Abarrach’s Personal Blog

I  am a huge fan of WoW and I usually search for the vid.s about the game; both PvP and the vid.s with a story line. While I was browsing warcraft movies; I saw “Darrowshire; The Redemption of Joseph Redpath” as the featured movie of the day. Checked the comments and got that it was a rare and good piece. And I did love it too. It is a video for the song that Cranius wrote about the unfortunate story of a dead little girl Pamela; subject of a quest line in WoW based in Darrowshire; Eastern Plaguelands. I’m sure that the ones that are into WoW and FRP will love this song; even you don’t enjoy these things; the song is still a heart-touching one. Do not miss this one.

Lyrics

I’ve seen a great many things that cause a man to wonder
I’ve seen a great many things that can tear a man’s heart asunder
But the day that will not let me go, it haunts me to my burning soul
Is the day I found Pamela wandering in Darrowshire

Can you help me find my dolly?  I left her by the window sill
Have you seen my daddy?  I think he went off to war
And can you tell my family I’ve been missing them for oh so very long
Ask them why’d they leave me here alone in Darrowshire

I bring word from your sister, she’s alive and well in Winterspring
Here I found your dolly, it’s up to you to keep her safe
And your father’s coming home again.  The war for him is over
And your spirits once again may be at rest in Darrowshire

Here is the link for the video;

http://files.filefront.com/Darrowshire+720+30pwmv/;9937316;/fileinfo.html

And here is the link for the mp3 I’ve ripped from the video; still includes the fighting sounds during the guitar solo though :/

Enjoy

Juno; probably was the weirdest film I’ve seen in such a long time. I just watched it by a friends suggestion; didn’t have any idea about its oscar; or the other 38 prize wins and 25 nominations. Now that I’ve watched it; i really think the film deserves it!

For those who have no idea of the film here is a short summary. The film is about a 16 year old girl getting pregnant and taking unusual decisions up to it; apart from abortion and the reactions of the people around her till the labor.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467406/

Well; I thought what would happen if the same thing had happened here in Turkey. First of all; I must say that the reaction of the family wouldn’t be even closer to the reaction of the family in the film. The family accepted the situation maturely and left the decision about the baby up to the mom; by no means of forcing. (which honestly I don’t find very realistic; though the ideal thing to do) I believe that in exactly the same conditions; the girl would be forced for an abortion here; and there would be huge fight within the family. I don’t even want to mention how the other people would look like and gossip. The girl would be named as a “whore” by most of the people. Aye this wouldn’t be a cool situation at all here.

Watch this fairy tale asap!

As I uploaded  my last video about Shantel to youtube; I was regularly checking the comments and the view # to get an idea if people liked it or not. I tried to do that again the other day but I couldn’t connect to the site. My browser was stopping at “Connecting..” O-oh! That’s bad news! If your browser stops at connecting.. when you try to reach a site here in Turkey; it’s most likely to be banned and you’ll get a  404 error or a page saying that the site is banned from now on soon. I hoped for the best; because I really wanted to know the thoughts of people about the video; but eventually I saw the page we Turkish people are familiar to see. Youtube was banned.

The reason behind banning is that -according to the court-; a video on the site was insulting Atatürk; the Great Leader of the Modern Turkish Nation.  Well; this is enough to show the judgement was correct. So I stand by the decision; but not the application. I still don’t get why the whole site is banned; it’s not that the site owners are uploading this video; any user could do that. I believe that; restricting only the page containing the video we are talking about of the site would be enough.

There is an interesting speculation about the “real” reason of the banning though. It says that youtube was banned because of the demand by TurkTelekom; (the one and the only internet provider in Turkey) because it was literally “eating” the bandwith. I must add at this point that; TurkTelekom is really providing a crappy internet connection and its bandwith is really really unsufficient. When the case is seen from this perspective; I guess they might be helpless enough to organize such a weird thing. Yet; I really want youtube to come online asap after the video is removed. Just cannot wait to read about the comment!

Aye; so there we were at the concert in Babylon! It was quite a night to remember. In my honest opinion; shantel did a perfect job; he made everyone jump and sing all together; which I think the most important things in a live performance.

And so here is the video of the show as I promised. (Must add that I worked my ass out to get my handy inside the concert) The original one is 25 mins long but mostly nothing good to see; just the songs; so I decided to edit a bit and put in the parts that worth seeing. I must also say that the video quality is not perfect as it was hard to both jump, dance and record; but the audio quality should be fine; I rendered the video at top audio quality. ENJOY!

http://rapidshare.com/files/98627091/shantelvid.rar

No no; it’s not what you think! It won’t be a guide like the millions out there in the web. I want to make a course about wordpress as simple as possible and for the real rookies. The ones who have never met a html or php code before in his/her life. You see; most of the time when you read an article about “Getting Started with Wordpress“; it writes; after we upload the “wordpress” folder to our host… Now hold on for a second! How can someone who has no idea of making a website can possibly understand this and upload to the host? I also didn’t know anything about this stuff a bit and searched like a lot and so here I am to share the wealth.

So instead of explaining the things you can do after you set your wordpress based website up; this writing will be about how to set the website step by step; if you already know about this and looking for something more proffesional; just ignore this.

So here we go;

What do we need?

• Wordpress (This is the english version. You can find wordpress in your language; just google it like wordpress <your language>. I’m sure you can find wordpress in your language.)
• Hosting Service that supports php, mysql and ft. You can use freehostia; I also used it publishing this site. Just sign up for free if you don’t want to pay at the moment; your site url is going to be like thenameyouchose.freehostia.com.
• Filezilla A ftp program that we can upload files to our site with.

Log into your freehostia account. You can see the “FTP Manager” link; there click it to set up a ftp server for your site. (For other host; it should also have a similar name.) Choose a name username, a password and set your access page as your thenameyouchose.freehostia.com. You‘ll see the ftp server host URL at the very bottom. Write those down because they will really be needed. Here is how it looks like.

Now while you are here, let’s set your msql database too. Return to the main management page and click “Mysql Databases”. You’ll see a page similar to the ftp server’s page. Delete the one that is already here; because you won’t be able to set another mysql server up with this free version. You can see if there is one or not under the “Database Name / Database Username”. After deleting; enter the required information and click “add sql database”. Write down your database name, password and database server’s URL on a paper. This one looks like this.

Ok; we have set everything we had to on our site. Now we have to upload our wordpress folder to our domain. First of all; install filezilla and run the program. At the very top you’ll see the “main computer”, “username”, “password” and “port”. Fill the main computer blank with your site’s url; thenameyouchose.freehostia.com; in the case you are using freehostia’s free offer. You’ve already written down username and password for the ftp server we have created; so fill “usename” and “password” with these information too. And for the last; write 21 in the “port” gap. Connect to your site. Here we go; we are ready to upload the wordpress directory to our site. Open your wordpress folder in filezilla (main page; left side) and send the files inside to your domain by selecting and pressing enter, or just double-clicking. IMPORTANT: If you send the wordpress as a folder to your site; to view the site you’ll have to type thenameyouchose.freehostia.com/foldername . Mine is like that because I’m actually running 2 blogs on the same domain so this was handy (: Be careful though; as sometimes file transfer fails and you have o upload the same file again; just be patient we are there!

Allright; you have also finished uploading; what now? A final step: log onto your site from your browser. type thenameyouchose.freehostia.com. You’ll be asked the following; “Database Name”, “Username”, “Password”, “Database Server”. (There might be another thing to fill at the very last; but you don’t need to fill that just leave it). Fill the “Database Name” and “Username” with the username we have created from mysql page. Fill the “Password” with the password you chose. And finally type in your mysql server’s url. (Check the picture to see where it writes.) Then click OK.

Well; congrats you have made it. Your wordpress based site ready to be used; managed; written on; whatever you wish to make with it. As I said at the beginning; my work was till here; the rest is to customize your site and there are millions of guides to explain those. You can find them in your language with a fast search in google.

Hope this helped you guys; as these were the hardest parts to accomplish for me. Take care; check back often.

I was surfing today to check some e-books and I’ve seen the “Interesting Facts” one. Weird things always tend to stay in my mind; so I gave it a try; and yeah; they were really interesting. Some bizarre ones;

During World War II, condoms were used to cover
rifle barrels from being damaged by salt water as the
soldiers swam to shore.

According to psychologists, the shoe and the foot are
the most common sources of sexual fetishism in Western
society.

The word Spain means “the land of rabbits.”

Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on
two continents.

The list continues like this; there are 500 facts to be seen! Check it out;

http://www.free-ebooks.net/files/722InterestingFacts.pdf

It all started when we decided to go to Babylon for the “Oldies but Goldies” party. I was OK with it; as the music was going to be frr gom Muse and etc.; similaenres to mine though not exactly the type I loved. Anyways; the important thing was to have a good time and dance; meet some new people and get rid of the stress of the ordinary frustrating city life.

But unfortunately when we get to Babylon we learned that there were no “Oldies but Goldies” party any time soon. Instead what we saw was a Shantel concert. I had no idea about who he was; or what kind of music he made; but my friend seemed to know lots about it. He said that Shantel was #1 with his disco music. To be honest; at that time I just wanted to turn my back and leave instead of paying money for a concert; I had no idea of. But as I said before; the important thing was to be together with everyone and spend some quality time so I said what the heck; should try everything.

And so we got the tickets; I was still in doubt if I did good getting the ticket or not; but there was one way to understand it; listening some songs.

Biography

Shantel’s rather breezy trip-hop productions suffer little considering their stated pop inclinations. Though born in Frankfurt, Stefan Hantel was introduced to clubbing and the music life while studying graphic design in Paris. Back in his hometown he opened the Lissania club, one of the few bastions of earthy grooves in a country obsessed with techno. A noted port-of-call for similar minds like Kruder & Dorfmeister and Howie B., the club’s prosperity led to Shantel’s first album, Club Guerilla. Released locally by Infracomm, the album was given a 1997 American reissue by Shadow Records, along with Auto-Jumps and Remixes (a collection of EPs from his own Essay label). Shantel signed to Studio !K7 for his second full LP, Higher than the Funk. It earned high praise around the world, even hitting Spin magazine’s end-of-the-year charts. Great Delay was issued in spring 2001.

When I got home; I downloaded the most popular songs of him at once. Guess what; I’ve never heard anything so joyful in my life. It literally makes you want to dance. Sota was even able to break my Monday Morning Depression (:

Here is the full album “Disco Partizani” Enjoy!

http://rapidshare.com/files/78878138/Shantel_-_Disko_Partizani.rar
Finally one good news; I will be taking my handy cam to the show on March 8; so guess can provide some videos after I edit them a bit! Check back often!

This Saturday I had the opportunity to go see a movie. I was not able to go to any movies lately mostly because of my finals and stuff. There were two choices ahead of me and my friends. It was either Recep İvedik; a comedy film or The Mist; a horror film.

Since the comedy films in Turkey tend to be seen on TV like in a year or so after they are in vision; we thought that going to a horror film would be better for us. ( I already wanted to go to the horror movie; but since we were a group of people; we had to go see something which everyone would be happy to see. )

Anyways; we had our meal and set back to watch our film! The frigging advertorials and trailers took our 30+ minutes! Was pretty boring to be honest. And so my thoughts about the movie are;

After the first half; I was swearing myself! The Mist lacked at everything which a horror movie should have; no thrill; no excitement; no action; no up-to-date special effects; nothing! The movie was a 3rd class horror movie out of Hollywood which you could find every night by zapping few times. It was really not worthing the money we have spent. We have even made joke of the film during the whole break. But all of these were valid till the second half had begun.

Belief divides them, mystery surrounds them, but fear changes everything.

In the second half; with standards and expectations lowered; I must say that the movie literally punched me in the face. I’ve figured out that; The Mist; was not a common horror movie with having only blood and gore in it. In fact the movie was deeper. It was arguing themes like religion, anarchy and hope.

The movie has shown how easy it was to make people believe in something and to control them; when you scare them enough; and how messiahs (or the ones that claim they are) can get power in chaotic situations.

The movie has shown how quick, people are turning into fierce murderers when you take law and order out of the equation.

And one thing; the movie stresses a lot is that one should never lose hope; no matter how bad the situation seems; there is always a probability that the things may change.

With all these in mind; I can say in full confidence that The Mist worth the time and the money I’ve spent. To be honest; I was not expecting a movie this deep in the main idea; but I’m glad it was. But hey; it is Stephen King afterall.

Before beginning one thing should be cleared. Hijab and headscarf are two completely different things; at least in Turkey. Headscarf is being widely used in Anatolia as a part of Turkish culture and can be seen on everywomen. Hijab; on the other hand; is worn by a limited group of women with different styles depending on the islamic group that the women belong to and a tradition in Arabic culture. One visiual difference is; Hijab completely covers the hair; whereas headscarf has no purpose like that; just a piece of clothing used for to protect the head from sun mostly. In this writing what i’ll be talking about; as it can be understood from the title; is Hijabs.

Had to give this information; because the two piece of clothing are mostly mixed.

The hijab problem has been the subject to one of the most fiercest arguments in Turkey in the last 40 years. It has become a problem; since after it got banned in the universities; a part of the islamic side demanded the allowence of hijabs. In this time interval hijab was banned and allowed many times. Here is how the things have developed in time:

Hijab was first banned in 1967 in Ankara University; and became a problem then. Year by year it has become a popular arguement which everyone has commented on.

An important thing to note is that whenever the islamic parties got power in the government; the hijab problem surfaced again in the years between 1967 and 1980; till the military coup in 1980.

Another important world event which is highly related to the hijab problem and actually one of the main reasons why the hijab became a chaos in our present day is the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. It is a known fact today that the Molla’s send hijabs for the teenagers in Turkey for free; confusing the mind of the youth. That is why the hijab problem is sometimes called as the “imported problem.” The government in that time has done nothing to prevent this; as it was also matching with their cause.

For many journalists; one of things that leaded to the military coup; (the main reason of the coup and how Turkey was used by the imperialist powers is the subject of a whole different writing; hope i can write on that too sometime.) is the speech of Necmettin Erbakan; the radical islamic president of Turkey at that time. “İmam Hatips (high schools that are providing religion based education; and where all of the teenage girls are wearing hijabs) are our back yards” was what he has said. This was exactly when the hijabs became a political symbol and the great exploitation of religion in the education was surfaced.

With the speeches like this and the endless deaths because of the fights between left and right sided university teenagers, triggering the army; military has taken control of the government in September 12, 1980. Right after the coup; YÖK (Higher Education Board) banned Hijab in all of the universities.

The political party of ANAP who came in charge in 1983 and was against the ban; prepared tons of new laws about the Hijab; more than ever made till their government. Again in this period of time hijab became the symbol of religious movements and political islam.

After 1983 hijab is banned; and allowed several times according to the political views of the governments present in those days.

At last; in 2002 hijab was banned in every university in Turkey; leaving the society polarized as either; against hijab or side with hijab.

And now in 2008; this problem is up again; hijab is being tried to be let free; history is just about the repeat itself.

Now the question that needs to be asked is why was hijab banned in the first place? According to the turkish constitutional law; any kind of political symbol is forbidden in the universities. This is for to keep the peace and minimize the fights between the groups. It is not a hijab-specific rule. As an example; I cannot wear a t-shirt about communism and get into the university; that is also forbidden. The problem starts when the people claim that; it is personal freedom and not a political symbol. I guess after reading about the historical events; about who were behind all these this doesn’t sound as innocent as it is tried to be.

In my honest opinion; hijab is really a political symbol; brought up from time to time, that remains as an unsolved problem on purpose for to be used by the islamic side’s politics over and over again; the victim perspective. A last minute card to be played to make waves on the masses. Making people feel like victims on this debate; making them support the cause and vote for the politicians who are using this.

But what is more and deeper is that; hijab symbolizes bigotry for me. The narrow mind that classifies every unusual behavior as a sin. The obstacle in the path of a developing country. The reason why one of the greatest empires in history stood behind while everyone was moving forward; and finally lead to its devastation.

Just to remind again; this law is not only for hijab wearers. It is for ALL university students. For the sake of the peace; for the sake of development and for the sake of the turkish nation; hijab needs to stay banned.