a few weeks ago i wrote about how i’m all-in on AI at work but barely using it in my own life… and now i have some progress.

i cycled through many systems and tools, including many variations of AI implementations but they all tend to shape into something that covers the work area 100% but personal area maybe 5% at best. my main problems were inbox zero, follow ups, personal relationships, my personal commitments and curiosities, ideas, accountability on creative and health related goals… and many more. but this time, i blocked a whole sunday to solve this problem and for the last 9 days i’m using what i built that day.

it’s basically an LLM living on a cheap VPS, communicating with me over telegram and has the context of everything basically. it uses git version control to commit the memory, the logs, journal, and many other context files multiple times a day, so that i can spin up a new instance from any point of time in its life. i can even build other tools to map out the progress during its lifetime…

now, the key part was/is how to shape it of course… the shape of its soul. at first i started with some existing tools out there but they were too opinionated which would take too much time to understand and shape to my own needs.

i named it daimon… the stoic concept of your inner guiding spirit, the part of you that knows your pattern. also a nod to eudaimonia, being in good standing with that spirit. felt right.

anyways… i will share more in time, the more i experience it.

side note: i do not like treating my life, a single whole thing, having personal and work, two separate big areas… however, how to put that into words when needed etc. is another topic i’d like to dig into, later…

i wish it had more drum-n-bass but still a great companion for a focused early-morning session… whatever you want to get focused on… this album inspires me to play guitar better and dig deeper into jazz.

a few days ago I arrived at something… “curiosity in action.”

and then fahri shares a note about Punchdrunk… the immersive theater company. you walk into a dark building, no one tells you where to go. you choose which room, which character to follow. you make your own story.

kendi açılarımdan seyrettiğim bir tiyatro… seyirci olmak yerine şahit oluyorsun.

the verb state of curiosity is not easy… may become past tense in chaos, or, if you’re lucky, present tense in wonder. still, worth it.

a few years ago I was trying to build my personal website around the concept of “from expectation to exception”… transitioning from a state of expectation to a state that creates exceptions… sometimes beautiful ones, but most often disappointments, to self.

now I see what was missing… the fuel, the energy source. curiosity in action. curiosity as a verb.

…lately i’ve been thinking about the definition of done, completed, finished, ended, dead, resolved, closed, etc. …all seem to have the same meaning but there i see little nuance differences… ‘finished’ feels crafted, ‘ended’ feels abrupt, ‘dead’ is final with no sequel, ‘resolved’ implies there was tension, ‘closed’ is bureaucratic… but ‘done’… done leaves room… in turkish i catch myself choosing ‘tamamladım’ over ‘bitirdim’… one means i made it whole… the other means i made it stop…

i wonder if there’s a better or even a closer version for english, for the same meaning “i made it whole”?

i love how this brush pen gives me constrained freedom… i have many notebooks full of this style. i love it for a few reasons; meditative process, the satisfaction gained from discovering the pen’s limits and capabilities…

first time with oil pastels… a beautiful set, gift from my wife. i always had this idea of blunt/brute characters, raw, big and bulky and suddenly caught by you while doing something not so interesting things, mundane activities and staring at you, the spectator…

i did some other sketches for the idea here and there, way back, like 5-6 years ago…

this idea keeps coming back and i like it… and having these, many of these on the walls excites me a lot…

David (David Henzel, https://henzel.com/) introduced me to the notion of personal core values, mission, vision etc, 10 years ago… and since then i had many variations of them, and with each iteration/change i got even more excited about the idea of having connected core values written… sometimes they reflected my ideals but sometimes they reflected the current state…

now, after ten years, finally i have something both the ideal and the current… something that i wish i had all the way back in my life, happy to have it today, and excited to be having it in the future: “Curiosity in action”…

wonder, question, curiosity… fueling the action itself… then fueling the curiosity itself…

Always doing your best is easy. Knowing and accepting that your best is not always the same? That was hard, and life changing.

a full biological brain… copied neuron-by-neuron… driving a simulated body for the first time. not animation.

gives me altered carbon vibes… but how far are we from the self part of this?

In the X thread, someone already asked, “That fly has no idea it is in a simulation. Do we?”

what if you could clone your actual neural wiring and put that copy to work? not a chatbot that sounds like you… a you that thinks like you. running in a sandbox. would it be painful for it? would it be painful for you? could you keep someone you’ve lost… running?

There has never been a better time to multi-task ever in human history… To all multi-taskers out there, salut!

started with Escape from Pluto by William Oberfield… a short sci-fi story, liked it more than expected.

one thing led to another. searched the author, found his other stories, stumbled on the golden age of science fiction… and then kept digging.

then I found this thing called podcast theater. there are a bunch of science fiction audio drama shows on Apple Podcasts.

this is what I’m doing this week.

also excited about the possibilities of this new thing, audio drama podcasts… sound design, music, story, cover art, … so many interests in one place. these kind of things get me excited. a lot.

Clarity may not be the goal but a tool only… Such as the creativity, too. Not sure if both can be used at the same time though. When you have clarity, you lack creativity, and vice versa.

Not sure if it’s clarity versus creativity… Maybe it’s about the ratio..

This morning, I felt this amazing excitement, inspiration, energy… The music I’m listening to felt different, the things I read felt different, the things I’m doing felt different. Why? Don’t know… But here’s, as far as I can tell, what was unique about it:

• Sunday calmness… Even though I work all the time, the optionality of Sunday, is a bit different I guess
• From yesterday, I forgot to close the window in my office at night and the AC was not working from the day before… When I jumped in to the office early in the morning, it was cold, very cold… I immediately turned on the AC and closed the window but it took 2-3 hours until I was warm inside… I had my hands in my pockets as much as I can…
• Amazing new music discovery
• I was multi-tasking, the great sin… yes, I’m a sinner…
• I was in the mood of “whatever I can do today, it’s all good and a plus” — the optionality, again

my new tool, Parect… it’s an evolution of both Pare and Defect, merged into one single tool. I did some simplifications but also at the same time introduced complexity. I can say that Pare and Defect are now retired. they’re like the pens I used to like but now they are put in a drawer, to be forgotten. they are not dead… waiting to be discovered, to be useful again.

I discovered this album in my Apple Music homepage. There was a section named “Modern Classical”… I didn’t know what it meant and still don’t… I started listening to this album, and started writing imprisoned by the formula… it was good… felt good. I can’t say whether it was this album that put me into the flow or not but I can say it was one of the factors, for sure…

I’m not sure what this genre is… It was listed under modern classical but the album’s genre is also labeled as electronic… Not sure how to label it, but listening to this and seeing it listed under modern classical makes me want to go deeper into modern classical…

The track Two Pages is something… Hits hard and somehow makes it feel like having fireworks exploding in my brain… It’s an amazing track…

Bruce Brubaker and Max Cooper… Who are these guys? Definitely worth a research.

The formula, the systems we build… I don’t think that this is only for societies, but also valid for individuals. Is it possible that I am imprisoned by the systems I setup and run for myself? Whether it be a productivity system, a routine, a habit, a mindset even?

I do think that systems provide value, for sure, but only if they’re designed and implemented for surprise, not efficiency. When it’s for optimization, you lose something… and you don’t know what you lose until you know.

When the formula and systems you are running stop generating questions and new impulses for discovery, than it turns into ouroboros…

What the author said about bookstores, the same goes for music stores too… It’s been ages since I have been into one… There are some indie stores everywhere, probably, but in Bodrum, I don’t know of any… Actually you know what, I never searched for it. The conformity I fell for replaced the inspiration and joy of discovery…

Now, where did I stumble upon this article? I don’t know and don’t remember… Maybe it was Feedly… But I loved it… and this is how webrings worked ~30 years ago and I used to loved them all… I used to have this webpage where I reviewed metal albums, I was at high-school… I was a member of a webring, don’t remember the name, but I used to have their banner on my website, on each load it was showing other members of the webring, in round-robin fashion, linking to their website… It was amazing. I don’t remember how many new things I learned, discovered, and inspired by that… It was huge… I used to have bookmarks of those many webrings. It was still a controlled experience but not like the current day’s Instagram and X kind of algorithms… It was nice… better actually.

The conformity I fell for replaced the inspiration and joy of discovery… The conformity I fell for removed impulses… Clarity is given, creativity is taken…

Questions of the day…

• How to be comfortable but not too much?
• How to use patterns and algorithms but allow for deviations and exceptions?
• How to seek clarity but allow for a bit of fog at the same time?

I have so much to say about The Gathering… and starting to share from my least favorite album of theirs, but still great though. The opening track, When Trust Becomes Sound, creates high expectations from the rest of the album but it fails to deliver unfortunately. Capital of Nowhere and The West Pole are other good tracks from the album… I love this band, with their lows and highs, with old and new members… The way they’re experimenting with the genre, their openness for new things… respect!

what if I merge Pare and Defect into a new tool? a background image, layered defects and glitches, posterize, shapes and colors… tempting…

The gap is real. I feel it every time I make something. Gap is disturbing… and it’s been years, not just “the first couple of years”… My taste knows where I want to be, my hands aren’t there yet… Maybe I’m not giving my all? don’t know… The big gap, doesn’t seem to be shrinking to me, but still…

StumbleUpon… I used to love this browser toolbar around 2004-2005… The first 2-3 years were so good, all quality and unexpected stumbles. So much inspiration I got from its golden years… Definitely a gem for me back at the time.

It would be great to have the original StumbleUpon around these days…

Web Archive · Wikipedia

The album that introduced me to electronic music… A fascinating pivot. After 27 years, I still love it and still relevant in terms of production and genre… Well, might be a bit strange but this album made me like and listen to Depeche Mode and understand what they’re doing… Ordinary Days, So Much Is Lost and In All Honesty are my favorite tracks.

This is it, I guess. One of the foundational pillars of me, myself… As a goal, an identity, an idea, a vision…

This came to me when I was sharing my feedback and thoughts to my friend, Fahri. He has this amazing sentence on his new website’s home page (not public yet), which gave me the goose bumps…

I had the original CD, with all its booklet, 30 years ago… I don’t remember where I bought it or got it from. Maybe it was a gift? I don’t remember… However, the artwork by Holly Warburton was amazing, so inspiring. I did not have a walkman disc-player at the time so I was only able to listen to it at home… The track “Once Solemn” is probably one of the most listened tracks in my life. Paradise Lost was such an interesting band for me until their album Symbol of Life… After that, somehow it just disappeared for me… I had this t-shirt of theirs, which I couldn’t find online anymore. I used to wear it all the time in my high school years…

Sidenote: Sully Erna from Godsmack, his vocals always reminds me Nick Holmes’ Icon era

Some may say that “always doing” is an escape… On the contrary, taking action is facing the unknown, the challenge, the unbearable… and then learning from it.

Instead of focusing purely on dancefloor, there’s a narrative thing within their sound and arrangements. It’s warm, rhythmic parts and reverb heavy, psych-rock sounding guitars moving me a lot.

Around Light, West (2020), the live trio was:

• Edmund Kenny — vocals, electronics
• Harvey Grant — keys
• Lawrence Howarth — guitar

The lineup has evolved since but this is the era I fell for.

They have an amazing live performance on KEXP from 2025. The songs played there I’m hearing the first time, but loved it all.

This other live performance on Aire Libre is the live performance for Light, West. It’s amazing for sure. From what I’m hearing and seeing, they seem to treat their live sets like an improvised jam session, which I love.

Only listened Light, West, from beginning to end, multiple times. But they’re already in my top electronica artists for sure.

study/practice on Logic and Serum. 28 seconds of an intro to something… ends abruptly but this is just a sketch.

Another favorite of mine… almost 30 years after, still can feel it.

Exactly… The moment my brain and body moves from stress to curiosity I feel powerful and capable. This is hard… and fun.

The second time I’m using my new tool: defect… This time grabbed a photo from Unsplash…

A new discovery… I stumbled upon them via Apple Music’s “You Might Also Like” section on Monolink’s Under Darkening Skies album page. First listen is complete and loved it… Especially the way they have repeating and hypnotic rhythms accompanied with short and repeating guitar riffs makes me enter flow state easily…

Another new series with a new tool: defect. With this new one now I have two tools — defect and pare. Both built for a specific purpose, specific output style, and just enough parameters to play.

I’m getting more familiar with p5.js each time I work with it, still not happy with the outcome though… I need more hours to get better at it. I did these when listening to Under Darkening Skies.

This album contains one of the best opening songs ever, Laura… Spent hours and hours listening to this album… and not just as a background music to doing something else but also active listening too, a rare act these days.

I did the sketch in the followed-up post with Pixelmator. Too many tools, too many options… more than I needed for the style I was going after. So for this one, I built my own tool. Very simple, very limited. Constraints as a feature.

More on the tool itself soon.

Feels good when I give what I have, and then a bit more… Whether it’s material, spiritual and intellectual.

Everyone can cook but we still eat out… It’s mostly even more expensive to eat out and we love it all… It’s about connection, skill and taste variety, socializing and sharing… Having the means and the skills of cooking yourself did not eliminate eating out, not at all. On the contrary, it put the experience, eating out, into a more meaningful place.

AI gave us all a kitchen… Amazing. Now, lets cook ourselves some food and then meet at a restaurant, occasionally… Or invite each other for dinner.

I’m grateful that I am surrounded by talented, hard working and smart people. My family, friends, colleagues… all of them.

One of the most important things I can show my children is how valuable this is. Not to take it for granted. To notice it, appreciate it, and learn from it.

Scenes from the future… A city, a device, a creature, an alien… Not the full story. Just a glimpse.

Something I’m already familiar with my own body of work… In-complete shots.

That’s all I need. The imagination kicks in immediately, trying to complete the picture.

Thanks to AI, my feeds are filling up with these sci-fi shots… More and more, every day. A glimpse, then a spark… Like a puzzle, like sudoku. My mind wants to solve it, fill in the gaps, build the world around that single frame. But still, as another incomplete frame maybe.

Inspired and restless, in a good way…

Opens his eyes to a boring version of himself, the real one. Sits up and then hears himself saying it, with all its falseness and fake emphasis. A heat, an explosive heat begins to crawl up from his guts to his chest, then his neck and then his brain. His face heats up, his ears start getting tingles. He covers his face with both hands and sighs…

The process over the product…

Somehow became the soundtrack of the third book of Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King… Again, I was at high school at the time. My most tasteful years I guess… Ruin and Misery, Raven Claws, Opium, and Mephisto are my favorite tracks from the album.

Listening to Anathema for exactly 30 years… Too many things to say… But this one… This is my after 11pm album, which I rarely stay awake. The song giving the album its title, The Optimist, is my favorite…

“The great escape in the slow lane…”

What a year it was, 2024… For sure a year to remember…

With all the things that happened, it was one of the most creatively productive years of my life… Completed ~10 various size sketchbooks… I can see it coming again… Sketches, music, guitar, writing, code, …

Not certainty, not perfection… just enough.

Procrastination is the tool that keeps the state of vagueness still… Clarity, knowledge, definition… These need focus, persistence, and willingness to dig deep into the unknown. Chasing the unknown while being at peace with it. Dreaming without sleep. Assuming without attachment…

Another one from my high-school years… My last two years in high-school passed with this album in the background… It also introduced me to the book itself, The Mind’s I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett… Time to time, skimmed through the book but never able to stick with it… Maybe this time it’s the right time?

Not sure though if Dark Tranquillity was inspired by this book when making the album or not… Still one of the top best albums I’ve ever listened, that’s for sure!

Side-note; Niklas Sundin, credited with guitars, music, lyrics and cover art, is definitely a source of inspiration and a gem for me…

One of my top three albums from Opeth… The others in the top three are Morningrise and Damnation…

When in doubt, in void… Work works… Always worked for me.

No need to make people bigger, better, or greater than they actually are. And no need to make them smaller, worse, or lesser either.

But still… I fail at this.

Talking too much cultivates fear and doubt, doing cultivates love.

Execution is love.

I’m human. I feel envy sometimes. But when I notice it, I remind myself of this: someone out there might be looking at my side of the fence and thinking the same thing.

It doesn’t matter how green or dry either side is. What matters is whether you’re taking care of your own part.

That’s it.

I’m Mert Hurturk, a software developer and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience building things on the web. I live between Bodrum and Iznik, Türkiye, with my wife and twin daughters. Beyond the code, I’m drawn to creativity in all its forms — generative art, playing guitar, drawing, writing, game design… any medium I can get my hands on, really. I believe in shipping, momentum, and the joy of just keeping things moving.

Flames bursting, energy is high, a bit chaotic but in a good way… Inspired by The End.

High positive energy boost drink! A great way to start the day sprinting and smiling…

It’s amazing how fast things are changing with AI and our progression with the way we’re utilizing it in our daily lives… Even though I’m going full-throttle at work in terms of utilization, I’m still much behind in my personal life…

Some areas I keep thinking about:

• If I could keep a better log of what I’m working on at frequent intervals, at the end of the day I could have more to share and feel more accomplished
• If I had a record of all the things we talk about, discuss, debate… I could extract more snippets to share and think about later
• A way to actually get through my read-later and watch-later backlogs instead of just growing them forever

Glitch sketches inspired by Nordic Gothic. RGB channel separation, scan lines, floating debris… The visual equivalent of that distorted guitar tone and mood.

Takes me back to my high school years, when I enjoyed the music I was listening to the most. Put a cassette into my walkman (don’t remember if it was Aiwa or Sony, but it could auto-switch sides) and it played on loop while I walked up and down Istiklal street in Istanbul. A to B, B to A, A to B, …the same album, same songs, for hours…

I love it when such a simple idea (not necessarily means simple execution) puts me in flow and makes me spend minutes and minutes on it… glitchycam.com

Some p5.js sketches I did while listening to Becoming X… It’s tough to say though, “I sketched”… I explained my vision, chose the colors, the shapes, the story, the style, etc. and Claude wrote the script… Don’t know exactly how to share these yet… “I directed” maybe? Like a director…

Moody and moving at the same time… Amazing soundtrack for a rainy focused and energic day!

A new version of intromert.com. Built on Astro and hosted on Cloudflare. Setup with Claude Code.

Nothing special… but much closer to my original idea, “from expectation to exception”…

Stream of thoughts, snippets, anything…

Sometimes detailed, sometimes superficial, sometimes fictional…

Here’s to the many…