructor introduces a new term, I put it in my org file. Then when I want to write a definition for that word, I need Google to help me. So, I wanted a function that takes the current word my cursor is on and searches it on Google. I looked for a package to do that for me and there was one. But sadly, it wouldn't work on my system. So, with the help of u/Aminumbra, I was able to create a function that does exactly what I want.

(defun google-current-word ()
  "Search the current word on Google using browse-url."
  (interactive)
  (let ((word (thing-at-point 'word)))
    (if word
        (browse-url (concat "https://www.google.com/search?q=" word))
      (message "No word found at point."))))

Conclusion

I hope you find some of my recommendation useful. These functions may be commonplace for some but I am sure that there are a lot of people who might benefit from these. If you have any critisims or advice, please reach me on ismailefetop@gmail.com

As Steph Ango mentions in his article, plain text files are more than files that have texts in them. They also symbolize a way of life. They make you face your technological habits, make you more aware of the stuff you create and encourage you to hold onto your creations.

Plain Text Files

If you don't know what plain text files are, they are files that have human readable content in them.

I am sure that at some point we all have opened up a notepad software in our computers and written simple stuff that don't have any fancy headings, colors or pictures. These notes would then be saved as .txt files.

With the rise of note-taking apps such as notion and simple to-do apps, the need for these .txt files diminished. Now we live in a world that produces a new multi-million dollar silicon valley company that makes a ground-breaking new note-taking app every month.

But was the diminishing of these simple .txt files good for us. Yes it was. This was of course a system that was doomed to fail. It is important that we color our notes, make big titles and add pictures. They make things more easy and joyful. But there was a great thing about these .txt files. They were simple and could be open everywhere. You didn't need an app that was 5 dollar every month and only available for iPhones.

Luckily we don't have to revive .txt files. We already have markdown (.md) and org (.org) files. While the latter is somewhat obscure, markdown is already used in a lot of places and have a thriving community.

Markdown

Markdown is a markup language that lets you add formatting elements to plain text files. Markdown can add stuff like; different levels of heading, bullet lists, to-do lists, hyperlinks, pictures and many more. And you can do these awesome things without ever needing a mouse. When you want to have a big title you can start your sentence with #, or if you want to make your text bold you can put '**' sign to the beginning and the end of your text. Let's do a little demo.

# Learning Markdown

# Level 1 Heading
## Level 2 Heading
### Level 3 Heading

## Text Formatting

**Bold Text**
*Italic Text*
~~Strikethrough Text~~

## Lists

### Ordered List
1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3

### Unordered List
- Item A
- Item B
- Item C

### Todo List
- [ ] Buy milk
- [x] Write a post about plain text

### Links and Images

[Markdown Guide](https://www.markdownguide.org/)
![Markdown Logo](https://markdown-here.com/img/icon256.png)

### Code

Also you can write code blocks with three backticks.

```python
def greet():
    print("Hello, world!")

When we view this code in a markdown supported editor like obsidian, bear, notable or inkdrop. It looks something like this:

As you can see it is fundamentally not difficult. You just have to know the symbols that correspond to what you want. When you get used to markdown, you can write as fast as you can think with files that have proper formatting. For example if you are in a classroom or in a meeting. At the end, you can have a beautiful looking note file out of the box. The apps I mentioned above also support converting these markdown documents to all kinds of useful formats like PDFs, docs and HTMLs. For example, I am writing this blog post with org. While org works a little differently they are similar in a lot of areas. You can check out this interactive org example.

Why bother

Apart from the convenience, this makes you more aware of what you create. Having little symbols on an application that you have no control over is not something you want if you want to preserve your legacy. While apps like notion might seem like a good option because of their ease of use. These apps will certainly someday fail. But if you use plain text files and apps that support it, when the app you are using dies, you can just take your stuff and move to a different app. And an app dying isn't the only reason. The company behind the app can turn it to a monthly service, remove functionality that you regularly use and, can make all sorts of bad decisions. That is one of the reasons why I love open-source so much, but of course that is another topic. Having your creations as files you own will surely benefit you a whole lot.

Recommendations

I am going to give two starter packs. The first one will be for most of the people, the second one will be for the people who want to go into a rabbit hole and change the way they look at note taking.

Starter pack

• Markdown for the markup language
  • Markdown is widely used and have a lot of guides for it
  • Is a little bit limited but allows a wide variety of use cases
• Obsidian
  • Works great for writing, note-taking, to-do lists
  • Open-source
  • Available in all major platforms
  • Syncs between these platforms
  • Great collection of community plugins
• If you are using an iPhone, you can use bear for short to-do lists or notes

Advanced pack

• Org for the markup language
  • Teaches you how to take logical notes
  • Nested headings
  • You can easily integrate meta-data
  • Works great with pandoc
  • Have native support for latex and live command blocks
  • Great for literate programming
  • Ability to use agenda and calendar with org-agenda
  • Native support for tags
  • Interconnected notes, better with org-roam
  • Fantastic way of managing tables
  • Great support for citation
  • Probably the only piece of software that have perfect defaults
  • Is a life-long journey that teaches you new things everyday
  • Is weirdly not limited by imagination, I always find stuff that I would never be able to think on my own.
• Emacs
  • The best way to use org is in Emacs
  • Open-source
  • Works properly on computers only, while it is possible to run it on Android I wouldn't recommend it
  • Has endless customization options, check out this blog post
• Plain-org for iOS
  • Looks native
  • While it lacks certain features it is still actively maintained
  • Best option for viewing and editing org files in iOS
• Orgro for Android

While I know started a rant when I mentioned org and Emacs but I assure you they are great if you have the proper free time, as it takes quite the time to get use to it. It took me around half a year to get to a place that I am comfortable in. But now I do 99% of my writing in Emacs and it saves me a lot of time. Learning Emacs and org was probably the best thing I have done for myself.

To conclude

Make sure you own your files, so that you can preserve your creations. Use apps that support plain text so you can jump ships easily. Definitely check out the starter pack. If you like what you see in the starter pack, forget everything you have learned and use the things in the advanced pack. And send me an email if you have any questions or recommendations.

Great articles on the subject

• File over app by Steph Ango (CEO of obsidian)
• The future needs files by Scott Jenson
• More files please by Jim Nielsen

What is EDC?

EDC stands for every day carry, encompassing everything from your wallet and phone to various types of screwdrivers can be included in the EDC category.

Even though everyone carries some stuff with them, there are people that take great pride in their EDC. We can find those people in forums and youtube videos. Those places can be a great starting point for people who want to give a little more effort to what they carry.

My EDC

While mine might seem a little lacking and boring, it has been by far the most efficient setup for me.

I will mostly write about the interesting stuff and give only the bare minimum for the normal stuff.

📱

I am using an iPhone, while the operating system is quite locked I love the polished iOS experience and the great ecosystem which I am a part of.

🎧

I am using the airpods pro 2nd gen. While expensive, they sound great and switching between my phone and my computer is stupid easy. Not having to deal with the unwanted small stuff and focusing on my creative projects is really important to me. Being in the apple ecosystem allows me to do that.

⌚️

I am using an old apple watch. I like tracking my sleep and exercises so that I can make adjustments. Also, seeing notifications without looking at my phone really comes in handy more than you might think.

🪪

Like most people, I used a lot of different wallets. My biggest problem with my old wallets were they size. Because of my different circumstances I need to carry lots of cards and photos with me. For my old wallets to carry those different cards they needed to be really bulky. I wanted a slim option, so I found the OneTigris. I can stuff a lot and not have to worry about them being lost. I carry the ones I frequently use in the front pockets. It really is the perfect wallet for me.

🔑

I carry the keys for my dormitory, nothing special.

My Backpack

I like to use different bags in my backpack. That way nothing is lost inside my bag. I have a computer case with a big zipper pocket, a travel pouch, and an umbrella.

🎒

My backpack is a mid-size Herschel Little America. Because I carry my backpack everywhere, it needs to be light and comfortable. This bag is just that. It has no fancy trick. Just a light and small backpack. It's the perfect size for carry it everyday.

💻

This is probably the most important part of my life. I take notes for class, I program on it, I watch youtube. Basically most of my digital life is on here. I have a mba(2022) with 16 gigs of ram and 512 gigs of storage. I am coming from a linux laptop, It used to have 3 hours of battery use and the linux system would broke a couple of times a month. MacOS has the hackability of linux and it is crazy stable. I can easily say that this laptop suits my needs perfectly.

💼

While the most important use-case of my computer case is protecting my computer, it also holds a lot of important accessory like:

• Logitech pebble
• 70W USB-C Power Adapter
• One Magsafe Cable
• One Lighting Cable
• a Baseus Presentation Remote
• a Generic Type-C Hub

👝

I also have a vintage travel pouch. On one side I have a usb power adapter and a 3 headed power cable and on the other I have a small notebook and different pens. On the outer shell I house different kinds of medicines.

First of all, this post is directly inspired by Álvaro's work. I love his stuff and he has been a great inspiration for me. I suggest everyone to check out his stuff.

In this post I am planning to walk you through my visual Emacs setup, I will use the Doom Framework. I am planning on making a detail blog post about Emacs, org-mode and how I use them, because of this I will not go into explanation of what Emacs is. There are great sources about Emacs and org-mode on youtube. Until I make that post, you can explore the Emacs world freely.

Edit: I have made that post. Why Use Emacs?

Let's Start

Installing Brew

I will be using brew to install Emacs and it's dependencies.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Installing Emacs

I am choosing the default cask for Emacs. I tried several different forks of Emacs for MacOS but all of them gave me poor performance on my m2 MacBook Air.

brew install --cask emacs

After installing, do not start Emacs. Starting Emacs will create a profile, which will conflict with your doom profile.

Installing Doom

Doom is a stable framework for Emacs. You can considered like a base config file. It really makes Emacs easy to use out-of-box.

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs ~/.config/emacs
~/.config/emacs/bin/doom install

And now we are ready to hack our Emacs.

Changing the theme

I used to use the doom-dracula theme. But nowadays my favorite is the kanagawa theme.

;; add this to ~/.config/doom/package.el
(package! kanagawa-theme)

Then set your theme to kanagawa.

;; ~/.config/doom/config.el
(setq doom-theme 'kanagawa)

Changing the font

I like using the JetBrains Mono.

;; ~/.config/doom/config.el
(setq doom-font (font-spec :family "JetBrains Mono" :size 22))

Enabling Word Count

This puts a word count in the modeline.

;; ~/.config/doom/config.el
(setq doom-modeline-enable-word-count t)

Disabling hl-line-mode

'hl-line' makes the current line a different color. I don't like it.

;; ~/.config/doom/config.el
(remove-hook 'doom-first-buffer-hook #'global-hl-line-mode)

The title bar

I like the look of an empty unified title-bar, so this removes the text. Only works for MacOS.

;; ~/.config/doom/config.el
(setq ns-use-proxy-icon nil)
(setq frame-title-format nil)

Removing the tilde signs

There is an ugly tilde sign on empty lines by default. I really don't like it. You can remove it by commenting out the 'vi-tilde-fringe' line in ~/.config/doom/init.el

Olivetti mode

There is a melpa package called olivetti. This package provides a good look for writing/reading by decreasing the width of the buffer.

;; ~/.config/doom/package.el
(package! olivetti)

You can adjust the width with the below line

;; ~/.config/doom/config.el
(setq olivetti-body-width 94)

I also start Olivetti Mode automatically on Text Mode buffers

;; ~/.config/doom/config.el
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'olivetti-mode)

Changing the Icon

Lastly, I like to use this logo. It is quite old but it suits my style.

2023 might be my busiest year yet. As a first-year in my major, I'm discovering a new city, giving tons of presentations, and balancing my relationships. As a result, I've had less time to discover and enjoy new music.

In spite of this I found lots of good record to listen to. Here are my top picks of 2023.

this listing is in no particular order.

1. SCARING THE HOES

Until the announcement of this album I've have never heard of Danny Brown. And honestly, I didn't care who he was, because I knew that if JPEGMAFIA was one of the co-artists of this project, it would be good. When the first song 'lean beef patty' came out, I knew I was right.

But I have to be honest, this album is not for everyone. It has a rough and dirty sound. Lots of beat switches and samples that are straight from a forgotten graveyard. But these are the exact reasons why I love this album so much. This album is your weird friend that always do niche movie references and that joke about internet memes. When done is dose, which SCARING THE HOES does, it feels like a different and fun thing.

2. Let's Start Here.

I always knew Lil Yachty as a lighthearted rapper. So, when I heard that he had made a Psychedelic Rock album, I knew I had to check it out.

On my first listen, the Pink Floyd influence was pretty apparent but there was something different. His sound was fun, catchy and like how a Psychedelic Rock should be; it was trippy. And the album stayed that way, it was fresh every time I listened to it. That's why I spend the quarter of my year listening to this album.

3. UTOPIA

Utopia is an album in which Travis Scott tries to return to his roots. It features raw cuts and a plethora of different voices.

This album was in the making for about 4 years. And you can tell this by how polished it is. Also, there are 52 beat switches in the album. So, every song feels like you are listening to an EP.

4. LATIN VIRGIN

This is a Turkish release, and one of my favorites. The reason why I love this album so much is that it's a big milestone for the Turkish rap scene. For a really long time the scene was populated by people who claim that woman weren't able to make good rap tracks and those few who made good rap tracks were people who were very conservative of their bodies. Alizade showed that you don't have to hide your body to make good rap song. While her songs lack in the lyrics department she more than makes up for it by using different types of sounds and colorful beats in her songs.

While she is still criticized in Turkey for showing off her body and not being a proper 'lyricist', I admire what she is bringing to the table in the Turkish rap scene.

5. For All The Dogs

I feel like Drake's albums are really a hit or miss. And luckily this album is a hit. While this album could cook a bit more, I like how raw it is. There are bunch of features I really like and it is a fun album.

He really needs to not take himself so seriously, he shines best when he has fun too.

I use a lot of apps that allow me to use custom themes. While most people who are into customizing their setup like to choose one theme, I like different themes for different apps. Here are the themes I use.

Lighthaus

• Lighthaus Website

I use this theme for Bear. It's real easy on the eyes and complements the bear font.

Mountain

• Mountain Repo

This theme is used for the kitty terminal. I've been trying different themes for kitty for about 4 years. Mountain is by far the best.

Rosé Pine

• Rosé Pine Website

There are tons of options for vs-code. Rosé Pine is really polished and looks great, nothing to complain.

Kanagawa

• Kanagawa Repo

I saved the best for last, this is an Emacs theme inspired by the colors of the famous painting by Katsushika Hokusai. I really love this theme, the colors are perfect for reading and writing. It might not work this well for programming but luckily I don't use Emacs for that.

My problem

I love reading personal blogs, since I love them so much I decided to make one myself a couple of weeks ago.

There were a lot of framework projects for personal blogs like hugo, Astro JS and Jekyll. But for different reasons I found them quite restrictive. Since I was already using Emacs for most of my writing I thought I could use org-mode to write blog posts and use pandoc to convert them to HTML. It worked quite well. This is blog is the result of that. But this method has it's downsides, you have to do some manual labor. And this includes RSS.

RSS

RSS is "a standardized system for the distribution of content from an online publisher." In a nutshell, it is a file you host that has all the important metadata like what are the posts in your blog, who wrote them, and what are the posts about.

The frameworks I mention have solutions for automating the generation of RSS files. I also found a solution that works for exactly what I do, webfeeder. With the webfeeder I was able to achieve the bare minimum, but anything more than that required a more extensive knowledge of the lisp language.

After all this, I felt like I had to dive deeper to RSS. I already had a basic understanding, but looking at the RSS feeds of different sites gave me the knowledge and the courage to write a script that automated RSS generation.

Basics of RSS

RSS is simply a big nested XML file. You start by declaring the usage and the version of the file.

<rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0">

Then you open a channel tag and give your basic information.

<channel>
<title>İsmail Efe's Blog Site</title>
<link>https://ismailefe.org/</link>
<description>İsmail Efe's Second Brain.</description>
<atom:link href="https://ismailefe.org/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
<lastBuildDate>Thu, 01 Feb 2024 11:27:51 +0300</lastBuildDate>

Now we can start giving it the key items. These are going to be your posts. I am going to give you an example.

<item>
<title>My EDC Essentials.</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[ <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="" xml:lang=""><body>YOUR HTML CONTENT</body></html> ]]>
</description>
<author>ismailefetop@gmail.com (İsmail Efe Top)</author>
<link>https://ismailefe.org/blog/my_edc/index.html</link>
<guid>https://ismailefe.org/blog/my_edc/index.html</guid>
<pubDate>Sun, 14 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0300</pubDate>
</item>

Let's tie the loose ends.

</channel>
</rss>

This is what a basic RSS file for a blog looks like.

Automation

I wanted to write this script in rust but I am still learning, so I decided to use python for this. Here is what I did.

from datetime import datetime
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

system_header = "/Users/ismailefetop/projects/org-blog/ismailefe_org"
website_header= "https://ismailefe.org"
blog_posts = ["/blog/my_edc/index.html",
              "/blog/eye_candy/index.html",
              "/blog/best_albums_2023/index.html",
              "/blog/favorite_themes/index.html"
              ]

update_time = str(datetime.now().strftime('%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S'))+' +0300'

feed_output = "/Users/ismailefetop/projects/org-blog/ismailefe_org/feed.xml"
xml_file = open(feed_output, "w")

xml_file.write(
f'''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>İsmail Efe's Blog Site</title>
<link>https://ismailefe.org/</link>
<description>İsmail Efe's Second Brain.</description>
<atom:link href="https://ismailefe.org/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
<lastBuildDate>{update_time}</lastBuildDate>'''
)

xml_file.close()

# Below function is partially written by ChatGPT.
def parse_html(filename_arg):
    # Read the HTML file
    with open(filename_arg, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
        html_content = file.read()

    # Parse the HTML content using BeautifulSoup
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html_content, 'html.parser')

    # Extract title
    title_tag = soup.find('title')
    title = title_tag.text if title_tag else None

    # Extract date (assuming date is in an element with class="date")
    date_tag = soup.find(class_='date')
    date = date_tag.text if date_tag else None

    # Extract body content as HTML
    body_tag = soup.body
    body_html = str(body_tag) if body_tag else None

    post_dict = {"title":title,"date":date,"body_html":body_html}

    return post_dict

# Below function is written by ChatGPT.
def format_date(input_date):
    # Convert input date string to a datetime object
    input_datetime = datetime.strptime(input_date, '%Y-%m-%d')

    # Format the datetime object to the desired string format
    formatted_date = input_datetime.strftime('%a, %d %b %Y')

    return formatted_date

for post in blog_posts:
    post_dictionary = parse_html(system_header+post)
    xml_file = open(feed_output, "a")
    xml_file.write(f'''
<item>
  <title>{post_dictionary["title"]}</title>
  <description><![CDATA[<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="" xml:lang="">{post_dictionary["body_html"]}</html>]]></description>
  <author>ismailefetop@gmail.com (İsmail Efe Top)</author>
  <link>{website_header+post}</link>
  <guid>{website_header+post}</guid>
  <pubDate>{format_date(post_dictionary["date"])} 00:00:00 +0300</pubDate>
</item>
''')
    xml_file.close()

xml_file = open(feed_output, "a")
xml_file.write('''
</channel>
</rss>''')
xml_file.close()

When I write a new post, all I have to do is add the name of the post to the blog posts list. Feel free to modify it to your heart's content. As a note, while working on this project, I used the RSS Validator. This site checks whether your RSS feed is valid and highlights any problems you might have. It really is a life-save when working on RSS files.

I have a very structured file management system for my university life. I save almost everything and everything that I saved has a place. Let's start with the main folder.

Uni Folder

I have a folder called 'uni' in my icloud drive. This folder sync between my macbook and iphone. This allows me to access my PDFs and docs with ease from either of my devices. I have a shortcut to this folder on my ~(home) directory. Here is what this folder looks like on the first level.

uni
├── citation
├── current-course -> /Users/ismailefetop/uni/first_year/02/
├── etc
├── first_year
└── prep

• Citation folder houses my zotero bookmarks. I use an Emacs extension which allows me to cite those bookmarks.
• Current course folder is a shortcut to my current semester.
• etc folder houses stuff that are necessary but aren't specific enough for a folder.
• first_year and prep are for categorizing years in my university life.

Semester folders

Every year houses 2 semester folders inside it. Because my classes changes every semester it is the easiest way to categorize my classes. For example:

first_year
├── 01
└── 02

Let's look at the first semester of my first year. This is the first level.

01
├── ceit100
├── eds200
├── fle134
├── fle137
├── fle147
├── hist2201
├── school.org
├── todo.org
└── turk103

Every class has it's own folder. I will talk about them more in the next section.

school.org

This file is my semester's guidebook. It houses my class schedule, the classrooms, and shortcuts to class folders. It uses org mode, which is similar to markdown but more powerful.

todo.org

I use org capture, which allow me to write quick todo items when writing stuff in Emacs. These todo bits go into this file.

Class Folders

These folders are the meat and bones of my setup. They hold everything about that particular class and they do it in style. For example let's look at my eds200 folder.

eds200
├── eds200.org
├── homeworks
├── notes
└── odtuclass

eds200.org

Every class folder has an org file with that classes name. It houses information such as the instructor's name, email address and their office hours. It also have quick access to folders.

homeworks folder

Every homework related thing goes into this folder and every homework has it's own folder.

notes folder

I divide homeworks by week. I write notes in org and these org files go into appropriate week folder.

odtuclass folder

My university uses it's own moodle. Our instructors communicate and give homework to us through there. It is also divided by week and the stuff our instructors upload goes into those folders.

Conclusion

It might seem overly complicated at first, but once you get used to it, it's very easy to operate. It's definitely better than looking for that one file you downloaded weeks ago. And you don't need to know any complicated computer stuff to use this system. Even though org files are plain text files. You can just change the org files with more common text files.

Sidenote

Creating this folder structure might be cumbersome, so I created this python script to ease the process.

import os

class_list = ['ba100',
              'hist2202',
              'fle129',
              'fle200',
              'fle280',
              'fle480',
              'turk104',
              'eng102']

year = 'first_year/'

semester = '02/'

system_path = '/Users/ismailefetop/uni/' + year + semester

# overwriting an exisiting folder might create problems, so the code doesn't do anything if the wanted semester folder exist.
if os.path.exists(system_path) == True:
    print('This directory already exists.')
    quit()

os.makedirs(system_path, exist_ok=True)

with open(system_path + 'school.org', 'w') as fp:
    pass

with open(system_path + 'todo.org', 'w') as fp:
    pass

for class_name in class_list:
    class_name_folder = system_path + class_name + '/'
    os.makedirs(class_name_folder, exist_ok=True)
    os.makedirs(class_name_folder + 'odtuclass/', exist_ok=True)
    os.makedirs(class_name_folder + 'odtuclass/misc/', exist_ok=True)
    os.makedirs(class_name_folder + 'notes/', exist_ok=True)
    os.makedirs(class_name_folder + 'homeworks/', exist_ok=True)

    with open(class_name_folder + f'{class_name}.org', 'w') as fp:
        pass

In my department we give a lot of presentations, so mastering the skill is important for a student like me. I learned a lot in my last 2 years at metu and I want to share what I learned.

This guide will include tips about time management, physical environment, styling of the slides and other general information.

General

My first tip would be to always have an introduction. Introductions are important because they help the listener have a short sense of what you are talking about. Diving into a subject without the proper introduction can lead to a sense of confusion in the listener.

In your introduction you can talk about…

• General information about your subject
• Why you chose that particular subject
• Significance and relevance of the subject
• The key takeaways listeners can expect by the end of the presentation

While it may seem obvious, thanking the listeners at the end is very important. We should remember that while we do spend time preparing, they also spend their time listening to us.

Physical Environment

If you are not giving a presentation in a space designed for it, going into there beforehand and removing any distractions can be helpful. For example, if you are going to give a presentation in a class or a meeting room, adjusting the curtains and cleaning the whiteboard can help listeners not lose focus.

A lot of presenters hide behind a podium. While it can help when you feel anxious, it can also lower your presence as a presenter. I would suggest not putting anything in front of you and trying to be as close as possible to the audience without going into their personal space. Maintaining good space and leaning closer when announcing a heading is a good strategy to stress the importance of that portion. Other than that, you should never put your hands in your pocket. Letting the audience see your hand fully is always important.

Presentation Slides

First of all, any presentation software works. I use and recommend pitch. The most important thing when presenting a stylish slide is the font and simplicity. Let me explain more.

Most people try to cram all the information they can into their slides. This leads to presentations that look like textbooks. I think that is the biggest sin you can commit. This is a big mistake because the presenter is the one giving information not the slide. Slides should complement you, not replace you. Another reason we shouldn't make slides with a lot of text is that they are distracting. While you try to talk about your subject, the audience will look and try to read what is on the slide. If you MUST put a lot of text or a big picture, you should at least give proper time for the audience to look at the slide properly.

Another mistake I see is that making your background too crowded, this makes it hard to read or see whats on the slide. I would suggest a single color background with small graphics that are away from the center. Another thing to note is the contrast between the color of your background and the color of your text. If they don't have good contrast, the text might be too hard to read. Having good contrast is especially important because while your colors might look good on your fancy computer screen, they might blend together on the projector due to low color performance. So having a little bit more of a headroom can be a good idea.

Lastly, using short and simple animations between your slides can be a good visual sign of professionalism.

Time Usage

To be honest, I think this is the most important part. The usage of your time dictates how people remember your presentation. If it is too long, people can get bored and stop listening to you. And if it is too short, people might think that you were unprepared. One of my instructors has a great advice on this, he says "When preparing for a presentation, aim for the 9/10 of the time allocated to you.". It is a common practice to time yourself when preparing. But if you try to make your presentation stretch to the time given to you, you will see that it will always be longer when doing the actual presentation. With this advice, you can make your speech more to the point and easier to follow.

Addition to this, I would suggest finishing your presentation a couple of minutes early. In my opinion this can give a sense of professionalism and competence. It is definitely better than finishing late. Just make sure that it is no more than 5 minutes.

To conclude…

• Do an introduction about the subject
• Thank the audience for their time at the end
• Declutter your presentation environment
• Make your body and hands visible
• I recommend using pitch for your slides
• Do not cram text into slides
• Make your slide backgrounds simple
• Most of the time a single color background is perfect
• Have good contrast between your background and text
• Use fast and simple transitions
• When preparing aim for the 9/10 of the time allocated to you
• Try to finish a couple of minutes early