Kerem Erkan
The mind of the six billionth one…
PHP QR Code Generator evolves!
Mar 12th
PHP QR Code Generator page is the most visited page on my blog. It has evolved from a small page with a few features into a full featured real time generator on which you can choose from a lot of actions for your device and create different image types, even vector images. As far as I know, there are no free generators on the internet that can match its features, and it is also better than most of the paid ones.
It even works on new generation mobile phones like iPhone or Nexus One.
And as of today, it can also create Data Matrix codes, thanks to the folks who have created the wonderful libdmtx library. So, I have made a name change on the page.
It is now called PHP QR Code and Data Matrix Generator. I hope it continues to prove useful to all folks who believe in open source. 
Adding Facebook and LinkedIn icons on Mystique v2.x
Feb 25th
Mystique theme for Wordpress has reached version 2.0. Milenko is very active on updating it. With 2.0, you don’t need to edit any theme files manually, and this makes it much easier to add new social networking icons and replace the default Twitter and RSS icons. Here is how to do it:
First, download the image below (all icons were created by Mark Hewitt, I only merged the LinkedIn icon into the default icon set. You can find other icons on his site.), and upload it to your site. It will go to the SITE_ROOT/wp-content/uploads/ directory, if you did not change your upload destination.
OK, now that you have uploaded your image to your site, you will have to edit your site style. You will add the necessary changes to Mystique’s settings, so that they will not be overwritten after a theme update. Go to your admin panel and select Mystique settings under Appearance. In the settings page, select the User CSS tab, and add the following lines there:
/* Extra navigation icons */ #header a.nav-extra.rss{background:url("/wp-content/uploads/nav-icons.png") no-repeat scroll right top transparent} #header a.twitter{background:url("/wp-content/uploads/nav-icons.png") no-repeat scroll -128px top transparent} #header a.linkedin{background:url("/wp-content/uploads/nav-icons.png") no-repeat scroll -64px top transparent} #header a.facebook{background:url("/wp-content/uploads/nav-icons.png") no-repeat scroll 0px top transparent}
The numbers after scroll in these lines select which icon to show. 0px is the first icon (i.e. Facebook), -64px is the second one (i.e. LinkedIn) etc. with decreasing 64 pixels.
Google is phasing out IE 6.0 support
Feb 2nd
Google Apps sent a notification to their users today. They say that they are phasing out IE 6.0 support in favor of new web technologies like HTML5. This is a very big and important step in the right direction. Web has been held back for too much time because of IE 6.0. I hope that other big portals follow this decision. The mail from Google:
Dear Google Apps admin,
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Global Game Jam 2010
Jan 31st
I had the pleasure of being in the jury for Global Game Jam 2010 in Turkey. The goal of Global Game Jam is to create a playable game in 48 hours. So, the teams do not sleep and try to create the best game in that very limited time. There were very talented and valuable people in this competition and most of the games they created were very good when you think they only have 2 days.
You can visit Global Game Jam site or GGJ Turkey site for more information.
Adding up on Mark Hewitt’s Mystique Facebook Icon Hack
Jan 22nd
UPDATE: This post is only valid for Mystique versions up to 1.7.2. Newer versions need a different approach which can be found on this post.
Well, Mystique is a beautiful theme, but the original icons for Twitter and RSS Feed you see on the upper right were not very appealing to the eye. And the Facebook and LinkedIn icons? They are not part of the theme.
So, what I have done to add those extra icons is, follow the instructions on Mark Hewitt’s Facebook Icon for Mystique Theme post. But editing the style.css file and uploading the icons over and over is not necessary after each theme update, so here are more update friendly instructions:
First, download the following image (all icons created by Mark, I only merged the LinkedIn icon into the default icon set), and upload it to your site. It will go to the SITE_ROOT/wp-content/uploads/ directory, if you did not change your upload destination.
OK, now that you have uploaded your image to your site, you will have to edit your site style. But instead of editing the style.css file directly, you will add the necessary changes to Mystique’s settings, so that they will not be overwritten after a theme update. Go to your admin panel and select Mystique settings under Appearance. In the settings page, select the User CSS tab, and add the following lines there:
Laser marked toe line for darts
Jan 19th
I play darts as an amateur. I love the game and have a darts board in my house. I have recently replaced the parquet floors with a wall to wall carpet and I did not want to place some lath or masking tape on my new carpet.
So I ended up with a laser marked toe line. I purchased a simple line laser, used it as a plumb bob to determine its own place and installed it over my darts board. While installing I did not have a decent camera, so I ended up photographing the whole installation with my old Nokia E70. After purchasing my Nikon D300, I took another photo, with a little bit more quality, which you can see at the end of the gallery below. 
Mystique and WP-Syntax Incompatibility
Jan 18th
If you use Mystique theme and WP-Syntax plugin (the syntax highligher) together, you will notice that, your code snippets will use Mystique’s fonts instead of monospace for colored words. When reading codes, monospace fonts like Courier fell much better, because they are easier to read.
Mystique’s style.css file defines default fonts with “*”, so every element on your site which does not have font information will use Mystique’s default fonts. WP-Syntax uses span elements for colors, and these elements do not have their font attributes defined.
In order to solve this problem, you have to add the following to wp-syntax.css file of the plugin:
.wp_syntax span { font-family: Courier, "Courier New", monospace; }
This way, WP-Syntax will use the correct fonts for every span element, rendering colored words with correct fonts.
Oh, Smashing Magazine, what hast thou done?
Jan 16th
PHP QR Code Generator page was posted on the twitter account of Smashing Magazine, and the traffic of this humble blog has risen twenty-fold! Not that I am complaining…
The page seems to be useful to a lot of people, so I will probably add new features to it when I find spare time.
New blog theme, Mystique
Nov 20th
I was using the Arclite theme from designer Milenko Popovici (digitalnature), and went to his site to check for updates to the theme. I saw Mystique theme there and loved it instantly. So, I will be using it for my blog from now on. This man has real talent!
System Administrator Appreciation Day
Jul 31st
Today is the 10th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. It is probably known and appreciated by only the sysadmins in the world, so only we appreciate our own work (it seems a little pathetic, isn’t it? )
I am a full time System Administrator in the company I work at. I keep the connectivity of the company up. I make sure most of the spam goes to the trash instead of users’ mailboxes. When the servers go down at 03:00 am, I get up from my bed and go fix the problem. I am not only a sysadmin but I also help our developers when they cannot do something traditionally by just coding, as I know how systems work and how problems can be solved using different ways.
I am not a real developer, yet I can code more efficiently at times because I know the inner workings of my systems.
I love my work even if people do not understand what I do.
So, happy sysadmin day to all who work hard to make this “internet thingamajik” go on working as intended…
PS: You know that internet is wireless, right?
