İsmail Efe's Second Brain.
My First Trip to Europe - Estonia İsmail Efe Top 2026-05-17 Prologue Traveling abroad and experiencing different cultures was something that I had wanted to do all my life. I've achieved the first milestone of my dream when I visited Japan in December 2025. That was my first time abroad. I really liked Japan, but it felt too familiar. I had spent most of my middle and high school years consuming…
Intentionality İsmail Efe Top 2025-06-01 I've been practicing acting with intent for a while now. I think we, as human beings, are naturally prone to turning off our heads and giving control to routines. In my case, this behavior is mostly a coping mechanism. For example, I just let go and entrust my body to routines when I am overwhelmed by responsibilities. It feels like a sacrifice, an…
Reflecting on 2024 İsmail Efe Top 2024-12-11 I honestly don't even know where to begin. 2024 has been, by far, the hardest, the most packed, the most adventurous, and the most rewarding year of my life. I was able to grow so much this year and venture into tons of different areas. Here is a rough overview of my year in semi-chronological headings. ismailefe.org While this blog is not even 1 year…
Who Do I Want to Be? İsmail Efe Top 2024-10-29 For me, there is only one answer to "What do you want to be?". I want to be content. I want to be content with what I do for a living, I want to be content with where I reside, and more importantly, I want to be content with who I am . While I do have specific plans for my future, in the end, nothing else matters if I am not content. I can't find true…
My Design Stack İsmail Efe Top 2024-10-13 If you are familiar with frontend and backend development, you've likely come across tech stacks. You can think of tech stacks as a list of tools people use to create applications. People can share their stack and others can get inspired or learn about new technologies. While it is common to find different stacks when working in the programming field. You…
5 Life Lessons İsmail Efe Top 2024-09-14 I’ve been reflecting on life for the past couple of months, and my worldview has changed a lot. I feel like I have grown as a person, and I wanted to share the lessons I’ve learned during this time and throughout my life. Here are 5 life lessons from a 20-year-old. Calling an ambulance A lot of people my age tend to question if calling an ambulance is the…
Why Use Emacs? İsmail Efe Top 2024-08-19 This article is about my relationship with Emacs as a 20 year old university student. First of all, Emacs is a text editor that has been around for a really long time, 48 years to be exact. It still gets updated regularly and has a thriving community that continuously grows. The main selling point of Emacs is how extensible it is. You can change any of it's…
My Writing Tools İsmail Efe Top 2024-07-12 I love writing, it helps me empty my mind and improve my ability to express myself. While I enjoy writing digitally the most, I have to write to a paper often because of school and other circumstances. I have a few friends that accompany me while I write. I acquired these friends throughout my life, each has their own unique stories and reasons. They make…
Hobbies İsmail Efe Top 2024-04-23 I recently found myself juggling a lot of hobbies. They take up almost all of my free time and I want to talk about them. I will mention the interesting ones as I don't want to talk about “How I like to take walks” or “How I like to discover new restaurants”. Graphic Design While I am not a professional, I did my fair share of design work. I designed and wrote my…
My Org+Pandoc Workflow İsmail Efe Top 2024-03-29 Disclaimer: Emacs is necessary for being able to do the things shown below. Excluding chats, %99 of what I write is written in org mode . I love org mode that much, but of course there are downsides. For example, while they are easy to access on my mac, if I want to view them on my iPhone, I have to jump through a bunch of hoops. And this is not the…
Arc and Firefox İsmail Efe Top 2024-03-24 I started using Firefox in 2015, I installed it because the logo looked really cool. Of course, my reasoning did not stayed the same. A few years later, I became really interested in open-source software and migrated to Linux. In Linux, there are not many viable browser options if you want something open-source. The best option at the time was Firefox, so…
Org, AWK, and Anki İsmail Efe Top 2024-03-17 Disclaimer: This blog post requires you to know what org-mode, Anki, and AWK are. I use org-mode a lot for taking notes in my classes. There are not many classes that introduce a lot of new terms. But this semester, we are taking a class called 'introduction to literature' and as you can imagine there are tons of new terms. My memory is not that good…
The Story of My Rotring 500 İsmail Efe Top 2024-03-10 I wasn't always a good student, classes didn't interest me until I started university. Before university, every school year would go the same. I would tell myself that I only had to pass my exams and tough it out until the summer vacation. Then the whole loop would start again. I would daydream during classes and study exams the night before.…
My Must Emacs Functions İsmail Efe Top 2024-03-06 I love Emacs because the possibilities are endless. What makes it so capable is definitely Emacs Lisp . Thanks to this language, countless functions have been created to meet the needs of us users. As a student who uses Emacs everyday for writing, there are several and functions that I depend on. Here are some of them. view-echo-area-messages I…
Create Files That Last İsmail Efe Top 2024-03-03 As Steph Ango mentions in his article , plain text files are more than files that have texts in them. They also symbolize a way of life. They make you face your technological habits, make you more aware of the stuff you create and encourage you to hold onto your creations. Plain Text Files If you don't know what plain text files are, they are files…
How to give good presentations İsmail Efe Top 2024-02-23 In my department we give a lot of presentations, so mastering the skill is important for a student like me. I learned a lot in my last 2 years at metu and I want to share what I learned. This guide will include tips about time management, physical environment, styling of the slides and other general information. General My first tip would be…
University File Structure İsmail Efe Top 2024-02-18 I have a very structured file management system for my university life. I save almost everything and everything that I saved has a place. Let's start with the main folder. Uni Folder I have a folder called 'uni' in my icloud drive. This folder sync between my macbook and iphone. This allows me to access my PDFs and docs with ease from either of…
RSS Solutions İsmail Efe Top 2024-02-01 My problem I love reading personal blogs, since I love them so much I decided to make one myself a couple of weeks ago. There were a lot of framework projects for personal blogs like hugo , Astro JS and Jekyll . But for different reasons I found them quite restrictive. Since I was already using Emacs for most of my writing I thought I could use org-mode to…
My Favorite Themes İsmail Efe Top 2024-01-25 I use a lot of apps that allow me to use custom themes. While most people who are into customizing their setup like to choose one theme, I like different themes for different apps. Here are the themes I use. Lighthaus Lighthaus Website I use this theme for Bear . It's real easy on the eyes and complements the bear font. Mountain Mountain Repo This theme…
My Top Album Picks For 2023 İsmail Efe Top 2024-01-18 2023 might be my busiest year yet. As a first-year in my major, I'm discovering a new city, giving tons of presentations, and balancing my relationships. As a result, I've had less time to discover and enjoy new music. In spite of this I found lots of good record to listen to. Here are my top picks of 2023. this listing is in no particular…
My EDC Essentials. İsmail Efe Top 2024-01-14 What is EDC? EDC stands for every day carry, encompassing everything from your wallet and phone to various types of screwdrivers can be included in the EDC category. Even though everyone carries some stuff with them, there are people that take great pride in their EDC. We can find those people in forums and youtube videos. Those places can be a great…
My Emacs Eye Candy İsmail Efe Top 2024-01-14 First of all, this post is directly inspired by Álvaro's work. I love his stuff and he has been a great inspiration for me. I suggest everyone to check out his stuff. In this post I am planning to walk you through my visual Emacs setup, I will use the Doom Framework . I am planning on making a detail blog post about Emacs, org-mode and how I use them,…