I have the Model Y now for 6 months. As some of you know, I wrote a first impression that I wrote the week after I got my new Tesla. Here is what I think about the Model Y (2023 made) after six months of daily drive:

• Suspension is semi-bad. I thought I could get used to it, but nope. It's stiff and I don't like it. I wish it had an air suspension. The moment I drive another car, I feel how bad the suspension is.
• It sucks not being able to open the glovebox directly. I don't understand why it's an electrical button on the dashboard. It makes zero sense.
• We love the scheduled climate feature. Here in Ankara, it's cold in the winter. It can get to -20 Celsius, but most of the time it's around -10 to 5 Celsius. Because we drive the kids to school, it comes in handy to go to a warm car and drive them.
• On the weekends I drive my son to sports activities. The sitting area in the venue is bad, and I made a habit of having my cup of coffee, and sitting in my Tesla, watching TV shows, reading books, or using my iPad (I'm currently writing this from my Tesla!). It's nice to warm up the car during the winter or turn on the AC during the hot times. I never imagined sitting in a car for leisure but having this ability is nice.
• There are no front sensors. I knew it when I bought the Model Y. They had sensors previously, but they decided to remove them because they said their Vision feature which solely relies on cameras is superior. They are not. It's so bad, that we scratched the front bumper slightly. Luckily it was a small scratch.
• I didn't have as much of a problem with the wipers as people have reported. However, they are not consistent. I usually start them manually, but most of the time they work as intended.
• Having driver profiles is a godsend. I love how the Tesla adjusts the seats, mirrors, and everything else for my needs. This comes in handy as we constantly change the cars with my wife.
• After certain software updates, the car's setting would be somehow reverted back to their original. This doesn't happen often times, but it happens and some of them are really scary. As an example, we turn off the children's door, and after an update, it gets reverted back to the original. We discovered it when our son suddenly opened the rear door on his side.
• Keyless car opening is a hit or miss. Most of the time, the door handle never engages. I have to manually unlock my iPhone, the Model Y can detect my iPhone. I don't know if this is an iPhone or car issue, but this is annoying when it's raining outside, or if I don't have my iPhone at a handy place.
• I've got used to the fast acceleration. I no longer use it to drive fast, but it's handy to overtake a vehicle.
• I never used the autopilot extensively. I think it's bad compared to other cars. Initially, I thought Tesla's autopilot was superior, but the more I engaged with it, the more I understood it was poorly limited. It breaks, doesn't let you increase the speed, and I have to always engage it again because it constantly disengages. The user experience is worse than my previous Mercedes EQC 400 or Audi A7.
• We pay significantly less compared to our old ICE car. Gas was 8x more expensive. We pay around $25 monthly for electricity, whereas the gas costs were around $200 monthly (Turkey, Ankara). It makes so much to use an EV car. This is not Model Y related, but something we loved over the 6 months.
• Not having to stop at a gas station, and being able to charge at home is comfortable. And once you get used to it, it feels weird to stop at a gas station to fill your car.
• Six months passed, and I still miss physical buttons. Especially to quickly change the AC or change the volume of the music.
• I love that I can search my direction via Google Maps on my phone, and then share it with my Tesla. It makes navigating in unknown cities a breeze.

Overall, we're happy with the Model Y. However I think the Model Y doesn't provide any groundbreaking features. It's heavily marketed and I feel like it's an OK car. I have many things that I interact with daily that bring me pure joy. The Model Y is a hit or miss in that aspect. And hence it doesn't provide me any big reason to love it.

It's very good as a utility car though, and it gets its job done with no issues. Would I buy it again? Yes. But is it something that I want to keep for years, I'm not sure. I've heard the new Model 3 and the Model S have better improvements compared to the Model Y. Maybe future models will be better, we'll see.

I always wanted to wear a mechanical watch not just for engineering purposes but also for its romantic parts, such as giving it down to my kids. For the past seven years, I have always worn an Apple Watch. However, especially in recent years, I wasn't entirely happy with the relationship of my watch. You can read more about it in my post "The ups and downs with my Apple Watch".

When I decided it was time to pull the trigger, I already knew which watch brand I wanted to get: A Nomos. Not just any Nomos, but one from the Metro line family.

Why Nomos?

If you have decided to get a mechanical watch and start searching, you'll soon find a world with hundreds of details and features. You'll discover the world of Swiss watchmakers, especially Rolex's impact. The Quartz crisis in the '70s. How Swatch saved the watch world. The recent price gouges because of supply and demand (some say it's artificial). Most importantly, the watch's movement matters, whether it's in-house or not.

In-house movements mean that the brand itself entirely develops the watch's internals. Many watch brands don't develop their movements (which I'm okay with), but for many people, it makes a difference if a brand develops its movements. It shows dedication and an engineering background. It also means that the brand can take care of its watches. For many Watch nerds (I'm not one of them yet), movements are a whole other world. Watch collectors go the extra step to select watches carefully by their movements.

That's just one part of the story.

A watch is a very personal good. Not only because it's been shaped over the centuries but also because of the style and statement. There are many styles and types, such as Dive, GMT, Chronograph, Dress, and Tool watches. Each of these types has a long history in how they were shaped. However, another category is called "Bauhaus"; you probably know what I'm going for.

For the long-time reader of my blog, people know that I'm a huge fan of the Bauhaus area, especially the later work of people such as Dieter Rams, who followed the steps of former Bauhaus teachers.

Bauhaus-style watches have a minimal design and are inspired by the Bauhaus movement. Unless other types, their dials, hands, indices, everything is very sleek and slender. They are not shiny, and most even don't have Arabic or romantic numerals.

Back to Nomos. Nomos is a German watch manufacturer that creates Bauhaus-style watches and has its own in-house movements. For me, they create one of the best Bauhaus-style watches and combine both requirements I was looking for.

Metro neomatik 41 Update

There are over 100 models to select from Nomos. I purchased the Metro Neomatik 41 Update for myself. It's from the Metro family (designed by Mark Braun) and has a modern design with domed sapphire crystal glass. The reference number is 1165 (nit: watch models and their naming can be very complex. Hence, the reference number is more important to describe the exact model of a watch brand).

Its diameter is 40.5mm. Watches nowadays are getting bigger and bigger. But the Metro Neomatik 41 update wears small on my wrist. One issue people have with Nomos is their lugs. They are usually large and stick out, but that's not the case with the Metro line.

The lug-to-lug distance is 47.5 mm, but they're beautifully curved towards the wrist, and they are short. This is important because I have a small wrist, and I thought the 40.5mm would look big on my wrist, but that wasn't the case.

Why is it called "Update"? Because the Metro 41 was updated with a circular date complication. And to make the new date complication shine, it has a greater dial. The two markers in the neon orange frame the current date. It's one of the complications that I didn't see in other watches.

An interesting observation I had about the date complication was how I could asses easily where in a month I was. I could see if I was at the beginning of a month, in the middle, or at the end. Usually, on a watch, you can easily see your current state in a day, but the date complications change that perception. Now you can see where in the month you're.

The movement, Caliber DUW 6101, was unveiled in 2018 and was seen first in the Tangent, Autobahn, and Luwdig models. In 2021, the same movement was used for the Metro neomatik 41, another reason it has the "Update" word in its model.

The Metro neomatik 41's height is 9.1mm, and this is on the shorter side compared to many watches, thanks to the movement DUW 6101, which measures just 3.6 mm in height. The caliber is patented and unique in that it allows you to set the date ring in both directions. Often, you can't reverse a date that easily.

Neomatik here refers to "automatic winding". Once the watch is wind, it has a power reverse of 42 hours. It means that it will work for 42 hours until it stops. But because it's automatic, if you wear it on your wrist, with the movements of your arms, it'll automatically wind the watch.

What drew me to the Metro neomatik 41 was also the slender stainless steel bezel. The polishing is so good that it really shines in every light condition (like a diamond). Combined with the domed sapphire glass, it creates small reflections, and during the day, it's a joy to look at the watch. I never had this feeling with other watches.

It comes with a textile woven strap. But I also got a leather strap, which works well with both straps. If you wear it with the leather strap, it's a tad more dressy. And I think it works fine as a dress watch because of its Bauhaus style design. And using the textile woven strap, it suddenly becomes more sporty, more modern. The bonus of using the textile woven strap is that it is also water resistant. The Metro has a water resistance of 5ATM, and you can use it for showers, but it's not suitable for swimming or diving.

The Metro Neomatik 41 sells for 3700 Euros, probably higher in the U.S. or other parts of the world. However, most Authorized Dealers also offer significant discounts if you talk to them or if you are a loyal customer. It's even cheaper in the gray market. It's expensive, of course, and whether it's worth it or not is also very personal.

Is it better than a 100-dollar Quartz Watch? Probably not in many ways, but in many ways, it's worth it, especially for me. First, the design is exceptional. The craftsmanship, the in-house movement, the dial complication, all these small details create a coherent experience that will last for decades if taken care of well. I like to invest in well-designed goods, and Nomos is a brand that makes you feel good.

And with mechanical watches, the value usually holds well; there is a deprecation, and unless it's a Rolex or similar brand, the deprecation might be larger, but in the end, it's always possible to sell it on bad days or if you don't like it anymore. I can't say the same about the average Quartz and Smart watches, whose values have diminished in a few years.

I've been using an Apple Watch since Series 2. I actually wondered when I purchased it and found my old invoice. It was in April 2016. So, it's a platform I've been wearing for the past seven years. Of course, I replaced my original Series 2 with several newer releases—notably Series 4, Series 6, Series 7, and finally Series 8. Expect the Series 7; all of them were Stainless Steel. Hence, I upgraded to Series 8, as I wouldn't say I liked the screen and materials of the Aluminum version.

Wearing a "smart" watch for so long has benefits and downsides. I recently collected all my Quartz watches lying around and replaced their batteries to wear them again. And since then, I haven't worn my Apple Watch for the past four weeks, as I wanted to see how it would shape my day-to-day life.

Why I like the Apple Watch

My initial reason for getting the Apple Watch was because of my hearing aids. I'm partially deaf, and hearing, unless other illnesses, doesn't get better. You can stop it. All you can do is to improve your hearing slightly with hearing aids. So, wearing an Apple Watch has several benefits for people with hearing disabilities. The most obvious is that your wrist vibrates if someone calls you. I would miss calls from my parents or partner several times. The Apple Watch was a godsend because of that.

However, with time, my hearing aids became also better. The latest one (which I bought in 2019) can now connect to the iPhone directly, allowing me to hear the ring call in my ears. So, I no longer relied on the Apple Watch's notifications.

But with time, I started to like other features of the Apple Watch. I could immediately see the temperature, helping me to decide what to wear when I woke up. Because I've been working remotely for a long time, I had many meetings, and the Apple Watch would nicely display my next meeting. Another great feature was showing the time of another timezone (for me, it was PDT, i.e., California). I started running, so using the Apple Watch to count my total distance also helped.

Problems with the Apple Watch

As you see, the Apple Watch has some excellent features. Hence, this article is not about ranting about it. I love it. However, I'm also having some issues with it. And lately, those have become more prominent. Let me go over these:

Battery

First of all, battery life. It has become an anxiety lately because I have been slightly off-putting my watch on the charging stand several times a month, leading to an uncharged watch in the morning. Occasionally, I would travel with my watch or go camping. I always had to think about the battery. Having something on your wrist that constantly creates an afterthought was something I disliked.

Wearing an actual watch (Quarts and Mechanical (Auto)), it's so lovely that my watches work. Not having to think about the battery was so relieving that I believe it could be the sole reason not to use an Apple Watch anymore.

Notification

The second issue I had with my Apple Watch was the constant notifications. I know you can disable it, change it, etc., but what's the point of wearing one if you never use any of those features? I tried to tweak the notifications, but it never worked as intended. Because I no longer wear the Apple Watch, I get less distracted by various things throughout the day.

Reading the time

Somewhat fixed with the always-on displays is the ability to lift/turn your wrist slightly and read the time. With my current non-Apple Watches, I can quickly read the time without weird wrist and head interactions. With the Apple Watch, even with the always-on display, it's hard to read, especially in very bright environments, because the display goes into a standby mode, where it is slightly dimmed. It just doesn't feel like an actual watch.

Customization

Apple still doesn't allow us to create custom watch faces. They want to own the whole experience. The only part that can be changed is the overpriced watch straps. However, there are so many great designers out there, and not being able to use a futuristic or classic dial makes me sad. Just imagine how cool it would be if you could use custom watch faces.

Style

This is subjective, but wearing different watch styles feels excellent. I have several Casios, some new Braun watches, a new Automatic Mechanical watch from Nomos (more on this later), and various other Quartz watches. Most Quartz watches are cheaper than the Apple Watch, so I can buy several for a single Apple Watch. Of course, the watch world contains many expensive watches, but even those are better options because of longevity, which I'll explain in the next section.

Longevity

As I said, I've been using the Apple Watch for almost seven years with various releases. And looking back, I feel bad that none of the older ones are worth wearing. Nothing makes you want to keep an Apple Watch because they are worthless the moment a new watch is released. They don't hold their value. And there is no guarantee that Apple will support old Apple Watches in two decades.

As a huge Dieter Rams fan, I think his 10 Design Principles are worth following. One of them is "Good design is long-lasting". I can't say that with the Apple Watch. This isn't reassuring because I always try to obtain long-lasting goods, especially when it comes to furniture. After all, they were created decades ago but are still in use.

If you dive into the "real" watch world, you'll see how many carry over their watch collections to their son/daughters. Watches are legacies; they carry a story behind them. I would love to give part of my legacy to my kids, and I want them to feel good about it. That's not something you can do with an Apple Watch.

However, I have to say that, they have done an excellent job so far. The first Apple Watch is still wearable, and maybe I'll be wrong and Apple will support these watches for decades. Who knows?

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What now

What I've experienced is. The iPhone is perfectly capable of doing everything; it's so good that you wouldn't need an Apple Watch if you had it with you all the time (which is the case for me). So I'm questioning all the time if I need an Apple Watch.

I have not been using the Apple Watch for the past four weeks and discovered that I can live without it. Instead, I wear the watches that I've collected over the years. These are not luxury or expensive watches, but they are still a joy to look at. And they don't give me anxiety in the morning anymore. They work. It's a great feeling to have control over time again.

I've also recently started researching watches. It's a fascinating world. I finished the books "A Man & His Watch" by Matt Hranek and "Watches" by Hodinkee. Next up is "The Wristwatch Handbook" by Ryan Schmidt. There is so much cultural knowledge out there, and It makes me happy to learn new things. And who knows, maybe I'll have a few watches I can gift my children in the future.

This is an old post in draft. Last year, I had an off day (November 2022). I picked up my Fuji X100V and walked with my wife through the old town of Ankara, Ulus. These are the photos from that day.

Even people living in Ankara barely visit the old town. However, it's a bustling place, with decade-old bazaars, shops, and museums that carry thousands of antique artifacts.

We started our day in Ulus Hal, a bustling food market where you can find fish, fruits, vegetables, and other things.

From there, we visited a Börek (pastry) place and ate a "Kürt Böreği". Some also call it "Küt Böreği", though the correct word is "Kürt". It's sweet and salty and very delicious. Turkish tea is everywhere, so we also got tea with it.

Ulus is a bizarre and weird place. It's not modern but doesn't try to do any better. It's happy with its current state. A lot of families, generations old, trade and do business here.

We're now walking up to the Ankara Castle, rebuilt in 278 BC and renovated afterward by the many empires ruling these lands: Romans, Byzantine, Seljuk, and the Ottomans.

Ankara, being in the center of Turkey, made it also a strategic place to defend against enemy parties during the Turkish War of Independence. It was a natural choice to make it later the capital of the young country, Turkey.

Next to the castle are several museums worth visiting. That day, we chose Erimtran and the Koç Museum.

Especially at Erimtran, I was happy to see there was a temporary exhibition of Ara Güler, an Armenian-Turkish photojournalist nicknamed "the Eye of Istanbul" or "the Photographer of Istanbul."

We walked down the streets to finish our day at the Boğaziçi Restaurant.

The AW 50 is one of the only two analog watches designed by Dieter Rams. The other one is AW 10. The Braun watches are iconic, and most of them are designed by Dietrich Lubs, a longtime friend of Dieter Rams, who worked together on many projects back in the day at Braun.

This wasn't the first watch that Dieter Rams designed. Before the Analog Watches, he had his hands on two iconic Digital Watches, the DW20 and DW30. Both are extremely rare and hard to find. The DW 30 is available on eBay for around 5500 euros (rare black painted model).

I recently started wearing my old watches. The idea of having a watch that I had to charge constantly and that sought attention for most of my daily life was depressing. I wanted to change that. When I visited Munich in the past weeks, I bought several watches. One of them was the AW 50.

The AW 50 is made in Germany, unless other Braun watches which are mostly Chinese-made. There is a huge quality difference. Not every Braun watch is, unfortunately, well-built. Hence, many people try to get vintage Braun watches in good condition. Dieter Rams was a forerunner of long-lasting design, but the Braun Watch department changed hands several times. I can't say they followed Ram's vision that much until recently.

I'm a huge Dieter Rams fan. Especially the furniture that he designed in the late 60's. You can still buy it if you want (see Vitsoe.com). I love it so much that I imported the Vitsoe 606 shelves system and the Vitsoe 620 Chair Programme furniture to Turkey.

As a huge fan of Dieter Rams's work, I wanted to acquire more of his work. The AW 50 was first released in 1991, and can be bought second-hand, but Braun re-released the AW 50 with no significant changes from its original design in 2017.

As with the furniture design, the AW 50 reflects all that Dieter Rams embodies: Less, but better.

The AW50 has a grey dial, black hands (no second hands), and a date complication. A red arrow emphasizes the date and ensures it doesn't blend with the rest of the dial.

Compared to today's big watches, the AW 50 has a 33.35m case. It's rather on the small side. But it works for the watch. It would probably be a tad bigger if designed today, as the watch industry has a trend of creating large watches in the past decade.

With its stainless steel case and the grey dial, it doesn't provide a lot of contrast. But given the history of Dieter Rams, it's a known feature of his products. Rams used colors only if needed and only for important details (such as the red arrow emphasizing the date).

The minimalist design carries over to the indices as well. They are straight lines. No Roman or Arabic numerals are used. Hence, the dial is not crowded at all. It's a blank slate. Even the Braun logo is small.

It has a scratch-resistant mineral glass. For the price point, that's a fair compromise. Using sapphire would bump up the price significantly. With its 3ATM Water resistant, it's not swim-proof, but the occasional splash shouldn't harm the watch.

I bought the watch directly from Amazon for ~€140. It seems cheaper than the official Braun website, which lists it for $300. As you would expect, you get a Quartz movement for the price.

The movement itself is made by Ronda, with the number 715. It's a highly repairable movement, and the battery lasts around five years. As with all Quartz movement, the battery can die; if not changed, it could leak and destroy the movement.

As a daily driver, the minimalist, monochrome design of the AW 50 speaks to me. I wouldn't use it as a beater watch (talking about you, Casio), but it finds its place at home. Together with other Bauhaus-inspired watches, I think it has its place. And a bonus if you're a Dieter Rams fan.

I got a new Tesla Model Y (2023, made in Gigafactory Berlin) yesterday. Because I live in Turkey, I had to travel from Ankara to Istanbul and pick it up in person. This is my second EV; previously, I owned a Mercedes EQC 400. After picking up the car, I drove back from Istanbul to home. Here are my first, initial impressions, fresh from the oven:

• The interior is very spacious. Better than the Mercedes in every way. The panoramic rooftop adds a lot of air, and you can feel it.
• UI is responsive. Whatever I click comes up instantly. I thought it would be slow or unresponsive. Navigating the map was delightful, for example.
• Certain functions, such as the camera app, come up instantly. On the EQC, I had to fiddle around, and even by clicking on a button, it would a couple of seconds to see the surrounding. The Model Y even works if I'm driving, so I can watch who is tailgating me.
• Autopilot isn't as good as I imagined. It constantly disengages, and I have to enable it again manually. I don't know what I do wrong, but even holding it with two hands, it's very brittle. The Mercedes EQC was miles better.
• On my way, it suddenly started to rain. I wasn't sure how to turn on the wipers. Found it on the settings menu. I guess it'll take time to get used to the UI, but I would expect certain things, such as the wipers, to be available on the home screen.

• No transmission tunnel on the middle back rear seat is a game changer. Especially useful because we have kids and sometimes someone else is traveling with me. The Mercedes EQC, even though it's an EV, had a fake transmission tunnel.
• The native maps app works well. I can zoom in/out. Way better than any built-in navigation (Audi, Mercedes) and CarPlay (Apple Maps, Google Maps).
• After a Software Update, my iPhone BT's disconnected, and I couldn't connect it for 1hour. However, I could still lock/unlock the car. So somehow, my phone was connected, but Tesla refused to list it. I had to restart the Tesla OS several times, which was frustrating. Sometimes it felt like the UI and the whole car's software is still in Beta. Maybe I had a bad day.
• The Music app (Apple Music) works well. I also like that the UI gives me certain tips, such as how to pause or skip a song via the button on the steering wheel whenever I touch the UI. That's a great way to teach the user how to use a new car.
• I charged twice on my way back to Ankara from Istanbul. Once at a third-party charging station and second on a Tesla Supercharger. On the first one, I had to find the appropriate app, had to scan a QR code, make sure it worked fine, wait 1 minute, and then it started to charge. I also wasn't sure how to open the charge port. When I arrived at the Tesla Supercharger, I only did plug in the charging cable. The experience was surreal. Previously I had a Mercedes EQC 400, and fiddling with the third-party charging station app was a common experience. I now understand what it means to use the Supercharger stations.
• The interior quality is decent. Because I've watched a lot of horror clips from terrible-made Model Y videos, I lowered my expectations quite a bit. But it's nicer than I expected. The Mercedes, hands down, feels much chunky and solid.
• The seats are not comfortable and are not ventilated. They got hot very quickly. I don't know what I can do about it.
• Interior storage options are plentiful. I love the big cup holders. They are 100x better than the tiny cup holders in my old car.
• The Tesla provides a lot of information about my charging/driving habits. For example, it includes things like the windspeed of my driving route.

That's it. I love the car; driving is fun and a new experience. I now understand why people rave about it. It's delightful to use. I'l plan to write a long-term review in the future.

I recently changed my 20 years old vimrc file to init.lua, so I could start using Neovim, again. I used Neovim in the past (around 2015), primarily to support the Neovim support in vim-go .

While migrating to Neovim, I had to read many dotfile repos and blog posts; I've realized that all of them use a multi-folder approach with several layers of abstractions. It wasn't easy to follow. I know there is a specific pattern and that it's all tied to Lua file sourcing, but I wasn't a fan of it.

I realized then why I was not too fond of it. For the past two decades, I always had a single vimrc file. The beauty of using a single file is that I can copy/paste it, and it will work everywhere, and I don't have to jump into other folders or files to understand what's happening.

Treating configuration files like test files

However, the most significant advantage is that I treat editor configuration files, such as vimrc or init.lua like Test files (e.g., files like foo_test.go  or test/spec/model.rb).

The most crucial thing in a test file is that it's usually written once but rarely touched. There are unit tests that someone probably wrote six months ago and never touched. It's probably run on every CI run, but again, it's rarely touched. But when the time comes to modify the test, the problem arises precisely at that moment.

Experienced software engineers write tests in DAMP, which means "Descriptive and Meaningful Phrases" rather than in DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself).

Test files should be repetitive and highly descriptive. They shouldn't hide any surprising logic. It should be straightforward to add new tests with minimal reading. Second, tests written in DAMP are easier to debug. The goal is to fix the test failure as soon as possible because the code was written six months ago. A highly repetitive and descriptive test code is a valuable asset because you don't have to dive deep into multiple layers of abstracted code.

Google's Test Blog has an excellent post about why tests should not be DRY but DAMP.

Benefits of using a single init.lua/vimrc file

Now back to our init.lua/vimrc file. The same pattern applies to a configuration file. Configuration files, once written, are not touched that often. They should be highly descriptive and readable. They shouldn't hide any implementation details or how a plugin is configured in a particular way.

Assuming you want to add a new plugin and configure it. If you haven't touched your dotfiles for months, the moment you try adding a new plugin, you'll have to adjust and familiarize yourself with the layout. Using a multi-folder with hundreds of scattered tiny files will make adding a new plugin harder. Second, you'll have difficulty debugging if any issues arise because you don't have multiple abstractions that hide the error from you.

Using a single file has many benefits, some of that I enjoy:

• As I wrote earlier, DAMP over DRY triumphs because I can understand what's going on with my configuration file due to its highly verbose nature.
• All my settings are in a single place, and I can immediately grep a keyword and make changes without jumping between files.
• I started with 15 lines of code and grew to 750 lines. I can easily blame any line and see the exact moment and history of the changes for a particular change.
• You can copy/paste any settings easily and apply them to another init.lua/vimrc without creating folders/files or renaming variables. It's more user-friendly and approachable for other Neovim/Vim users.
• I can easily bookmark my configuration file and share it with others. Here is my init.lua file: https://github.com/fatih/dotfiles/blob/main/init.lua Go ahead and open it. You can copy/paste this file and tweak it to your liking.

I was able to maintain my vimrc for 21 years because that's all I did. I followed the rule of having a single file for my configuration. It traveled with me over cities/countries and continents. I never had to start from scratch, and in times when I had never made changes for years, I could easily modify it when the time came.

To recap, treat your init.lua/vimrc files like test files. Write them in a very highly verbose and descriptive way, and most important, put all your logic in a single file. Your quality of life will improve, and the more you use it, the more you'll appreciate how easy it is to extend and maintain your configuration file over time.

My Workspace

I was featured on https://www.workspaces.xyz. You can see my office with all its details. My room is separated into two halves, one is what I call the Lounge Area, and the other section is my Coffee/Work area. Check out the issue #265 for more details.

Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates (born August 28, 1973) is an American social artist and a professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he still lives and works. I never heard about him until I watched the second episode of “Home”, a TV show from Apple TV+ that shows the importance of homes and houses in various countries.

Here is a sneak peek of the episode:

What strikes me is his power and willingness to protect his people and spend his wealth towards improving the people he calls a family. Gentrification is a hot topic, but he goes and buys deteriorating houses, restores them, and provides everyone the opportunity to do their best.

I don’t actually need a lot of space for me, but I do want a lot of space so that I can see the mad potential within my people - Theaster Gates

Watching this episode made me realize that if you call a place a home, you don’t have to leave it if things go south. You could do wonders if you have the wealth and the will to change things. Sometimes it’s worth picking up a fight.

Watch Theaster Gates’s Ideas on Apple TV+ and the things he did in Southside, Chicago.

Togo Sofa

The Togo Sofa was released in 1973 by Michel Ducaroy, a French Designer. The sofa is all foam and has no base or hard points. You probably have seen it in many Instagram influencer accounts because it has become a trend in the past five years.

For me, the Togo sofa looks more like a fashion statement than a functional piece of furniture. It’s too low for my liking and is comfortable only if you sit in a particular position.

The Togo sofa is produced by Ligne Roset and starts around $2000 for a two-seater model. Here is a story on how Michel Ducaroy come up with the design: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/the-story-behind-michel-ducaroys-iconic-slouchy-togo-seating

Universal Typeface

Using only small letters (a.k.a lowercase) is something that fascinates many people in the world. In 1925, Herbert Bayer persuaded Gropius (Bauhaus director) to use a new system of writing where only lowercase letters were used at the Bauhaus.

Bayer designed the Universal Typeface and reduced the alphabet to only lowercase letters. They were pure geometric forms, which means you could draw them with a ruler or compass.

we write everything in small letters, as we save time. also: why 2 alphabets, if one achieves the same? why capitalize, if you can't speak big?

Here is the letterhead that Bayer itself has designed, and it recommends the usage of lowercase letters for the content:

2. durch kleinschreibung verliert unsere schrift nichts, wird aber leichter lesbar, leichter lernbar, wesentlich wirtschaftlicher.3. warum fur einen laut, z.b a zwei zeichen A und a? ein laut ein zeichen. warum zwei alfabete fur ein wort, warum die doppelte menge zeichen, wenn die halfte dasselbe erreicht?

Translation from German to English:

2. we don’t lose anything with the lowercase, but it’s easier to read, easier to learn, and more economical.

3. why for a sound, for example, two characters A and a? One sound, one character. Why two alphabets for a single world, why double the number of characters when half achieves the same thing?

As you see, Bayer had some valuable ideas, and they were not groundless. The typeface was never used as a real type, though, but many other fonts were inspired by it. Notable ITC Bauhaus and Architype Bayer.

Databases Sharding Explained

The blog post from Mahdi Yusuf goes into the details of how Sharding works. Scaling a DB is easy if you know how your data behaves and its constraints. Sometimes just bumping up the machine specs to a larger value (e.g, CPU, Memory) is all you need. This is called vertical sharding.

However, physical machines are limited, and you can scale up to a specific size. After that, you have to think about how to distribute your data and split it into two or more machines. That way, you can use several small machines instead of putting all your data into a single powerful machine. This is called horizontal sharding.

If you decide to use horizontal sharding, knowing HOW you distributed your data is essential so you can find it again. If you put one customer's data in machine A and another in machine B, how do you know which one contains the data?

This is where several sharding algorithms come into place. Usually, you have to come up with a certain logic, such as sharding by hashing the key, splitting by a particular column value, etc. Some database technologies, such as Vitess, do data distributing (sharding) and putting/finding the data into the proper machine automatically. Vitess allows you to choose which Sharding algorithm you want to use. They are complicated to run in the first place, but they have a solid foundation and give you the tools to grow your data with no pain.

(Disclaimer: I’m an employee at PlanetScale, and we offer an easy-to-scale MySQL Database powered by Vitess technologies. Nevertheless, I think Sharding is a universal topic, and it’s worth explaining the cons/pros of it.)

Portal Desk

Optical illusions are well known. Especially 2D ones that you can view via your browser easily. There are also 3D optical illusions, which are rare to find and primarily found in exhibitions or science museums.

However, with the advent of 3D printing, a large community of people are creating models with optical illusions that can now be made at home. One of them is the Portal Desk, designed by Ada Cohen:

In this model, some vines and leaves apparently vanish into another portal. It’s fantastic and works surprisingly very well. The 3D model can be downloaded via Printables.com: https://www.printables.com/model/414209-botanical-portal-desk-toy.

Technolumen WNL30

The WNL 30 was designed by Wilhelm Wagenfeld. He was a German industrial designer and a former student of the Bauhaus art school. He is most famous for the WA24, also called the Wagenfeld Lamp. Bauhaus-era designs use materials like Metal and Glass heavily, and you can see this in Wagenfeld's work.

The WNL 30 has an exciting design. It can be used as a bedside lamp, but due to two joints and hinges, it can also be mounted to the wall. The stand is also carefully designed so that the cable can be easily hidden away. The WNL 30 is produced by Tecnolumen and costs around €600,00.

Thanks for reading!

P.S.: If you like this series, please forward it to a like-minded friend. (If you're not subscribed yet, sign up here.)

This will be a short topic, but I wanted to get it out of my mind. I have 62K photos and 5k videos, and I want to ensure I can back up my Photos for decades with no issues.

I gave a lot of thought to how I could back up my photos to multiple locations. It’s surprisingly hard to have a good backup system in place that meets these goals:

1. Photos should be synced between all your devices
2. Photos should be periodically backed up to two or more places

None of the mainstream photo alternatives, such as Google Photos or Apple Photos, allows you to do this. They are superb at syncing and resurfacing photos but terrible at backing up all your photos.

Having your photos in the cloud is one thing. Still, it should be safe against accidental account closures (what will you do if Google suddenly closes your account?) or accidental deletion (what if someone breaches your account and deletes all your photos?). I use Apple Photos as I’m invested in the Apple ecosystem, and it works fine and syncs all my photos across my devices.

The Apple Photos app on macOS has two modes it can operate:

The original versions are not downloaded to your machine in the optimized mode; they are stored in the cloud and only get downloaded when you view them. This mode is excellent if you don’t have a lot of storage or use an iPhone.

However, having a Mac with a large disk is great because you can download all your original photos to your machine. And this is the detail I use for backing up my photos. The native Apple Photos application syncs all your photos with all your devices, and the originals are stored on your machine. You can quickly check how much storage all your photos occupy.

$ cd /Users/fatih/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary
$ du -sh ./
614G    

From there, I set up TimeMachine to back up my whole disk to a Synology NAS with two 8 TB disks setup with Raid 1. That’s my local backup. I configured a virtual disk that slices around 4 TB for TimeMachine and assigned a custom user.

On top of this, my whole computer is backed up to Cloud via Arq (you can also use Backblaze). I had to reset the backups recently as I switched to a new personal MacBook, but the logic still applies here.

I also use Lightroom CC with 2TB of cloud storage via the Photography Plan. However, I only use it to import my Leica M11 Raw files, edit them, and export the JPEGs to Apple Photos (so the photos are propagated to all my devices). I don’t delete any RAW, so Lightroom CC is my scratch storage for the RAW files, and I treat them as transient.

With this setup, all my photos are backed to three locations:

1. On my MacBook Air
2. On my Synology
3. On cloud via Arq/Backblaze.

This is the best setup that works so far for me, and I have a copy of the originals in three locations, and it gives me peace of mind.

The monthly cost for this setup is around $37 :

• $10 for Apple iCloud 2TB plan
• $6 for Arq/ $7 for Backblaze
• $20 for Adobe Photography Plan with 2TB storage (Obviously, you don’t need this. But I work with RAW files, and I like having a set of professional tools to edit my photos. This plan also includes Photoshop/Lightroom)

There are also the initial costs for a NAS with a minimum RAID 1 setup. Because this varies so much on what kind of NAS you bought and how cheap you could get SSD disks (such as Seagate IronWolf), I’ll give a ballpark of around $700.

And that’s how my backup system works. I’m always looking for improvements in my backup plan. So let me know if you have better solutions. Happy to change my approach to backing up photos if there are better opportunities out there.

Notiz: /noˈtiːʦ/. Genitive, singular Notiz | nominative, plural Notizen. The German word for “Note”.

This post is an experiment, and it might be a long-term project, depending on my overall mood. My Goal: share an excerpt of the things that occupied my mind and inspired me. Here are some of the Notizen from the past weeks.

2023 Turkey earthquake

For the past two weeks, Turkey has been struggling with the aftereffects of a devastating Earthquake. We had one of the most devastating earthquakes in Turkey. Over 47.000 People have died, and estimates are 100.000. It’s tragic. No words can describe the feelings of the people living here.

Technical facts from Wikipedia:

On 6 February 2023, a 7.8 earthquake struck southern and central Turkey, as well as northern and western Syria. It occurred 32.4 km (20.1 mi) west–northwest of Gaziantep at 04:17 am TRT (01:17 UTC). A  7.7 earthquake occurred nine hours later,47 centered 95 km (59 mi) to the north–northeast in Kahramanmaraş Province. There was widespread damage and tens of thousands of fatalities. . As of 19 February 2023, over 47,400 deaths have been confirmed: over 41,000 in Turkey, and over 6,400 in Syria.

Watch this video to see why the Earthquake was so disastrous for many in Turkey. Yes, the magnitude of the Earthquake was immense, but building codes, bribes, and decade-long corruption have also led to deaths.

Turkey's economy has also tanked, inflation is in three digits area, and people don't have money to spend anywhere. So it's not easy also to fix or rebuild all existing buildings. I'm not sure how to solve this complex situation. It's very political. Turkey is polarized into two camps, and the social attitude doesn't help either. Most buildings are inhabitable, and even buildings that look safe are not safe to enter.

What can we do? My family and I donated, bought tents for some families, and furnished empty houses for earthquake victims. We have neighbors whose whole family has died; we try to support them emotionally, and it’s hard.

Berkeley Mono

I discovered a new monospace typeface, the Berkeley Mono:

“Berkeley Mono is a love letter to the golden era of computing.”, said the author of this Typeface, Neil Panchal. I discovered this font randomly while reading the HN comments on the blog post “Modern Mono” from Tim Bray. Monospace fonts are fascinating. They are fixed-width fonts created in the early times when computers had limited graphical capabilities. But it’s widely used nowadays by professionals, and text editors, by default, use fixed-width fonts. Everyone has a Monospace typeface that they love. It’s like a sneaker, a car brand. Some are better than others in technical specifications. But it mostly boils down to aesthetics.

I loved Berkeley Mono the moment I saw it. It’s very readable, the glyphs are carefully designed, and it reminds me of the beautiful area of the 80/90’s. It’s like using an IBM PC. It invokes the same feelings as looking at a design piece by Charles Eames. It’s timeless.

The Typeface is not free, though; a single license costs $75 (there is a trial version for trying it out). And it’s also the first Typeface I paid for. It feels weird being a person that pays for a font. But the craftsmanship and meticulous work invested into the Typeface makes it worthwhile.

https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/

The Perfect Angle

Watch this video of the Schweikher House, built during the 1930s. It explores the term Solar Architecture. Solar architecture is an architectural approach that considers the Sun to harness clean and renewable solar power. The video shows some fascinating techniques, such as slanted roofs to let the Sun into the house during the Winter but prevent Summer sun entering the house.

Flowerpot VP8

The Flowerpot lamps are a family of lamps designed by the famous Scandinavian designer Verner Panton. The light was designed in 1968 and came in various forms (desk, wall, pendant, table, etc.). This particular lamp model is the VP8. The Flowerpot is most famous for its VP3 model (table lamp), but the wall lamp is also designed well. It comes in different colors, the cable can be cut for seamless integration, and it costs around $300.

Inclusive Design

I’ve seen this table many times, and I find it very inspiring every time I see it. It’s hard to empathize with people who have disabilities, and when we design things, we make it easy for some people but difficult for everyone else. Creating with accessibility in mind will always benefit everyone, not just people who have permanent disabilities.

For example, I’m Deaf person, and I use hearing aids all the time. So I rely a lot on close captions. However, I know that people can get temporarily deaf by having an ear infection or might be in places where it’s too loud to hear each other (a bar, airports, etc..)—so having closed captions part of your product (i.e., Streaming) always pays off.

Microsoft includes a Toolkit, a comprehensive introduction to the world of inclusive design. Check it out: https://www.microsoft.com/design/inclusive/

Patterns of Distributed Systems

Distributed systems are hard to design. In a distributed system, components are located on different networked computers, and they communicate by passing messages to one another, either directly or by intermediate systems (also called brokers).

The article from Unmesh Joshi provides several patterns and frameworks to implement distributed systems. It shows problems that might happen and solutions to some issues in distributed systems.

Pictures from Home

The book “Pictures from Home” by Larry Sultan is something that I believe everyone should carry in their home library. It’s warm and cozy but also slaps in your face the fact that we get old, our parents get old, and that all good things end.

I wake up in the middle of the night, stunned and anguished. These are my parents. From that simple fact, everything follows. I realize that beyond the rolls of film and the few good pictures, the demands of my project and my confusion about it meaning, is the wish to take photography literally. To stop time. I want my parents to live forever. - Larry Sultan

Last Flight Out

This is a captivating blog post about an IT professional living at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. He is applying for the job since 2017 and was finally accepted to be deployed to the South Pole station in 2022/2023. Check out his other blog posts, such as "Showering at the South Pole" and how they deal with "Frost".

Faced with the rapidly-approaching polar winter, which promises bitterly cold temperatures and complete darkness, the station enters a 9-month period of complete and total isolation.

If you're interested in more content like this and notified of my latest essays, subscribe to my blog:

These are my initial impressions of using https://mymind.com/, a bookmarking/second brain tool. Let’s start with why I need such a tool.

Why?

Foremost, I use Apple Notes for note-taking and Ulysses for writing long essays and blog posts. These tools are for my thoughts, for things I want to remember, and when I'm in control of the words.

However, in my day-to-day life, I encounter many things that are not my thoughts but belong to others. Things that I want to save for later, photos I’ve found interesting, products I enjoy using, and quotes I found inspiring. I would like to remember these things and find them again. I’ve discovered that finding something I encountered six months ago is not easy.

Generally, I try my browser history first, but that’s not straightforward because browsers are still dumb (yes, I wish they would expose the thousands of addresses I visit in a meaningful way, but that’s a rant for another day). It’s time to take matters into my hands.

What is mymind?

Mymind is a second brain tool, and it reminded me of Evernote when Evernote was an excellent product. The promise is you have a single place to save all the things you encounter during the day. These can be books, pictures, quick notes, extensive notes (it has markdown support), videos, articles, PDFs, etc. The list is long. However, there are no folders. So, it’s a single big folder, or consider it a canvas. You can tag things, of course, and above the canvas is a big, large search bar. That’s it.

Now the beauty of this design is I'm not too fond of folders, for one, and mymind not having folders is an essential feature. Some might say it’s a bug, but nope. It frees me not having to think about where to put stuff. Behind the scenes, they analyze every single article, picture, and file. By analyzing your content, it starts to auto-tag them with meaningful tags. So, you don’t even have to tag yourself.

When you start searching for things, you need to type what comes to your mind. It’s so easy and straightforward, but at the same time, it’s powerful. Here are some examples from my mymind account:

A quote from Charles Eames:

Books on photography:

Vitsoe 620 chair designed by Dieter Rams:

Show articles I’ve saved this week:

As you see, the natural language interface works very well. Of course, you must trust the system and the automatic tagging system that mymind runs behind the scenes. As we see in the next section, it’s still not perfect.

Cons

Things are not black and white, and there are still items that need to be improved. Some things that I’ve found frustrating or annoying are:

• Search doesn’t work all the time. For like, the “color” tagging isn’t working for me. I tried to write “Red Chair” or “Black Lamp” with no success. I believe something is up with my account, and not sure if this is a widespread issue (I'm in contact with the support on this matter).
• There is no autocompletion in the search bar. I have to write some tags entirely, and it would be great if it would have a fuzzy finding and automatically complete tags or sentences.
• mymind cards can be in several types, such as quotes, pictures, books, and products. For books, if you save, say, from Amazon.com, it automatically creates a cover. So, all books you save look the same, which is excellent. However, it doesn’t work all the time. If you’re using, for example, the iOS Amazon app and add a book by sharing a link from the iOS app, mymind creates a screenshot of the whole webpage. Or if I add a book from Amazon.com.tr (Turkish) instead of Amazon.com (U.S), it doesn't work.
• Same for products. On certain websites, it adds the price of the product you saved. Here is an example, usually, it’s a hit or miss. It doesn’t work on all websites. That’s ok, but I wished, at least let me allow to write the price or manually mark the card type as product:

• mymind shows the cards in a grid system. It looks beautiful. And you can change the grid size and make it denser or larger. However, the automatic resizing of cards sometimes fails, and two cards overlap. To fix it, you have to resize the window or restart the mymind.app macOS app. Refreshing doesn’t work.

Suggestions

I took some notes that I would love to see in the product, and I believe it’ll improve mymind :

• The ability to manually add a price to a picture. If it can’t parse a website, that’s ok; let me at least add a price. Or occasionally, there are things that don’t have a price in the market or are not obvious. In either case, we should be able to add a price.
• Manually change or add a card with a specific type. This is similar to the first suggestion, but let me add cards in the type book or product.
• mymind automatically tags all cards with tags that are hidden from you. But every so often, a specific tag shows things you’re not interested in. As an example, when I type jean and then hit space to write prouve (to search for the French designer “Jean Prouvé”), it shows some pictures of people who wear a Jean. I don’t care about them, but I would like to exclude them from the search.
• There is a "top of my mind" feature, you can basically pin cards to the top of the grid. It would be cool if I could configure it, so it would automatically add cards that have a certain tag. As an example, I could say "auto add card with the tag read later", with that all my read-it-later articles would be easily there, waiting for me to pick up read it.
• API support. It would be nice if it had a proper API to add/delete cards; I could hook it up in my apps or write command line tools for it.
• mymind can evolve quickly into a private Pinterest clone. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s much more capable than just saving pictures or products. It's your private Google clone. Hence, just like a search engine, it should expose information in various ways, not just cards in a grid. I believe it should have a grid type called “mixed”, which shows the notes as a list of things, rather than cards and pictures. You might think, “Fatih, what even changes here?”. The perception changes. In everyone's mind, “a grid of beautiful pictures” is equal to “Pinterest”. But mymind is more than that. So, the UI is also essential to convey a specific message. I suggest making changes in the design language that also appeals to power users and shows the user that it’s not a local Pinterest but much more than that. For example, the “tips and tricks” section underneath the search bar is a design element. I would like to see more of that.

Verdict

Mymind is evolving, and I think it has massive potential if the team continues investing in the product. I love the interface. And the design is top-notch. It’s one of the reasons I’m in love with the product. But it needs to be better. And while evolving, it should still not lose the essence of what makes it unique. As for me, I believe it’ll be better. I also respect their commitment to no ads, no social features, no tracking, etc.

Using the product makes me feel special, and I know it’s made for individual users like me and that they want to take care of us. Hence, I’ve also bought the Mastermind plan. I intend to support businesses and companies that aim to create quality products, believe in design, and create products where the user is the central focus and not a by-product. If you believe in what I think and that mymind will improve with time, you should try it out.

Photography is a hobby and a passion. I love going out, walking in the streets, and shooting photos of people, interesting architecture, or landscapes.

Since my teenage years, I have always had a camera. My first one was from Aldi, a German grocery chain. I think I was then around 15/16 years and didn't know anything about cameras. When I saw the Ad, I begged my father to buy it. The brand was "Medion", and I shot many photos and videos. There I knew I loved shooting photos.

After using it for several years, my father bought me a Canon G7, a point-and-shoot camera. This was another camera I insisted my father get for me. When a newer version of it came to the market, the older one was discounted, so we got it for cheap from Saturn (a German electronics store chain). It was black, and I felt like I was using a professional camera for the first time. It was a decent camera, much better than the Medion. Still, it wasn't a DSLR or in the same ballpark, but it made me happy.

Once I left the university, I started working and, with that, started earning money. After numerous years of work, I saved enough money before my Japan trip, so I pulled the trigger and bought a FujiFilm X-T1. It was my first real camera. Subsequently, I was obsessed with cameras, especially using FujiFilm cameras. Since then, I have had several Fuji cameras, such as X-H1, X100F, and X-T30. My final Fujifilm camera was the X100V that I bought two years ago.

Using all kinds of different cameras taught me how to shoot, but also I found out what I'm interested in shooting. Looking back at my photos, I discovered I love to take pictures of architecture, landscapes, and people (street photography). The Fuji X100V hence was the perfect camera for my style.

The time has come

Time flies. There are only so many things my family and I will witness. I'm also old enough that I didn't want to prolong my decision any longer.

My love for photography is in its prime. With that, for a long time, I thought about the switch to a Full-frame camera system and further strengthened my skills, especially doing more landscape, architecture, and street photography.

I never bought a professional Canon, Nikon, or Sony because I never found a specific reason to switch to those brands from Fujifilm. The only brand/model that interested me was the Sony RX1R II, but Sony never released a newer version.

Otherwise, all these brands have excellent cameras, and on paper, they are incredible. Lots of professionals use them for their job. But I never liked their designs, menus, or the feel of using them (yes, I've used most of these brands on plenty of occasions). Even the newer mirrorless cameras are clunky and big. You can't blend into the crowd with a big camera.

Hence, I started looking at how to make one of my dreams come to life: owning and using a Leica M Rangefinder camera.

Leica's are not cheap (more on this later), but behind the name is a long history of people making the best cameras in the world, with the best photographers witnessing history (i.e., Ara Güler) while wearing and shooting with Leica Rangefinder cameras. I want to be part of this culture and craftsmanship, and the ethos behind the Leica community is something that speaks to me.

So, I pulled the trigger and got my first Leica Camera, the Leica M11. It's their latest digital rangefinder camera. I searched for a second-hand Leica M10-R but couldn't find anything here in Turkey. So, when I had an upcoming trip to Germany, I decided that's time to get the camera body.

Leica Türkiye had ongoing sales for the lens. My all-time favorite lens (I've probably viewed thousands of pictures of various Leica lenses), the Summilux 35mm f/1.4 FLE, was discounted significantly. It's not the newer 2022 version, but I didn't need any close-up photos, so I decided to buy it here.

The Leica M11

The Leica M11 is Leica's latest digital Rangefinder (I'll tell more about the rangefinder technology in more detail). There are tons of reviews, so I don't want to go into every detail (i.e., DPReview Leica M11 Review).

What essential for me to was when picking up the Leica M11 was its 60MP resolution, USB-C connector, battery life, and internal 64GB storage. The processor was also upgraded. I honestly wanted to get a second-hand Leica M10-R because it already has 41MP resolution and is a great camera, but as I said earlier, I couldn't find any second-hand ones here in Turkey.

You might ask why not the M10 or M10P. They are older, and the resolution is also way lover than the M10-R or M11. The sensor resolution is essential because I want to print my photographs in the future, and I also do quite a bit of cropping in my photos. Using the Leica M11 now for several weeks; the 60MP is incredibly useful, and I love it.

The USB-C connector also comes in handy because it allows me to travel hassle-free with a single USB-C charger everywhere. I hate to carry additional cables. Except the iPhone, all my devices use USB-C. Next, the battery life had to be good enough to take it for a whole day without needing a second battery. I hate to carry additional batteries as well. Charging them is even more annoying, as I have to take an extra charger. The Leica M11 has a new battery with a 64% capacity increase compared to the battery in the M10. According to the technical specs, you can shoot 700 pictures, and in my day-to-day field trips, I witnessed the improvement.

Lastly, a couple of times, I forgot to put my Fuji's SD disk back into the camera and left the house that way. Bummer. It happens. The Leica M11 has internal 64GB storage. It's great for two reasons: when I forgot to take my SD card and for redundancy. You can configure the M11 to copy the RAW files simultaneously to the SD card and the internal storage. Even in the event of an SD card failure, I still have a backup of my photos.

Summilux 35mm f/1.4 Lens

There are many Lens options for the Leica M11 due to its famous M-mount. Leica itself provides the best lenses your money can buy, but you don't have to; there are also other brands, such as Voigtländer, Zeiss, 7Artisans, etc.

I also had to decide on the lens when I wanted to get a Leica Rangefinder camera. The lens is even more important than the body because you can use it for decades if you take care of them. First, the most significant part is which focal length I want to use. Luckily, I knew immediately what to get because I had shot in various focal lengths for a long time. It was 35mm. I shoot in 28mm and 50mm full-frame equivalent lenses, but they were either too wide or too near for my liking.

Once I decided on the focal length, I had several options. I wanted a Leica Lens because I wanted to be fully in the Leica world. But not only because of that, but one of my favorite photographers and writer, Craig Mod, was also using a 35mm Leica Lens. I also know that Leica Lenses were some of the best you can get on this planet, so I had to get one.

There are various 35mm Leica lenses. Some are the Summarit, Summicron(s), or Summilux lines of lenses. I initially decided to get the Summicron, but when I saw the discount on the Summilux, I couldn't pass it. The Summilux 35mm f/1.4 is an extraordinary lens. Especially wide open, it's incredibly sharp. I never used a lens like this. There is some vignette at F/1.4, but I love the look of it. For the first time, I could witness the Leica Look and shoot photos where the subjects are like 3D objects. I didn't see any bad reviews about this lens, which further consolidated my desire to get it. And I wasn't wrong.

Besides that, I don't think to get any other lens. But I have plans for a 21/24mm and a 50mm lens.

Rangefinder system

When someone says they are using a Leica, it's usually the Leica M-System series. But Leica also sells other camera systems, such as Leica Q, Leica S, Leica SL, etc. I bought a Leica M11, which is their latest digital Rangefinder camera.

Why a Rangefinder camera? And what exactly is a Rangefinder camera? Foremost, Leica M cameras don't have autofocus (other Leica cameras have autofocus, though we're talking about the M system cameras).

With a Leica M camera, you need to focus manually on your subject. It's one of the reasons why Leica M Lenses are so small compared to the equivalent of other brands' full-frame camera lenses. Because they are simpler to build, they don't have motors or any additional mechanics.

Leica M lenses have excellent usability. There are only two options you have on the lens:

1. Changing the Aperture via the aperture-ring
2. Changing the Focus distance via the focus-ring

You compose and shoot your picture with those two rings on the lens. So hence, to make manual focus work well, you need the camera built for this purpose. This is where Rangefinder comes in.

Initially, I always thought Rangefinder meant an optical viewfinder that shows the world as you see it. However, it's entirely different. A Rangefinder is a technology that allows you to measure the distance to a particular subject, and it was so popular that it was later introduced in cameras.

Because a rangefinder lets you find the distance to a given subject, you can focus your lens directly on the subject. From Wikipedia:

A rangefinder camera is a camera fitted with a rangefinder, typically a split-image rangefinder: a range-finding focusing mechanism allowing the photographer to measure the subject distance and take photographs that are in sharp focus. Most varieties of rangefinder show two images of the same subject, one of which moves when a calibrated wheel is turned; when the two images coincide and fuse into one, the distance can be read off the wheel.

The key is these two images. Once these two images line up, the lens is perfectly aligned and focused on the subject.

At the beginning of the 19th century, many popular analog rangefinder cameras existed. Still, nowadays, there is only one significant brand that built analog and digital rangefinder cameras, which is: Leica. Other brands also made rangefinders, but none had the success as Leica.

Second, the optical viewfinder lets you see outside the frames, which is crucial when you shoot with a Leica. Because it lets you compose specific frames that wouldn't be possible with a regular SLR or Mirrorless camera; for example, you can see a moving bus coming into your view and hit the shutter button at the exact moment.

There is one thing more I think it's worth mentioning, which is the art and action of shooting with a Rangefinder camera. It takes time to shoot with a camera, so you must think about what you want to shoot first. You need to slow down sometimes, deliberately. Slowing down, seeing the world through a hand-made rangefinder, seeing the world without any obstruction (no EVF), and framing your picture, all these small motions and details make you appreciate shooting with a Leica. It's pure joy.

When you combine all these reasons, you understand why the Leica M cameras are one of the best for street photography.

Cost and ownership

I know Leica's are expensive.

And I know many people are super sensitive about the pricing, so I want to bring it up front. These machines are too overpriced, and I'm not sure the price justifies the gear. But I'm sure of one thing; they are beautifully created, hand-machined objects. Leica cameras are known for their high quality, craftsmanship, attention to detail, and durability. It's like wearing a well-made mechanical watch. And you would never understand a good watch if you never wore an automatic watch. It's the same with the Leica M's.

Leica produces the best lenses you can buy. Their high-end prime lenses are most of them sharp across all F-stops. What does it mean? Usually, if you buy a lens with a particular focal length and widest Aperture, say 35mm f/2.0, what it means is that it's super-sharp, usually around f/5.6, and soft when wide open at f/2.0. But that's not the case with Leica lenses. Leica has the mission to provide the same sharpness across all F stops. And this quality comes obviously with a price.

Most of their equipment is assembled manually in Germany, inspected thoroughly, and fitted perfectly together. The customer service is exceptional, and the people there are proud of their work. Leica has a long history and reputation for producing some of the best cameras in the world. They are also a relatively small company compared to other camera manufacturers, contributing to the higher cost of its products.

Is a Leica worth it? Maybe not. But for me, it's worth it. Not price-wise, I think they are still expensive. And I only could justify it recently, given that I waited almost a decade. Yet, they evoke certain feelings, and once you start using them, you understand why they are so expensive. People pay for things that are way pricier, such as expensive, beautiful cars, but use them less than a camera.

And it's usually not an issue if you buy a car or an iPhone yearly. So, that's also something to keep in mind: a price is very subjective. It changes according to society's view of whether it's "expensive" or not. It's been a long time since I've been at peace buying stuff, especially goods built by master craftsmanship and having attention to detail. You pay what you get, and with all things in life, this changes a lot about what you value in your life. I respect people who think like me and still believe in quality, and I'm more than happy to support these businesses.

Second, Leica gears hold their value for a long time. Their previous generation M10-R still sells for $5-6K. The lenses never go down; with time, they gain value. So, the Leica M system's initial investment is very high, but once you're in, the ongoing cost or getting out of it isn't that expensive anymore. There is a massive community of second-hand Leica gears; typically, the Leica stores also easily change/upgrade to newer versions. It's easier to upgrade or sell existing Leica gear if you treat them well because people in the Leica community are proud to use them and take the extra step to protect their equipment.

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Accessories

The M11 has various accessories you can buy. I've discovered that the Leica community is full of hand-made artisan shops that produce different cases, straps, etc. It's incredible to see this kind of dedication to the craft.

It's not only the artisan community; Leica also sells all sorts of accessories. But what is insane is every single item is custom painted or made that match perfectly with the camera body you use. As an extreme example, the Thumb Grip you can buy for the Leica M10 and Leica M11 are the same models. However, the black painting is different in each model because the top of the M11 is made of aluminum, but it is brass on the M10 (their previous model). Hence, the black color's reflection or feel is unique. The attention to detail here is on an entirely different level than I've experienced so far.

I didn't buy any thumb grip or half cases this time, and I wanted to use it bare-bone and understand how it feels. These are some of the accessories I got:

• I decided to get a nice Leather Strap and chose the original Leather Strap from Leica in Cognac Brown. The beauty of this strap is that it's well-made, has no metal pieces (zero probability it'll scratch the body/lens housing), and is adjustable. I initially thought about going with my loved Peak Design Straps, but I've discovered that I always hang around my camera. Second, I believe a Leica looks much better with a leather strap.
• My soft-release button isn't new; I'm using the old, wooden soft-release from my X100V. It works well and does the job for me. However, I will probably replace it with a dark, black version.
• I always put a UV-Filter in front of the lens. For the M11, I got the UVa II, E46 from Leica. I don't affect the image quality at all, but it protects the front elements of the lens. Not only that, but I can easily wipe and clean the filter, buy a new one and replace it if anything goes wrong.
• As I do with every camera I buy, I bought several cheap screen protectors from Amazon. You can buy four pieces for like $10, so you can use the others even if you make mistakes during the installation.
• Lastly, I bought a Sandisk 128GB Extreme Pro SD Disk. What great about the M11 is it already comes with internal 64GB storage, so you don't need an SD Card. But if you put an SD Card, you can use it for backups! Or you can customize it to your liking, such as saving JPGs to the internal storage and RAW (DNGs) to the SD card.

My M11  camera settings

I take photos from F1.4 to F8; I sometimes go up to F11 but never exceed it. Hence, I shoot in aperture-priority mode, which means I tell my camera the highest ISO I'm willing to use (which I set to ISO 6400). The camera automatically changes the ISO and Shutter speed to shoot in my desired exposure setting. I also made sure, up to ISO 6400, the shutter speed never exceeds 1/250s. I think that's the minimum I can use because the slower the shutter speed is, the harder it is to shoot people in motion. It doesn't sound straightforward, but it's easy to understand once you get the feeling. For the record, I used a similar setting with my X100V.

Let me give an example of how it would work during the day and night:

Day: Because it's not dark outside, assuming the sun is shining, the camera probably will choose the lowest ISO, which is ISO 64, and then shoot in 1/250s. Of course, depending on the light, the shutter speed will increase and might go up to the maximum of 1/4000s.

Night: It'll keep the shutter speed to 1/250s and gradually increase the ISO to 6400. If it's still insufficient, the camera will start to decrease the shutter speed, so 1/125s, 1/60s, 1/30s, etc. During the night, it's essential to have several fallbacks. One is to bump the ISO further and take a hit for some noise/grain. The M11 is superb at it, and I usually go up until ISO 12800. Second, shooting wide open, so F1.4 is also essential. We want to make sure to get as much light as we can.

Some other settings:

• Standby is set to 60 mins. My camera is always on.
• I always shoot in RAW.
• I shoot with the maximum available sensor resolution, which is 60MP. This allows me to future-proof my picture (especially for printing) and, most importantly, crop pictures.  
• EVF is set to -2/3v. I use Highlight-weighted metering, so I underexpose a little bit. This way, in post-processing, I can recover the shadows and don't have to play around with highlights. It's insane how much detail you can recover from a RAW file of a Leica M11. Let me show an example side by side (especially take notice of the tree that appears suddenly):

Photo Workflow

With the Leica M11, I've decided to change my photo workflow. First, this was my previous workflow:

1. Shoot JPEG with the Fuji X100V
2. Import all photos directly into Apple Photos
3. Cull and delete bad photos from within Apple Photos, Favorite good ones
4. Post-process favorite ones with Pixelmator Photo.

Because Fujifilm JPEGs are so good, I've learned to know the ins and outs of the Fujifilm X100V; hence I never shoot RAW with it. Pixelmator Photo worked well with my workflow because it provided some functionality Apple Photos lacks, such as removing spots.

With the M11, I decided to change and also improve my workflow. So, this is my new photo workflow:

1. Shoot RAW with the M11
2. Import photos into Lightroom CC
3. Cull and delete bad photos, and post-process good ones directly inside Lightroom
4. Select all processed photos, and save them to the Apple Photos Camera roll as JPEGs

By using this new workflow, I have the following benefits compared to the old one:

• Leica RAW files are the golden standard. It's insane how much detail you can recover, and it would be dumb not to use RAWs.
• Lightroom's Photo management and post-processing capabilities are significantly better than Apple Photos. I have the 2TB plan, which also helps me to sync the photos so that I can edit/post-process them from my iPad, iPhone, or MacBook Air.
• I still use Apple Photos to sync all my photos across all my devices; by exporting JPEGs to Apple Photos, I keep the final picture.

Furthermore, I'm planning to write a dedicated blog post about my workflow with more details.

Leica M11 vs. Fujifilm X100V

Numerous people have asked what the difference is compared to my previous X100V camera.

Here are some bullet points that I've gathered so far:

• M11 is heavier. I sometimes miss the lightness of the X100V. However, I'll have to say, the extra weight also increased the stability while shooting photos, and you get used to it. So, it doesn't bother me a lot.
• M11's menu system is notably better than Fuji X100V. It's nicely designed, and I can see everything at a glance. It's beautiful.
• I miss the EVF in the X100V, and the M11 doesn't have an integrated EVF. However, one can purchase an external EVF or use the LCD. I know it's probably not possible with the Rangefinder system, but I'm hoping Leica does some magic for the future bodies and release an M12 or M13 with an integrated EVF.
• The manual focusing system on the M11 is miles ahead of the X100V. It's faster, it has dead-ends between 0.7 m and infinity, so the focus ring is easy to guess. With time, I'll assume I will remember the distance by moving the focus ring. Many people wrote that once you get the feel of it, you can focus faster than any autofocus.
• I like the Leica FOTOS (iOS/iPad) app more than the Fujifilm Cam Remote application. The Leica is better designed, and the UI is remarkably better than the Fujifilm ones. Of course, both can be better, and I think there is still some space for improvement.
• The X100V turns on faster; it takes 1.5-2 seconds on the M11. However, I never turn off a camera; it's always on, ready to shoot once I'm out in the field. The Leica M11 also has a standby setting, which I set to 60 minutes. I used this setup for several days and still had a battery left.
• The battery on the M11 is bigger and lasts longer. I didn't buy a spare battery because a single charge lasts me for a full day, sometimes even two days. The X100V's battery also wasn't bad, and I could use it for a day with no issues, but you have extra peace of mind with the M11.
• The build quality of the X100V was already great, but the M11 is on an entirely different level. The moment you hold it in your hands, you can feel that it's different.
• The M11 doesn't have video, autofocus, builtin-flash, EVF, and a built-in ND filter. It's only built to shoot photos, and you'll have to focus manually. On paper, the X100V has many more bells and whistles. If any of these are essential for you, the M11 is not the right choice. But in my case, I never used the video; I was using the X100V already in manual mode with zone focusing; I rarely used the built-in ND filter, and I never used the flash. The only thing I miss is the integrated EVF. The X100V has the upper hand here.
• The M11 has a full-frame sensor, and the X100V has an APS-C sensor. The pictures from the M11 are undoubtedly on a different level. Especially paired with the Summilux F/1.4 Lens.  I don't know how to describe it, but they are sharper, the bokeh is more creamy, and the colors are more accurate. The X100V has a different style, and I think they both have their place. The X100V's JPEG simulations, for example, are a huge thing. Whereas with the M11, you need to post-process the photos to create the various film simulations. But still, every time I post a photo from my Leica, people ask what camera I use. People are astonished and stuck by the pictures, which shows how good they are.

Communities and Resources

Leica also feels like a cult. When you buy a camera or lens, you also buy an entry into this cult. This, of course, applies universally to almost everything. People like to be surrounded by like-minded people with the same taste.

While learning more about Leica, I also stumbled across some great instructors and Leica users. I also want to share some communities as I think they are very informational, and I learned a lot.

1. Leica Forum: This forum has two sections, one in German and another in English. But I noticed that it’s the most active and largest Leica forum. You can find almost anything here. It has sub-forums for each Leica camera body and variouIt'sher topics. It’s a must for any Leica enthusiast.
2. DPReview, Leica Talk: This is a sub-forum under the DPRewiew umbrella. It’s a typical DPReview forum with knowledgeable people, newcomers, and trolls.
3. /r/Leica: The Reddit subreddit feels like the original Leica Forum. It’s full of Leica lovers; everyone is helpful, and it can feel very active.
4. LFI: This is a photo gallery where users can post their photos and a magazine that dates back to 1949. You can subscribe digitally or get a printed subscription, giving you access to the backlog catalog. I’ve read a few magazines (it’s free for three months for every Leica gear purchase) and have liked it so far.

Beside these Forums, I’ve found two YouTube channels beneficial. They are not very active, but they have a vast selection of very high-quality videos about Leica:

• RedDotForum: This channel is hosted by two of the employees of Leica Miami Store, and they have hours-long Q&A’s with a lot of helpful information. It’s one of the dense channels I’ve ever seen. I probably watched all their videos one by one because they know what they were talking about.
• Leica Camera Australia: I recently discovered this on Twitter thanks to a follower, and it became another favorite of mine. I started slowly consuming their excellent set of videos.

There are many great Leica photographers, some that piqued my interest so far:

• Matt Stuart: London based. Has several books on Street Photography and a distinct style.
• Alan Schaller: London based. He has some of the I've B&W photos I’ve ever seen.
• Siegfried Hansen: Hamburg based. A great person with a distinct style (i.e., lines)—lots to learn from.
• Craig Mod: Tokyo based. Great writer. He does days-long solo walks across Japan and documents his journeys via newsletters and book (disclaimer: I’m a Member and support his work)

Verdict

I’ve been using the Leica M11 for almost two weeks, and I know it’s not long, but I can say that the Leica M11 is currently the best camera I have ever used. It’s just pure joy, and I can’t wait to take it with me on field trips. The camera wants me to walk around the streets and take photos.

Whether it is worth it is a scorching topic and very subjective honestly, I don’t know how to answer it.

You should probably avoid a rangefinder if you don’t know what an Aperture is or have never shot with a professional camera. If you want to shoot objects that are moving fast (i.e., babies, animals, cars) or far away (i.e. wildlife, sports), I think it’s also not worth getting a Leica M camera.

But, if you already use a professional camera for years, you take pride in your work, you like to shoot the everyday life of your surroundings, you want to slow down and take photos just for fun, and if you think all this is worth the money for an excellent camera, then I think you would love to shoot with a Leica M camera.

As for me, I love it.

It's been four years since I wrote a recap. I wrote an update about my life two years ago when I left the U.S. and moved back to Turkey. It's a Recap of the years 2019-2020. I would suggest reading that blog post if you haven't yet because some parts of this blog post revisit some of those feelings I had back then.

I'm always writing these blog posts as a trail for myself; however, I've also found them useful for people interested in my thoughts. In this blog post, I want to share some of the most significant changes in my life in the past year. Let's dive in.

Family

I'm grateful for my Family, my in-laws, and the friends who surround me. After coming back from the U.S., I appreciated how great it was to be surrounded by my loved ones. As a parent, I welcomed the support, but it wasn't just me who was relieved; I could see how the daily encounters and conversations with my Parents enlightened my kids. My parents live nearby and occasionally come by, or the kids stay with them for a couple of hours. I can observe how the relationship between my Dad and my son evolved, how they started to become more closed, and how they shared secrets. All these make me very happy.

Being surrounded by my Family makes life easier for them and us. I can help my parents with their daily challenges, be with them if they need me, arrange doctor appointments, or do anything they struggle with themselves sometimes. I don't want to think this is a mutual agreement; it's just something I like to do and that I'm happy I can do.

Looking back, I know it's a privilege that I have experienced, and this privilege might go on again in the future. I can always be somewhere else, live in another country, and experience new challenges. That's what I am, and that's how I thrive. But I always try to ensure that my Family is a top priority.

Owning my own House

After moving back from the U.S. to Turkey, I also finished my ongoing house construction. I bought the land in 2017, and we started building our House around 2019 when we moved to the U.S. My father was looking over it, as he built other houses in the past and knew the in & outs. However, the construction halted for almost two years due to the pandemic, as with everything else. When we returned from the U.S., we started back again as things mostly normalized. In a 6-month short period, we finished almost everything.

Before owning my House, I was on rent living in one of the outer neighborhoods of Ankara. It was at the edge of the autobahn circling Ankara, so it was a very calm place, but it also had cheap rent as most professionals wouldn't want to live there due to the distance to the city center. But for us, it was a great jumping board. We could save money for our own House as I was working from home, and my wife could travel via the subway (she had to drive there). She eventually also started working remotely, so never moved out.

Anyway, now that I own a house, and because I also built the House myself, I could also design it in a way to have a nice office. Our House is a vertical-sized townhouse, and the living area and bedroom are on the upper levels, but my office was on the entry level, which meant it was also totally isolated from the rest of the home. An office for myself was one of my dreams because, before that, I had a small room in our apartment, and with my two kids, it became tough to do meetings in the evening or do my work in deep focus.

While at it, I also ensured my new room had an unobstructed view of the front garden. There is tons of light, which makes it pleasant to work all day long. It's also large enough to contain other things, such as a library with comfortable sofas/chairs and a fully functional coffee bar with an espresso machine and grinder.

It's been almost 1.5 since I worked in this setup, and as you imagine, it's everything I wished for. I'm very grateful for this setup every single day. The spacious area also allows me to invest in my other hobbies, such as playing Piano, reading books, etc. More on these topics later in this blog post.

3D Printing and Design

I love Design. I try to buy highly regarded timeless designs or feel you can use them even after several years. However, what means "timeless"? Or how is the process of designing a piece that you can appreciate? So to enjoy Design, I also wanted to learn "how to" Design. Hence I wrote this tweet in May:

By getting a 3D Printer, I wanted to learn CAD and tinker with small gadgets/industrial design objects. I had some ideas I wanted to tackle, but I first needed a 3D Printer. After some research, I've got Prusa i3 MK3S+.

As with all the things I'm doing, I wrote an extensive blog post about my journey; check it out: https://arslan.io/2022/06/11/how-i-got-into-3d-printing/

After assembling my 3D Printer, I started tackling my first Design project and designing a wireless charger pad for my Car. I bought a new car. However, due to the chip shortage, several things were missing. One of those features was a wireless charging pad. So it was the perfect project to pursue. I wrote another blog post with details on how I Iterated on this project: https://arslan.io/2022/07/04/designing-a-wireless-charging-pad-from-scratch/

Overall, I liked iterating on a project that wasn't Software; that was something I could touch and feel, and it was a very welcoming new experience. I've discovered that it's harder to iterate, and you can't see the result immediately. Printing a medium-sized model takes a minimum of 12 hours, and to understand a model's flaws or benefits, you need to 3D print it. However, holding something in your hands has an evoking feeling.

My problem with the 3D Design was/is the CAD software. There are many, and most are very expensive, and the open-source ones are not as user-friendly as the commercial offering. I think there is a market for hobbyists like me. I was using Shapr3D, but after they bumped the monthly price to around $40, I started looking into Solvespace, a new OSS CAD program that is very promising. I plan to re-design my wireless charging pad with this new Software and share more about it.

Photography

I still use my beloved Fuji X100V. It's an excellent camera for my style, and I love to use it for street photography. It creates great photos with minimal fuzz. The best thing about the Fujifilm X100V is that there are dedicated buttons for every Exposure triangle setting, i.e: ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture.

I shoot the Fuji X100V in two different modes. One is in the M mode, which is short for manual and S for a single shot. In the M mode, autofocus is enabled, and I use zone-focusing, change the aperture and focus distance myself. The only automatic setting is the shutter speed. These preferences allow me to compose different situations efficiently and quickly. It's also fun to use in this mode. The S mode is auto-focus with face detection enabled. It's for use cases where I need to give the camera to my wife or someone else who don't know how to use my camera.

This year, I also experimented with different frame ratios. The 16:9 ratio especially is something I liked a lot; however, it's not suitable for nowadays social media websites, especially Instagram Stories or Twitter. It doesn't bother me, though. I usually optimize for how I like things and want to see things in the future.

Lastly, I've been a Fujifilm user for almost ten years, but I think it's time to move to a different camera system. Not because I don't like to use a Fujifilm but because life is short, and I want to fulfill my dreams of using specific equipment and pushing my boundaries. If I can do it, I'll always try to push my limits. That's how I rouse, and that's my happy ground. I love Photography, and I think it's worth spending my time, investments, and energy on it. More on this later in another blog post.

Blogging

This year was one of my most productive years in recent years. I always wanted to write at least one post per month, and even though I couldn't keep up the pace, I wrote ten blog posts. It's hard to keep it up because I have limited time, and with that limited time, I try to read books, spend time with my kids, learn Piano, shoot photos, etc. So, it's usually an afterthought, and there is a balance here. Sometimes it skews toward writing a blog post, but sometimes I don't have the energy.

Like in past years, I wrote many lengthy reviews about specific products. My Kinesis Pro blog post was one of my most-read blog posts of the year, even though I just recently released it. I had 130K Total Pageviews and 88.5K Unique Visitors. People visited the most from the United States, and the most visited pages were:

Lastly, I switched from a custom Hugo setup to Ghost. I realized I started writing more because it's effortless to write a blog post with Ghost. I no longer have to fiddle around with markdown files and ensure Hugo is up-to-date. I just hit publish, and Ghost handles everything for me. This allowed me to spend more time writing and less time fiddling around with my blog setup.

Music and learning Piano

This year was the year when I finally started investing in making and learning music. I had a very informal Piano education in Germany when I was there in school. But I forgot almost everything. This was nearly 30 years ago. I was a kid back then, but playing a musical instrument was one of my goals that I never relinquished. In my youth, I did quite a bit of mixing using Software DAWs. When I left Germany and moved to Turkey, we had a yearbook where everyone wrote what they wanted to be in the future. I wrote: A DJ or Computer Engineer.

I never became a D.J. :) But I pursued my love of programming and doing stuff with computers. But music is still something I have always had in me. There are two things I started doing to improve it this year.

First, I purchased some excellent devices from Teenage Engineering. Teenage Engineering is one of my love brands. They create devices that are very well-designed and fun to use. I have several of their Pocket Operators (little synths), and I love to create beats with them. I also purchased an OP-1 Field from them and started using it occasionally. However, I need a better musical education to make the best of them. That's where the second thing comes in.

So, around September (3 months ago), I purchased a digital piano and started taking private tutoring, one hour per week, to learn Piano. My son also started learning Piano, so it was the perfect time for me. Since then, I have exercised for 1-2 hours daily, and I love playing the Piano. I've learned quite a bit and can quickly jump between the second and sixth D (four octaves). It isn't easy to learn Piano, and the dimensionality of how a note can be played still blows my mind.

Work

It's been two years since I joined PlanetScale. For those who don't know PlanetScale, it's a database provider with very advanced technologies packed in one of the most user-friendly UX you can find, and it just works.

Since I joined PlanetScale, I've worked on various projects, starting from our pscale CLI, our Go API, clients, and then moved to work on other distributed systems challenges, such as read-only regions.

I'm working on the Orchestration team, and our team is responsible for spinning up a PlanetScale Database for the user. Because PlanetScale uses one of the most sophisticated distributed systems DB underneath (see: Vitess), a database is not just a single binary; it's multiple services talking to each other. What happens if the underlying node dies? What happens if one of the services OOMs? How do you take backups? etc... are just some of the issues we're solving.

PlanetScale is fresh air compared to my old job at GitHub. The people I work with are intelligent, emphatic, and just great to work with. Every day I wake up, I open Slack with joy and look forward to solving a customer issue or working on the next big thing. It's rare to be in this situation. The last time I was this happy was when I worked at DigitalOcean. So I'm delighted with how things worked out for me.

My plan for the following years is to continue working at PlanetScale for the foreseeable future. I like what I'm doing, the work is challenging, and I trust the leadership and my co-workers& friends.

Books

Reading books is a core habit, and I love to read new perspectives or fiction that teleport me into a different world. Over the years, I've experienced reading at a different pace. As an example, I don't read a book per week or month. Instead, I have a period, which usually longs for 1/2 month, where I read a book in a brief period, like every 2/3 days. Once that period is finished, I read books very slowly.

This year I read around 25 books, which means one every two weeks. However, half of them I read in a single month. I don't think this is a good reading habit, so I plan to change that.

I discovered the magnificent Ursula Le Guin this year. First with "The Left Hand of Darkness" and then with "The Dispossessed". I can't still forget how she wrote the trek of Genly Ai and Estraven over the northern ice-covered part of the planet Gethen. How she depicts the interactions between the main character and the cold, vast desert is incredible. You can feel the coldness. The Dispossessed is yet another masterpiece. Honestly, I understood I couldn't go wrong with her and started reading the Earthsea series. Even though the writing, in the beginning, wasn't the same as in her other books, it became better once I continued.

There were other books I liked a lot. For example, I've also read Kurt Vonnegut for the first time, and he has an entirely different style, but I still liked it. My favorite non-fiction books were Build by Tony Fadell and Atomic Habits by James Clear, and both were great books with actionable advice.

For the upcoming year, I plan to set a reading goal of 35. My goal for 2022 was 20 books, which I've exceeded by five books. But I can read 35 books if I create a good reading habit and stick to it. This goal also will force me to read books.

Recap

2022 was a fully packed year. We finally settled and had our own home, and I continued investing in my hobbies. I also pursued some of my long-term dreams (such as building an excellent musical foundation). I love pushing my boundaries and excelling in everything I try to learn, and I plan to continue being in this thirsty spirit. My Job is challenging, and I love to work there; things are going well. Overall I'm grateful for all that life provides me and looking forward to the following year.

There are numerous blog posts about table-driven tests in Go. In this blog post, I want to show a technique we have recently started using in our unit tests. I saw it the first time when my friend Matt Layher introduced it to me at work, and since then, I gradually started using it in places where it's suitable. This technique comes especially handy for large structs with multiple nested fields.

First, let me describe the problem with large structs (with multiple nested fields).

Problem

Table-driven tests are OK when the input data to a function consists of single variables and types. Here is an example from the Go wiki:

var flagtests = []struct {
	in  string
	out string
}{
	{"%a", "[%a]"},
	{"%-a", "[%-a]"},
	{"%+a", "[%+a]"},
	{"%#a", "[%#a]"},
	{"% a", "[% a]"},
	{"%0a", "[%0a]"},
	{"%1.2a", "[%1.2a]"},
	{"%-1.2a", "[%-1.2a]"},
	{"%+1.2a", "[%+1.2a]"},
	{"%-+1.2a", "[%+-1.2a]"},
	{"%-+1.2abc", "[%+-1.2a]bc"},
	{"%-1.2abc", "[%-1.2a]bc"},
}
func TestFlagParser(t *testing.T) {
	var flagprinter flagPrinter
	for _, tt := range flagtests {
		t.Run(tt.in, func(t *testing.T) {
			s := Sprintf(tt.in, &flagprinter)
			if s != tt.out {
				t.Errorf("got %q, want %q", s, tt.out)
			}
		})
	}
}

As you see, it's perfectly fine, and you can test multiple cases by adding a new item to the flagtests slice. It has a string input and a string output. This is a prime example of an excellent table-driven test.

However, if your input and output parameters are structs, the test case in the table might be more than a few lines of code. This leads to tables that are pretty hard to read, which defeats the first purpose of table-driven tests: readability. Let me show an example. Assume we have a validate() function that ensures that a Kubernetes Pod is valid:

func validate(pod *corev1.Pod) error {
	if pod.Name == "" {
		return errors.New("pod.Name is empty")
	}

	if pod.Namespace == "" {
		return errors.New("pod.Namespace is empty")
	}

	if _, ok := pod.Annotations["ready"]; !ok {
		return errors.New("pod.Annotations['ready'] key is not set")
	}

	if len(pod.Spec.Containers) == 0 {
		return errors.New("spec.Containers is empty")
	}

	for _, container := range pod.Spec.Containers {
		if container.Name == "" {
			return errors.New("container.Name is empty")
		}

		if container.Image == "" {
			return errors.New("container.Image is empty")
		}

		if len(container.Command) == 0 {
			return errors.New("container.Command is not set")
		}

		if len(container.Ports) == 0 {
			return errors.New("container.Ports is not set")
		}
	}

	return nil
}

The validate function checks where a given Pod is valid. For the sake of this post, we keep it simple and only check for a couple of things.

And let's write a table-driven test with a single test case. We'll add more:

package main

import (
	"testing"

	corev1 "k8s.io/api/core/v1"
	metav1 "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1"
)

func TestValidate(t *testing.T) {
	tests := []struct {
		name string
		pod  *corev1.Pod
		err  string
	}{
		{
			name: "valid pod",
			pod: &corev1.Pod{
				ObjectMeta: metav1.ObjectMeta{
					Namespace: "default",
					Name:      "pod-123",
					Annotations: map[string]string{
						"ready": "ensure that this annotation is set",
					},
				},
				Spec: corev1.PodSpec{
					Containers: []corev1.Container{
						{
							Name:  "some-container",
							Image: "fatih/foo:test",
							Command: []string{
								"./foo",
								"--port=8800",
							},
							Ports: []corev1.ContainerPort{
								{
									Name:          "http",
									ContainerPort: 8800,
									Protocol:      corev1.ProtocolTCP,
								},
							},
						},
					},
				},
			},
		},
	}

	for _, tt := range tests {
		tt := tt
		t.Run(tt.name, func(t *testing.T) {
			err := validate(tt.pod)
			// should it error?
			if tt.err != "" {
				if err == nil {
					t.Fatal("validate should error, but got non-nil error")
					return
				}

				if err.Error() != tt.err {
					t.Errorf("err msg want: %s got: %s", tt.err, err.Error())
				}

				return
			}

			// should not error
			if err != nil {
				t.Fatalf("validate error: %s", err)
			}
		})
	}
}

So as you see, it's already pretty long, even though we only have a single test case. Let's run the test:

$ go test -v
=== RUN   TestValidate
=== RUN   TestValidate/valid_pod
--- PASS: TestValidate (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/valid_pod (0.00s)
PASS
ok      demo    0.771s

It's all good!

Now let's add another case where we want to check that the container.Image is missing, and that the validate function errors with a warning:

		{
			name: "invalid pod, image is not set",
			pod: &corev1.Pod{
				ObjectMeta: metav1.ObjectMeta{
					Namespace: "default",
					Name:      "pod-123",
					Annotations: map[string]string{
						"ready": "ensure that this annotation is set",
					},
				},
				Spec: corev1.PodSpec{
					Containers: []corev1.Container{
						{
							Name: "some-container",
							Command: []string{
								"./foo",
								"--port=8800",
							},
							Ports: []corev1.ContainerPort{
								{
									Name:          "http",
									ContainerPort: 8800,
									Protocol:      corev1.ProtocolTCP,
								},
							},
						},
					},
				},
			},
			err: "container.Image is empty",
		},

Let's rerun it:

$ go test -v
=== RUN   TestValidate
=== RUN   TestValidate/valid_pod
=== RUN   TestValidate/invalid_pod,_image_is_not_set
--- PASS: TestValidate (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/valid_pod (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/invalid_pod,_image_is_not_set (0.00s)
PASS
ok      demo    0.305s

Let's another case, this time, the Ports slice is not set, and we want to make sure validate() errors:

		{
			name: "invalid pod, ports is not set",
			pod: &corev1.Pod{
				ObjectMeta: metav1.ObjectMeta{
					Namespace: "default",
					Name:      "pod-123",
					Annotations: map[string]string{
						"ready": "ensure that this annotation is set",
					},
				},
				Spec: corev1.PodSpec{
					Containers: []corev1.Container{
						{
							Name:  "some-container",
							Image: "fatih/foo:test",
							Command: []string{
								"./foo",
								"--port=8800",
							},
						},
					},
				},
			},
			err: "container.Ports is not set",
		},
	}

Let's run our test:

$ go test -v
=== RUN   TestValidate
=== RUN   TestValidate/valid_pod
=== RUN   TestValidate/invalid_pod,_image_is_not_set
=== RUN   TestValidate/invalid_pod,_ports_is_not_set
--- PASS: TestValidate (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/valid_pod (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/invalid_pod,_image_is_not_set (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/invalid_pod,_ports_is_not_set (0.00s)
PASS
ok      demo    0.298s

So far, all is good. However, now look at how big our table-driven test became. Because the file is too long, I will share it as a snippet. Please open it:

https://go.dev/play/p/ekc3cVvN__D

Compare this to our initial prime example, and you'll see how bad it is. There are many such tests, especially in the Kubernetes community when you have to mock large K8S resources; some examples I've found searching via GitHub are:

• https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/f83cd1f63bb216c76a3af46d58614d517113d1c5/pkg/pod/pod_test.go#L78
• https://github.com/operator-framework/operator-lifecycle-manager/blob/6ffec4d5a1c3245a5302a5ca02deebd1af543e7f/test/e2e/csv_e2e_test.go#L445
• https://github.com/grafana/loki/blob/37b1c0fce035affeb486528c09de8975f5b31d68/operator/internal/manifests/storage/configure_test.go#L189

Another issue is each test case in the table consists of duplicates. Because even though the input parameters are a struct, most of the time, we only change a single field in the struct (or remove fields in our case).

This leads to copying/pasting whole test cases to only change a single field, which leads to repetition, poor readability, and maintainability. Adding a new edge case or refactoring the table becomes incredibly tedious.

How can we improve the situation?

Solution

One trick to make the table shorter and more readable is defining base values of the structs and using function types to modify the base value for each test case. An example code snippet explains it's better than words, so I'll show an example. First, let's move the Pod struct into the test.Run() closure. Let's also change the field that accepts the struct as a pointer:

func TestValidate(t *testing.T) {
	tests := []struct {
		name string
		pod  func(pod *corev1.Pod)
		err  string
	}{
		{
			name: "valid pod",
		},
	}

	for _, tt := range tests {
		tt := tt
		t.Run(tt.name, func(t *testing.T) {
			pod := testPod()
			if tt.pod != nil {
				tt.pod(pod)
			}

			err := validate(pod)
			// should it error?
			if tt.err != "" {
				if err == nil {
					t.Fatal("validate should error, but got non-nil error")
					return
				}

				if err.Error() != tt.err {
					t.Errorf("err msg\nwant: %q\n got: %q", tt.err, err.Error())
				}

				return
			}

			if err != nil {
				t.Fatalf("validate error: %s", err)
			}
		})
	}
}

func testPod() *corev1.Pod {
	return &corev1.Pod{
		ObjectMeta: metav1.ObjectMeta{
			Namespace: "default",
			Name:      "pod-123",
			Annotations: map[string]string{
				"ready": "ensure that this annotation is set",
			},
		},
		Spec: corev1.PodSpec{
			Containers: []corev1.Container{
				{
					Name:  "some-container",
					Image: "fatih/foo:test",
					Command: []string{
						"./foo",
						"--port=8800",
					},
					Ports: []corev1.ContainerPort{
						{
							Name:          "http",
							ContainerPort: 8800,
							Protocol:      corev1.ProtocolTCP,
						},
					},
				},
			},
		},
	}
}

The most significant changes are; first, we changed the Pod from a struct type to a function type:

func TestValidate(t *testing.T) {
        tests := []struct {
                name string
-               pod  *corev1.Pod
+               pod  func(pod *corev1.Pod)
                err  string
        }{

The idea is that instead of defining a full-filled Pod struct, we'll assume it's already valid and only change the fields we're interested in. By default, the Pod is valid (testPod() is a helper function that returns a valid Pod value). Instead of passing the tt.pod value to validate(), we pass the Pod returned by testPod, but also modify it when tt.pod() is defined:

        for _, tt := range tests {
                tt := tt
                t.Run(tt.name, func(t *testing.T) {
-                       err := validate(tt.pod)
+                       pod := testPod()
+                       if tt.pod != nil {
+                               tt.pod(pod)
+                       }
+
+                       err := validate(pod)

Here you can see that it's the same test, however, with a significant change. We no longer define the struct with all its nested fields in each case. Instead, we define a function that we can use to modify only specific fields of an already defined struct.

This approach is powerful when you apply it to the remaining cases. Let's change our test for the remaining cases, where we check the container.Ports and container.Images fields:

func TestValidate(t *testing.T) {
	tests := []struct {
		name string
		pod  func(pod *corev1.Pod)
		err  string
	}{
		{
			name: "valid pod",
		},
		{
			name: "invalid pod, image is not set",
			pod: func(pod *corev1.Pod) {
				pod.Spec.Containers[0].Image = ""
			},
			err: "container.Image is empty",
		},
		{
			name: "invalid pod, ports is not set",
			pod: func(pod *corev1.Pod) {
				pod.Spec.Containers[0].Ports = nil
			},
			err: "container.Ports is not set",
		},
	}
...

Let's run the tests:

$ go test -v
=== RUN   TestValidate
=== RUN   TestValidate/valid_pod
=== RUN   TestValidate/invalid_pod,_image_is_not_set
=== RUN   TestValidate/invalid_pod,_ports_is_not_set
--- PASS: TestValidate (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/valid_pod (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/invalid_pod,_image_is_not_set (0.00s)
    --- PASS: TestValidate/invalid_pod,_ports_is_not_set (0.00s)
PASS
ok      demo    0.556s

Here is the final test code:

https://go.dev/play/p/Uzspa-PtHjd

Previously we had to copy/paste the whole struct and only modify the lines, but now, as you see, with just a few lines, we can achieve the same result. It also reads a lot better because you can see at a glance which fields you have modified for a particular test case.

This pattern is also very flexible. In our test, we assumed a Pod is, by default, valid. But you can also assume the opposite, where the Pod is not valid by default, and you change the fields, so it becomes valid. You can also use function types for the output rather than the input. In our example, our validate() function only returns an error type, hence it's not needed. But if you return a complex, large struct, you can also use a function type for the return type in the table.

I have used many keyboards over the years. Some of those were standard OEM keyboards you would probably have seen and used all the time. But at some point, I started trying out different designs and wanted to type faster and be more productive. Allow me to share some of them.

One of my first keyboards was the Microsoft Office Keyboard. I bought it while still living in Germany, but I don't exactly remember the time. It must be between the years 2000-2004. The dedicated area for scrolling content and the copy/paste/cut buttons were ahead, and I still miss the scroll button. Another great benefit of this keyboard was the integrated wrist rest, which was very comfortable. It was called the Office keyboard because it had dedicated functions to open MS Word, MS Excel, etc., and create/save/close documents within the office suite apps. Interestingly, you can still find these on eBay.

My next keyboard was the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. When I saw pictures of this in my photo collection, I was surprised. Somehow, the memory of using a split keyboard didn't exist in my head. I used this keyboard for a couple of years. Later, I remembered it because I've used the dedicated back-and-forth keys a lot. This keyboard was also my first genuinely ergonomic keyboard. The apparent change compared to my previous keyboards was the split design. In this design, the keyboard is split into two half-sections. The split provided a very comfortable position for the hands. Like my previous keyboard, it had support for palm and dedicated buttons for easy access to Microsoft applications.

I switched to the Apple Magic Keyboard when I started for a San Francisco based company (r.i.p. Koding) and started using a MacBook. As you see, this keyboard is different compared to my previous keyboard. It's minimalist; it's not ergonomic and pretty simple. But, the Apple Magic Keyboard works very well with the Apple ecosystem, especially with macOS. It has dedicated keys for all the necessary functions you would need. Surprisingly, I started to like the Apple Magic Keyboard a lot. It was also the first time I didn't have a dedicated Numpad keypad area. The side effect of this was that I could use a mouse or touchpad in a very comfortable way, as I didn't have to reach for them awkwardly.

Of course, this also didn't last long. In our office, people started using mechanical keyboards. I had never used one before, so I wanted to explore and be part of that community. I believe it was 2013 when I ordered the KUL ES-87 Keyboard. This model also didn't have a Numpad area; I later learned that these are called "Tenkeyless". This keyboard, even though I mainly selected MX Clear switches, was loud during typing. This situation annoyed my co-workers so much that my friends ordered o-rings to put on them. I never quite liked typing on the KUL ES-87 keyboards. It felt slow; somehow, the experience didn't match my experience with the Apple Magic Keyboard.

Finally, I moved back to the Apple Magic Keyboard. Apple released a newer version that you could charge via lightning cable, and it was just perfect. And since 2014, this has been my daily driver (or was, more on this later). I loved it so much that I had two for daily usage and one for backup. The battery would go for months. It had the same layout as my MacBook and iPad Pro Keyboard, so switching between them was seamless. But this didn't last long when one day, I couldn't feel my right pinky finger anymore.

My hand and fingers started to hurt around 2-3 years ago. It wasn't that bad initially, so I didn't pay much attention to it. However, one day, my right pinky finger began to hurt excruciatingly, and I could not move it in any direction. After waiting a couple of minutes, It began to recover, but the pain was there. I started looking around and found an ergonomic, good-looking keyboard. It was time to get my health back.

I found the Moonlander MK1 and ordered it right away. The Moonlander MK1 from ZSA is an ergonomic, highly customizable split keyboard. But there are a couple of things worth mentioning. As you see from the picture, it's separated into two halves and is attached by a TRRS cable. Being split is a game-changer because you can now type at shoulder width. Because the keyboard was using QMK under the hood, every single key was configurable. This was the first keyboard I learned about layers and the world of mechanical keyboards, and it was eye-opening.

I wrote an extensive review that goes into every detail if you're interested: My review of the Moonlander MK1 keyboard. I've used the Moonlander for like 6-12 months, and it wasn't for me, not because of the quality or hardware, but because the design didn't work out for my small hands. So, I switched again to a new keyboard.

My next keyboard was the Kinesis Advantage 2. There wasn't a way to test the Kinesis Advantage2, but I still ordered it because the YouTube video that compares the Ergodox and Kinesis Advantage2 makes some excellent points. After watching it, I wanted to give the Kinesis Advantage2 a try and issued an order.

The Kinesis Advantage2 was so good that I sold my Moonlander immediately. I have small hands, and the Kinesis Advantage 2 was a godsend. Due to the unique design, I could reach out to keys like p or q without having to reach for them. I used the Advantage 2 for a year until Kinesis announced last year a new, improved, and upgraded version, the Kinesis Advantage 360. Even though I like the Kinesis so much, after coming from the Moonlander, I wish the Kinesis also had some things, such as open-source firmware, truly split design, tenting, etc. The Kinesis Advantage 360 was the answer.

I've been using the Kinesis Advantage 360 Professional for a month, and it's the best keyboard I have had. Of course, as with any keyboard, it has flaws, but it works great for me. Like the Moonlander, I also wrote an extensive review for the Kinesis Advantage 360 Pro. Check it out if you're interested in the Advantage 360. The main benefit compared to Advantage 2 is that it's wireless and has a genuinely split keyboard. These new features elevated my typing experience and made it the best keyboard I've ever used.

One thing I've learned by switching between so many keyboards is the brain is very good at context switching. I write these lines from my iPad Pro's Magic Keyboard extension and can type quickly without errors. However, I can easily sit at my workstation and use my Kinesis keyboard without issues. The hardest part is to learn the new keyboards. Once you dedicate time to learning a new keyboard and cross a certain threshold, switching between different keyboards is very easy.