Cengiz Cemaloglu - My Blog

When we drop our food on the ground totally accidentally, we usually eat that food because of our hunger without even considering the possible harmful effects of that behavior. Most people believe that if we pick that food from the ground before 5 seconds passes, we can still eat that food, so is it really safe if we pick it up in time?

“The five-second rule definetely should become the zero-second rule,” said Dr. Roy M. Gulick. Eating dropped food poses a risk for ingestion of bacteria and following gastrointestinal disease, and the time the food sits on the floor does not change the risk at all. In general, if there are bacteria on the floor, they will cling to the food nearly immediately on contact. Factors that influence the risk and the rate of bacterial transfer include the type of floor; the type of food; the type of bacteria; and how long the bacteria have been on the floor.

In a study published in 2007 in The Journal of Applied Microbiology, Clemson University researchers tested salmonella placed on wood, tile or carpet, and dropped bologna on the surfaces for 5, 30 or 60 seconds. With both wood and tile, more than 99 percent of the bacteria were transferred nearly immediately, and there was no difference by the time of contact. Carpet transferred a smaller number of bacteria, again with no difference by contact time.

We all know that it’s hard to resist the temptation of a quick grab when it’s the last pieces of chips in the box, or a favorite piece of chocolate, but to prevent harmful effects and very serious sickness we must fight against our desire to eat that. After all, the five-second rule should be zero-second rule, without any exceptions.

Most people usually seek for some alternative approaches of learning; to say truth, there’re plenty of them. Besides the scientifically proven methods of learning memorizing and those six steps of understanding, there’re also various methods of learning which are helpful in most cases. Some people believe they help, some people believe they don’t and some people believe, we think they help because of our beliefs about them.

Let’s start with the music. Most people listen to music while studying or reading books, but do they know that the music they listen affects their performance and efficiency. Classical Music vs. Hard Metal is the common comparison in various experiments. Classical music is the concentration and efficiency booster while Metal music is decreasing the concentration and success level as much as possible. There are diverse tracks made by different companies to increase level of concentration, understanding or even IQ. The music is usually a classical or ambient piece with different frequency coming from right and left ears, the technique is scientifically proven also. Most people agree on the fact that it works, sometimes the music can become tiring but after all, it does what it claims to do.

Meditation

Another uncommon way of increasing the understanding and learning level is basically meditation. The oriental and exotic way of becoming more relaxed and wise lies under the golden key of being able to meditate and yoga. Some experts of Tai-Chi, Reiki, Yoga and transcendental meditation suggest students to do some meditation each day before going to school for better learning and understanding. The ways are unluckily not scientifically proven yet, but they’re becoming more and more popular with each passing minute.

The most popular of the alternative ways is the most useful one also; hypnosis. There’re many various hypnosis sessions out there, in present circumstances we don’t even need a hypnosis master; there’re lot of self-hypnosis sessions on the internet that you can find easily. Stop Being Lazy, Improve Study Habits, Stop Forgetting, Supreme Self- Confidence, Infinite Concentration etc. are just some of them. Our subconsciousness, the one which is not discovered totally is the most suggestible one by the outer effects. The people who used to those sessions are usually content and satisfied totally.

So, besides the approaches we talked about let me remind you that there’re still many different ways to use and discover to learn, literally. Besides the six facets of understanding and the common techniques of learning things, you can always use these alternative approaches as far as you are comfortable with them, and believe in them. Just believe in them, then they’ll work for you, most possibly.

I’ve chosen my blavatar. I’ve always wondered how those websites could upload an image to the browser; actually right now I’ve discovered that it’s not that hard. My favicon consists of two beaks of the same bird. I liked it because it shows the contradiction I’m going portray, and the colors are really cool. Orange and sky blue; no surprise, since the background is sky.  I’d love to see my new favicon as soon as possible. The secret point is, I think I’m going to change it anyway in the following few days, actually I’m pretty sure I’ll change it. 

Firstly I’ve designed a favicon in a website called favicon.cc which is a pretty site that helps you to create a favicon by yourself. Then you can download it and use it, but since WordPress is not allowing any favicons in formats other than .jpg or .png my first creation basically didn’t work, because it was in .ico format. It was creative, colorful, and original in its own way. There was three letters in orange, yellow and bordeaux.

 (I’m not sure if Englishmen use this word for dark red, we call that in French and Turkish that way)

Whatever, since I won’t be using that one it doesn’t matter at all. I think my orange peaks in front of the sky background really rocks!

A lot of people get in trouble when writing their essays, there is a sample from me. Most people know at least a little about Shakespeare’s five-act comedy play  A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  You can find a successfully written essay by me about the differences and similarities in terms of behaviors towards mortals, between Puck, the mischievous servant; and Oberon, the king of all fairies. Enjoy it.

Oberon & Puck towards Mortals                              

Fairy king & queen: Oberon & Titania

            In Shakespeare’s five act play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, the fairy king Oberon and his “mischievous” servant and jester Puck cause some problems for the mortals in the wood unintentionally. Oberon uses Puck to manipulate the four lovers in the wood, and both of their intentions are virtuous at the beginning, However Oberon is very careful whilst Puck is not cautious at all, also  after Puck’s mistake, unlike Oberon who genuinely tries to create human happiness, Puck seems indifferent to human suffering.

At the beginning, when Oberon decides to interfere in the course of Athenian nobles’ love, his and his servant’s intention was pretty philanthropic. Their goodhearted intention was to unite the lovers, and make all of them happy. Oberon once stated: “A sweet Athenian lady is in love/ with a disdainful youth; anoint his eyes”, this shows his upright intention. His only intention was to cause happiness, and satisfy everybody. Therefore, although Puck is a “shrewd and knavish sprite”; his intention at the beginning is just to accomplish the orders of Oberon without meaning any damage. When he stated where he saw Hermia: “And here the maiden, sleeping sound, / On the dank, and dirty ground. / Pretty soul! She durst not lie”, his virtuous meanings and intentions are easily visible. He didn’t mean to harm anybody, as Oberon didn’t mean also. Additionally, Oberon’s motivation for his good intention is his quarrel with her wife Titania, he doesn’t want them to share the same destiny with their relationship with his wife.

On the other hand when Oberon is very careful while interfering with mortals’ lives, his jester Puck despite his good intention, is not cautious at all. Oberon orders: “But do it when the next thing he espies/ May be the lady.” These words show us how caring he is. He considers each little detail when giving orders to someone. He carefully thinks about the little details and circumstances, this shows us his pedant personality. On the contrary Puck behaves reckless; when trying to fulfill Oberon’s expectations, he stated: “Through the forest have I gone/ But Athenian found none/ Weeds of Athens he doth wear/ despised the Athenian maid”. This shows his thoughtlessness as Oberon himself stated “this is thy negligence” after seeing the results, since after searching the whole forest, just to fulfill Oberon’s orders Puck puts the juice on the first Athenian noble he saw in the woods, without carefully considering. In addition, Puck’s motivation is his intent of actualizing the orders of his master as quick as possible, perhaps trying to be the best servant of Oberon.

However after Puck’s mistake, Oberon seems more concerned about the mortals’ happiness than Puck, and tries to restore the mistake, whilst Puck enjoys the pleasure of his fault brings him. After both Oberon and Puck understand what mistake did Puck do, Puck defends himself with these words: “And so far am I glad it so did sort, / As this their jangling I esteem a sport.” His words show us that he enjoys the pleasure their folly brings him, and he is pleased with what he did actually. That signifies that although his intention is charitable, his characteristic traits are going to be present in his every action. On the other hand Oberon is very concerned with the situation; trying to solve the problem, and trying to create a good rapport between them. After telling Puck how to recover his mistake, he supposed: “When they next wake, all this derision/ Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision,/ And back to Athens shall the lovers wend/ With league whose date till death shall never end.”. He is a paragon of concern. He wants to put an end to all of this derision and chaos, trying to make them happy forever by the power of divine marriage. Thus his motivation for this action is his desire of the results to be as righteous as his intention, which is to unite the lovers and create human happiness.

In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Shakespeare’s five-act comedy, the king of all fairies Oberon and his servant Puck’s mistake caused a chaos between Athenian mortals. Although some of their behaviors towards mortals and their motivations are same, there are many diverse ones also. Even if at the beginning both of their intentions were decent towards mortals, Puck, reckless, seems not caring about human suffering, unlike Oberon, cautious, who habitually tries to unite the lovers.

Sometimes games make people addicted to them, sometimes not. Drag Racing is a game by Creative Mobile that you will be addicted to, and won’t want to quit the game for a long duration since famous mobile platform Android now offers us a drag racing game with regular updates, new features and realistic controls.

There are more than 40 cars available, and players can buy performance upgrades to advance their cars; also they can challenge with other players online! With a vivid and living community, there’s even a Facebook page of the game in which gamers can follow the news and strategies about the game itself. So let’s look at the game play, and some of the game’s features: the players have controls over three different points: the gears, the accelerator pedal, and the button to active the N2O. Gamers should manage to start better than their challengers and to gear shift appropriately in order to go past the opponent in tenths of seconds. Players also can activate the N2O whenever they want, but they should take in account that it runs out quickly.

The graphics are not flawless or amazing; however the gameplay is pretty worthy. Players can battle “bosses” for harder races that will help them to earn more points to upgrade their cars, and finally they can go online to race with other players, which is maybe the best feature of the game. The cost of their car and upgrades will define their “level” that is what is used to match them up with their opponents. What makes this game pretty amazing is it takes the customization part and the race part, and puts it in a custom that works well for the processing power and small screen of a phone.

The pros and the areas of improvement can be listed as:

Pros:

Car diversity with 40+ models

Car customization options

Quality of the sound effects

Automatically recorded increasing stats

Racing online

Areas for improvement:

Red > yellow > green start lights should be improved

When looking at the Drag Racing in general, because players can buy so many cars, upgrade them and race them against the AI or online community, there is a lot here to keep players to come back for more. Therefore when the developers will add the feature of being able to specifically challenge gamers’ friends to races, the game will become even more addictive. 9 out of 10.