Erman Aktan

Who is it?

Another homo sapiens that was born in İstanbul 342209 hours ago, educated in tourism but seldomly used it, wandered around as information technologies specialist, also worked as a photographer for some time. As the only place that he is truly free, this web site is his playground...

Employed as an IT technician in a furniture firm for 8 years, left it later because of the crisis in Turkey. Currently working as a junior developer in a respectable global advertising firm. Knows many different programming languages but prefers PHP, MySQL. Able to utilise everything that works with electricity, often tempers with them and gets a nice jolt doing it, fixes them later. But knows where to stop as high voltages are hazardous to humans. Can't trust everyone that does everything. For him, there must be a specialist or a trained person for any given thing.

What makes him tick?

An introvert, he almost always keeps to himself, doesn't bite if left alone. A mischievous kid at heart, loves tempering with things and learning. Can figure out the usage of any technological-gizmo in several minutes. But as a pessimist-realist, he prepares for the worst. Gets suspicious if everything works. He is always late for celebrations. Also he sucks at Maths. Often calculates things wrong, gets angry because he knows he did it wrong. Otherwise, he is an overly calm person that may drive you insane. As he may calmly try to disable a nuclear-bomb and doesn't give a ****!

Autobiography

I was born in İstanbul when it was nicer out there. Before meeting with computers, I loved wandering the streets of my neighbourhood. I was very good at getting lost but was also very good at navigating if I find specific landmarks like mosques, monuments or shore. As İstanbul has ample supply of them. I was the strange one of the bunch.

I liked watching TV as I liked wandering. Many of you may remember Sesame Street, the television show for kids. It was also on air in Turkey. The Big Bird (Ironically, he was named 'tiny' in Turkish) often appeared on the show with strange symbols and repeated them. That was the signal that triggered my brain. Big Bird taught me how to read before I even started elementary!

I also liked doing silly things with pencil and paper. Anything that catches my attention eventually ended up on paper somehow. Those papers are still kept as relics by my parents!

After all this, they took me to some place, called it 'school' and told me that they will teach me how to read & write and do things. My first tought about school was a 'boring' place. And that was the curse that befell my entire educational career. Never been a bright student. There were only two classes that I excel at: drawing and english! But I never complained about anything. Until university I was an average student. At university however.... well nevermind about it. Long story short: I dropped out. And it was the final call for my educational career.

I always put functionality before aesthetics. If something doesn't work, It doesn't matter how it looks. And if something works, it also doesn't matter how it looks! As long as I get what I need, anything can be a simple naked circuitry, a plain text or a hunk of metal with steaming pipes around it, I don't care. One have to know what one wants, and be ready to accept -to some extend- what one gets. The important thing is the result, not the steps that reached it. Of course there are exceptions in this.

Generally speaking, the world that we live in right now functions like a tin can strapped together with tapes. It will keep going like this, because intelligence levels of people will never be enough to create that so called 'utopia'.