Talking Turkish Names

Here’s the all new and improved Talking Turkish Names, the database that brings you the meanings and audio pronunciations of more than 1,000 Turkish proper names. You have quite a few options!

Over time, the navigation menu will contain useful shortcuts.

TTN is now working on two important projects: Top 100 Turkish Names and Top 100 Turkish Places. Our research team is trying to approach the issue methodologically by scanning the international web media to get a grip on top citations. Any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

Our medium-term goal is to have a resident editor to respond to fast breaking news so that Turkish names and places that are not in common use but start popping up in news bulletins can be immediately included in the database.

We will be more than happy to include any name our readers may suggest. Readers may also send audio pronunciations with their own voice to add a little bit more dynamism to their record.

That’s the general direction for TTN for the foreseeable future.

If you are into Turkish please also check our partner sites Esek Arisi, a blog on pains of cultural miscommunication, and Dr Yagci’s Entertaining Medical Dictionary, a self-evident body of work. Both partner sites are in Turkish.

What you’ll find below is my blog, partly related with the Talking Turkish Names project. If you are interested in Turkey, geopolitics, news media or computers, there may be something for you among the blog posts. 

No sweat. MPEG Streamclip is the solution. Just drag your files on to the app and then save. I’ve tried this on a numbered sequence of files like file1.mp4, file2.mp4 and the app was able to put the videos in the correct order. MPEG StreamClip is a free software that does many other tricks including managing DreamBox.

If you are using OS X Leopard and have a remote SlingBox that you are connecting to, chances are you might not be able to establish a reliable connection from time to time. That is even if you have no problems with your firewall settings.

If you are getting this error:

Connection Error
SlingPlayer can’t connect to the SlingBoz Location Service. Check your network’s Internet connection and firewall settings. If they’re okay, then the Slingbox Location Service might be temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

If the problem persists, say, over a few hours, you’ll need to use the actual ip address and port for your Slingbox. Question is if your remote Internet connection has dynamic ip, how’d you know the current ip address of your box?

Simple:

Obtain the ID number of your box and append it to the below line:

http://srs.slingmedia.com/getDeviceInfo.asp?id=

This will give you the current ip address and port of your box. Then you can add the settings of your SlingPlayer to connect to your remote box by using a “Direct Connection.”

Works.

Steve Jobs unveiled the new MB Air. Microsoft Office 2008 is out. Leopard is rocking. What can go wrong? Wait until you get your first PPT file from an external source and try to open it using your brand new Office. Then:

Hold on a second. This guy is saying my FILESYSTEM is inconsistent. Not my file. Not the Office app. But my filesystem. How does it know? Why is it the only app crying out about it?

Is MS trying to kill our joy of MacWorld?

One of the problems with backing up large number of files is that in addition to the total volume you are copying, the number of files involved has an important impact on the time the process takes. Say, we’re talking about a typical large-volume IMAP folder of 2000 e-mail messages. One such recent mail backup I retain has nearly 60K items in it. That’s a lot of files. I’m not into the tech details but it’s not been hard to figure out that not only finder but also sync utilities like ChronoSync take much time to copy such. Much more time than if we were talking about a single file of the same size.

Year, Mac people need little convincing about the utility and beauty of the DMG concept. (Like many other things about the Mac, there has to be an emotional and subjective part attached to DMGs. Hence the beauty.)

Yet making a DMG file from an existing folder is not so straightforward. One would have wished a context menu item for that. There are many nice utilities. They are quite convenient. However, for some reason, and most probably because I don’t understand their inner workings, I don’t feel entrusting my mail backup in the hands of anyone other than Apple.

Disk Utility is the way to go but need to be aware of a few things.

Firstly, in an un-Mac way, one needs to pre-determine how much space will be required and make a new DMG disk with that size. That’s a fairly time consuming process. Then you copy your files into the new DMG. The real nice thing is once your DMG is ready, you can go back to Disk Utility and compress it.

The above mail back up I mentioned was like 4.7 GB. After compressing I have a wonderfully economical 2.5 GB DMG file instead of the 4.7 GB folder of 60,000 mini files.

Of course you love apple.

Something from the personal archives of a journalist. Would be nice to add audio pronunciations along the way. It is the British version. Comments are appreciated as to the US version.

Navy

This is about the batch posting method I mentioned on WordPress community forums.

Here’s how the data looks on Excel:  
 

Excel formula used for the Code column:

=”<item><title>” & A2 & “</title><description>” & C2 & “</description><category>” & B2 & “</category></item>”

Here’s the resultant text file that WordPress will import as an RSS feed.

<item>
<title>CNN</title>
<description>
The last global channel. <a href=”http://www.cnn.com”>www.cnn.com</a>
</description>
<category>TV</category>
</item>

<item>
<title>The Times</title>
<description>
There are so many Times newspapers. This is THE one.
</description>
<category>Newspaper</category>
</item> 

Of course the neat thing is one can manipulate data in many ways using Excel’s functions. I keep my Talking Turkish Names database up to date and in a standard way using this method.  

I once read about how to price the “Information gap”. Basically it went like this: You enumerate the possibilities in a situation and assign probabilities and resultant expected values for each eventuality. In one main brach, you assume that you have no information and in the other branch you assume that you have full information, generated by research. The difference in total expected value between the two branches gives you the “information gap”. In other words you can spend research money up to that value because research will pay for itself.  The Times [of London] had yesterday an interesting piece that reminded me of the concept of this information gap. Apparently, following a series of misrepresentation scandals, the BBC is to buy training to teach its staff the importance of telling the truth. The training will cost 1 million pounds sterling.

You are still using your mother’s way of getting a simple list of files on Finder, right? And it feels so Unix. Cat them all and pipe into a new text file… Maybe that’s what you like. I’ve stumbled upon an easier way: Highlight the files you want. Then Launch TextEdit. Just use ‘Paste and Match Style’. Bingo.   

I spent too much time loving HP. I was one of the earliest users of their inkjet printers. Starting from 500C back in 1993. Wow. It cost a hefty 750 bucks back then. A few years later they won me for good - or so I thought at the time. I literally broke a 340 by feeding a thick envelope in it. While I accepted my fault, HP was kind enough to say there was still a design issue and gave me a brand new unit. Some people know how to delight the customer. All was nice until the age of soft printers dawned and I switched to the Mac.

Mac and HP do not go well together. I ditched a couple of HP 1020’s after trying to get them working on OS X Tiger in vein. Yes, I do have a 1022 in the office, but why bother if HP is not supporting the Mac domain with the same heart as they are supporting the Win world?

Then on a lucky day I discovered Brother and fell for it. If you are looking for a simple, economical and great all-in-one solution for your desk, go for MFC-7420. At around $250, you can hardly go wrong.

I was particularly impressed by Brother’s swift response to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The day Leopard was out, so were Mac printer drivers for many Brother models including my 7420: They actually came on the Leopard installer DVD. And the scanner drivers were ready for download on Brother’s support site.

I doubt very much if HP can match the pretty picture here.

Did I mention that the 7420 has a built-in fax (including PC fax capability) and a dual-function (flatbed and feeder) scanner? Yes it is a great device indeed.

Good luck. How do you exactly do it? By context? (Department A, Department B.) By person? (John, Jane, Ayman.) Does it not seem like a futile effort? Exactly 20 years ago I wrote my first and only file directory system. It was the dying days of CDC and the only PC available was locked behind a special access room. Using Fortran and the native OS of CDC, the mission was to write a multi-level directory structure. It did make sense to have some directories. But I did not feel comfortable at all about second and third level subdirectories. How would anyone remember the structure. Since those days, I’m looking for practical and meaningful logical method to organize my files, e-mail messages and folders. I’m yet to find one. Overtime, I’ve developed elaborate filing schemes only to be abandoned a few years later.

After the advent of Mac OS X, I’ve found justification to give up hope of file and folder organization. I’m now just depositing my files somewhere and then use search tools to locate them when necessary. Until recently, I could not do the same with e-mail messages. Having passed the 20,000 message barrier recently, I’ve now come to the realization that I must let go of e-mail organization too. The solution, if you could call it one, is very simple. Just put all your messages in an archive folder. Yes, it is a statement of defeat but if you think about it, it works. What’s the point in trying to impose structure on your e-mail folders while that structure is susceptible to change on a constant basis? Now, of course I use IMAP and hence must keep my mail folders down to reasonable sizes in terms of message count. That I do by using years as folders. “2007″, “2006″, “2005″, “2004 and before”, and so on. It works. The next big step will be to make sure nothing unnecessary is filed. And perhaps on one idle day some of the junk in the old material can be sifted away.

There is no painless way to put it: You need Windows functionality on your Mac from time to time however infrequently that might be. The excuse could be the Thai-language web site you are building for the Asian multinational. Could be that you are changing Blackberry handsets so you need to transfer data. Bootcamp and Parallels do nice work together. Bootcamp needs restarting your machine. Parallels is as much pain in the rear side as it takes ages to load on my MacBook Pro. I’ve been testing CrossOver from CodeWeavers and I like it merely as an alternative. Now I don’t need to get the gigantic wheels of Parallels rolling just to look at a web site using IE6; CrossOver does that kind of Windows pretty well. It did not allow me to install BlackBerry Deskop Manager though. Said something like ‘Unsupported Application’. That’s a good summary of CrossOver actually: It’s built to run major apps like IE6 and Microsoft Office smoothly. They make few promises for the rest. I like it. Give it a try.

George Orwell’s famous essay in full. Makes one think his fiction work must have been beyond that. He had serious points.

You asked… Messrs Wimbush, Fuller et. al. answered. Here’s Hudson Institute’s full report. Quite recent and relevant.

Is the US Losing Turkey?

Regular readers (and I know the birthdays of all of them) will remember that I had declared Namely as the winner of Mac App Launcher competition. Turns out it was a little premature. After a two-month fling with Namely, I’m back to LaunchBar. Namely was a lot of fun. You started styping the name of the app you wanted and it started dynamically matching it against the apps in the folders you specified. But the fun was short-lived when it began to hang for nearly a minute re-indexing itself or I don’t know what. Well, in the end it failed to deliver its main promise: Launch apps. I’m therefore back to my old and trusted LaunchBar. It’s quirky. I don’t like it’s interface. But at least it delivers what I need right now: Launching apps. Meanwhile, I’m on the look out for a better one.

I have a Dreambox 7000s. It’s a jewel of a satellite receiver. Connects to your home network for LAN and WAN action. Has its own web server and web interface so that you can manage it using your browser. That’s pretty neat. Ideally, one should be able to click on a channel to start streaming video and audio from the box into the PC! How cool is that. However, the device has been plagued by web interface issues and the click-to-view functionality did not work as advertised. As I’m on a Mac, reports of happy users of Dreambox’s web interface did not help me a bit. Most appeared to be using a newer image. I kept checking the official download site. Mine was the newest. And it was dated 2005. Today, while searching for an NTSC skin, I came across the attached image that has better interface and functionality. It’s working beautifully for me.

I’m not sure of its source but it looks pretty decent to me. Try here.

It’s been slightly more than a month since this site introduced Google Adsense advertising. So, how has it been? Pretty nice actually. First and foremost, I now have a solid idea of how many users are visiting the site and what they are looking for. I’m not entirely happy about the kind of advertising displayed but that’s probably my fault: I’m not managing the advertising, plus the content I’m uploading is quite varied. This site, this blog, dear world, is not focused. It never has been intended to be such. I have other site ideas that can come to being only when their concepts come to fruition. And the money? Tell you the truth, it’s not bad. I come from a frugal business background where the main perscpective is covering fixed costs first before attempting big things. In that respect, Google Ads has been great. I expect complete fixed cost coverage in a few months.

A nifty little app from Amar Sagoo wins my little advertised and probably totally fictitious competition for the most practical Mac Launcher. Until recently I’ve been using Launch Bar of which I was very satisfied. Enter Namely and my satisfaction hits through the roof. It’s simpler and easier to use. Launch Bar was simply too detailed for my needs and taste. And you can’t beat Namely’s value: It’s free.

I’m back in play in the virtual world after a 24 hour hiatus. My MacBook Pro’s HDD failed catastrophically. It took me about 6 hours to procure a new (and larger) disk, operate on the machine and restore status quo ante. (Lorem ipsum, quid pro quo, et cetera.)

Fortunately all I lost in the way of data were a few useless files. So far as I’m aware…

I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that the MacBook Pro’s original disk was an 80G Tosh. It joins my bad device drawer and is parked just next to another 2.5 inch Toshiba disk. Indeed, my first Mac, a PowerBook, had had a 60G Toshiba HDD and it too had failed unannounced and with much loss of data.

Must be coincidence. Still, I’m not buying any Tosh disks anytime soon.

Velinur Dedeoglu’s candid camera talks to Billy Hayes. Summary: The book is all mine. The movie is not.
[coolplayer width=”300″ ] [/coolplayer]

Did I manage to emulate submarine sounds from the Red October? Yes, my immediate memory is a bit cluttered with irrelevant references - more than usual. I’ve been watching 24 and Heroes over the past week. Now, I’ve found keeping my web site a challenge even with WordPress to which I’m really thankful. I still need a simple tool to post things in a simple way. Maybe this is it: www.blinklist.com. The theory is I’ll ‘blink’ web sites as I run into them and they will magically appear on my home page. We’ll see.

I need a simple web data base. With all the usual form posting and view generation. Seems these guys have it and then some. Reminds me: I need a way to quickly jot down my web discoveries.

www.zoho.com

Here’s the all new and improved Talking Turkish Names, the database that brings you the meanings and audio pronunciations of more than 1,000 Turkish proper names. You have quite a few options!

Over time, the navigation menu will contain useful shortcuts.

TTN is now working on two important projects: Top 100 Turkish Names and Top 100 Turkish Places. Our research team is trying to approach the issue methodologically by scanning the international web media to get a grip on top citations. Any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

Our medium-term goal is to have a resident editor to respond to fast breaking news so that Turkish names and places that are not in common use but start popping up in news bulletins can be immediately included in the database.

We will be more than happy to include any name our readers may suggest. Readers may also send audio pronunciations with their own voice to add a little bit more dynamism to their record.

That’s the general direction for TTN for the foreseeable future.

If you are into Turkish please also check our partner sites Esek Arisi, a blog on pains of cultural miscommunication, and Dr Yagci’s Entertaining Medical Dictionary, a self-evident body of work. Both partner sites are in Turkish.

What you’ll find below is my blog, partly related with the Talking Turkish Names project. If you are interested in Turkey, geopolitics, news media or computers, there may be something for you among the blog posts. 

Feel like doodling?

Try this: http://www.stripgenerator.com/

Cool map of US radios. I don’t know how it works but it claims to show what radio stations are beginning to play in so many points in the US.

http://web.yes.com/yes-nation/