A Daily Trip to The World of Windows Phone 8

Today, I tried to develop my very first app for Windows Phone 8 (WP 8). I found a digital version of WP8 Development Internals and started reading. My goal was to develop an application that schedules the silence mode. If I had finished the application, I would have a scheduling mechanism that automatically sets my phone to silent mode whenever I wanted. Yet I realized my doom about 6 pm.

First of all, except reminders and alarms, there is no scheduling mechanism that you can set for a specified time. There are two background task models, yet none of them provides such a mechanism. Secondly, for security reasons, apps cannot change several system settings. And volume control is one of those settings that no third party app can control.

I named my app as “Code of Silence”, for 3 apparent reasons. It is my very first “Code” for WP8. Secondly, “Code of Silence” is a very interesting concept in real life. And last of all, Chuck Norris has a movie with the same name.

Frank theme

Now my blog looks better!

Turkish city town district database

After a bit research and tweak, we finally create tables for representing cities, towns and districts of Turkey. I uploaded the sql scripts for creating the tables and populating them to my github account. You can check it out: https://github.com/seckin206/TurkeyDB

What am I doing? Learning!

Before it has started, this semester seemed to be challenging. As the time passes, it affirms my guess. Learning CUDA, Maven framework,distributed and parallel computing, improving my poor Java,developing my senior project, preparing for GRE, TOEFL, looking for schools to apply etc. List goes on and on.

I’m planning to write tutorials about CUDA but I have no spare time in near future. I hope I can find time for the tutorial writing. BTW I taught my girlfriend Latex, and she liked it. It’s a huge surprise for me because majority of my undergraduate friends in department hate Latex. I’ve never liked WYSIWYG, especially when you spend more time on formatting rather than expressing yourself or applying the intended logic.

Is GPRS slow?

Of course, title looks a bit sarcastic because there are lots of connections which is faster than GPRS. But I’m not talking about bps value of it at all. Opening a facebook or github home page in 30 seconds is something that started to slow my mind even if I’ve started using my GPRS subscription just 20 minutes ago.

Ready to Migrate!

I’m planning to migrate to Windows 8 RTM and I’ve recently packed up all I need. I have about 50 GB of data that needs to come with me wherever I go.

Technician vs Engineer

“It all comes to the age-old difference between the engineer and the technician. Engineers are paid to know “why”. If you don’t know why, then you are not an engineer. It’s really that simple.”

XRDS Summer 2012 vol.18 no.4 p.9

Summer School is Over!

Even if it has been incredibly hot in Istanbul this summer, I managed to end summer school without major problems. My main was goal was to relax my schedule for the upcoming fall semester, and it seems that I’ve achieved it. I have only 4 courses remaning to be taken to get my bachelor’s degree now.

An imagination of Tanenbaum

“At one time, 80% of the AT&T’s capital value was the copper in the local loops. AT&T was then, in effect, the world’s largest copper mine. Fortunately, this fact was not well known in the investment community. Had it been known, some corporate raider might have bought AT&T, ended all telephone service in the United States, ripped out all the wire, and sold it to a copper refiner for a quick payback.”

Quoted from the book “Computer Networks”