Hasan Tayyar Beşik

[paper] The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:00:00 +0000

From CHI '08: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 5-10, 2008 · Florence, Italy

Paper https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/1357054.1357072

We performed an empirical study to investigate whether thecontext of interruptions makes a difference. We found thatcontext does not make a difference but surprisingly, people completed interrupted tasks in less time with no differencein quality. Our data suggests that people compensate forinterruptions by working faster, but this comes at a price:experiencing more stress, higher frustration, time pressureand effort. Individual differences exist in the managementof interruptions: personality measures of openness toexperience and need for personal structure predict disruption costs of interruptions. We discuss implicationsfor how system design can support interrupted work

Also kind of a related tool: Interruptions impact on deep work simulator

music: Strudel works - Geography of Afterlight

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Ambient Strudel studies. Two tracks album. Inspired by broad characteristics of Rafael Anton Irisarri's works. See track info for the generation code.

Geography of Afterlight by H-T-B

Visual work - A ronin demo

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 10:59:00 +0000

Below is a Ronin work. Ronin is an amateur open source procedural image processing tool by an inspriational creator.

Ronin is a procedural graphics tool designed to automate simple graphical tasks, like resizing, cropping, coloring, and generating algorithmic images. It interprets a minimal dialect of LISP, look at the examples to better understand how this all works.

The code below is evaluated via a Ronin js version https://hundredrabbits.github.io/Ronin/.

; RESIDUAL ORBIT
(clear)
(resize 2400 1600)

(def f (get-frame))
(def x 1069)
(def y 650)

; atmospheric field
(fill (rect 0 0 f:w f:h)
  (gradient (line 0 0 0 f:h)
    ("#03040b" "#101936" "#3b214b" "#070914")))

; distant horizon
(fill (rect 0 1040 f:w 560) "#070b19")
(stroke (line 0 1040 f:w 1040) "#e05691" 3)
(stroke (line 0 1052 f:w 1052) "#4fb9b0" 1)

; spectral atmosphere
(fill (circle x y 520)
  (gradient (line x (sub y 520) x (add y 520))
    ("#121636" "#512650" "#091126")))

(fill (circle x y 390)
  (gradient (line x (sub y 390) x (add y 390))
    ("#e55d91" "#ffb47e" "#23204a")))

; eclipse
(fill (circle (add x 8) (add y 6) 245) "#050610")
(stroke (circle x y 252) "#ff6e9f" 4)
(stroke (circle (sub x 9) (add y 3) 246) "#58cfc0" 2)

; orbital traces
(stroke (ellipse x y 570 170) "#24556c" 3)
(stroke (ellipse x y 510 118) "#7a3565" 2)
(stroke (arc x y 540 (rad 198) (rad 326)) "#ff6e9f" 6)
(stroke (arc x y 492 (rad 12) (rad 142)) "#61d6c0" 4)
(stroke (arc x y 430 (rad 214) (rad 304)) "#d8ffe9" 2)
(stroke (arc x y 358 (rad 42) (rad 154)) "#ff947d" 2)

; measurement rays
(stroke (line x y 80 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 240 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 400 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 560 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 720 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 880 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1040 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1160 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1240 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1360 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1520 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1680 1600) "#19405b" 2)
(stroke (line x y 1840 1600) "#28556a" 2)
(stroke (line x y 2000 1600) "#19405b" 2)

; floor bands
(stroke (line 0 1100 f:w 1100) "#1d3450" 2)
(stroke (line 0 1180 f:w 1180) "#1d3450" 2)
(stroke (line 0 1290 f:w 1290) "#23465c" 2)
(stroke (line 0 1435 f:w 1435) "#1b304e" 2)
(stroke (line 0 1580 f:w 1580) "#23465c" 2)

; signal crosshair
(stroke (line (sub x 670) y (sub x 310) y) "#4fb9b0" 2)
(stroke (line (add x 310) y (add x 670) y) "#e05691" 2)
(stroke (line x (sub y 670) x (sub y 310)) "#e05691" 2)
(stroke (line x (add y 310) x (add y 670)) "#4fb9b0" 2)

; central residual pulse
(stroke (circle x y 92) "#d8ffe9" 2)
(stroke (circle x y 76) "#e05691" 2)
(fill (circle x y 8) "#d8ffe9")

; CRT veil
(stroke (line 0 1090 f:w 1090) "#111b32" 1)
(stroke (line 0 1110 f:w 1110) "#111b32" 1)
(stroke (line 0 1130 f:w 1130) "#111b32" 1)
(stroke (line 0 1150 f:w 1150) "#111b32" 1)
(stroke (line 0 1170 f:w 1170) "#111b32" 1)

(export)

Spatial Kata Notation: writing kata so you can see where you are facing

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 09:30:00 +0000

Karate kata is spatial. You turn, you step, you change facing, and the floor pattern (embusen) is half the work of remembering a form. Most of my notes after class were still paragraphs: technique names in order, with facing lost in the sentence if I remembered to write it down at all.

I wanted something I could read on a phone between sets, paste into a chat, or print without opening an app. That became Spatial Kata Notation (SKN): a plain-text tree for kata and bunkai. The site and generator live in an open repo here:

https://github.com/hasantayyar/spatial-kata-notation

Live docs and the tool: https://hasantayyar.github.io/spatial-kata-notation/

This is an early, working documentation site plus a generator for Karate teachers and students.

If you train, try writing one short section of a kata you know in SKN after class. If the facing line feels redundant, good: that means you already had it clear. If you keep correcting the facing line, the notation is doing its job.

A single move looks like this:

+-- [STEP → N] -------------- (Face: N)
|   ├─ Stance : [R] Z-D
|   ├─ Action : Right Age-uke (J)
|   └─ Key    : Rise under attack angle

Multi-beat transitions nest under one move:

+-- [MAWATTE → E] ----------- (Face: E)
|   ├─ Beat 1 : [R] Z-D
|   │   └─ Action : Right Gedan-barai (G)
|   ├─ Beat 2 : Pull back into [R] N-D
|   │   └─ Action : Right Tetsui Otoshi-uchi / Otoshi-uke (C)
|   └─ Note   : Distinct two-part transition

It is not a grading tool, a style authority, or a substitute for partner work in the dojo. Every sheet should name the school reading it follows (for example Shito-Ryu, or dojo-specific).

That sounds obvious. It is also the part most “systems” forget once they get a logo.

The kihon catalog is a practical vocabulary list with belt floors, not an official federation syllabus. Dojos differ. Again: sensei first.

Under the hood the useful bits are small TypeScript modules: an SKN parser for kata spines, a practice-plan generator, and the kihon catalog. No account system, no timer coach, no backend. Plain text in, plain text plan out, copy button.

June '26 - Everything I Learned

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:30:00 +0000

Every month I share the things I leraned and remembered to write down somewhere. Here are the June notes.

Berlin is serious about bats

I discovered a naturbelassener Park around Tempelhof nearby my apartment. Berlin quietly protects a lot of semi-wild spaces like bats.

NABU Berlin says that Berlin is the “capital of bats”: 18 bat species have been recorded in the city, and up to 11,000 bats overwinter in the Spandau Citadel alone. (NABU - Naturschutzbund Deutschland e.V.)

Nazi drug experiments

While I show a Nazi era concentration camp to my family during their visit to Berlin, I learned lots about the drug experiments in these camps.

Nazi doctors conducted radical medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners without consent. I knew it already but I didn't know there were inhumane cocaine experiments and some psychedelics as well. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum groups these experiments into survival, drug-treatment, and ideological/racial categories. (Holocaust Encyclopedia)

More specifically, SS doctor Kurt Plötner is associated with mescaline experiments at Dachau, apparently connected to interrogation and “truth serum” research. These expreiments later mentioned on LSD researches. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

Eichenprozessionsspinner

I learned the story behind the German word that looks like a keyboard accident: Eichenprozessionsspinner, the oak processionary moth. the city was invaded, probabyl still is. Especially in the outer parts.

The adult moth is not the main issue. The caterpillars are. Their tiny hairs contain an irritating toxin and can cause skin, eye, throat, and allergic reactions.

Berlin is a good habitat for them because the city has many oaks in parks and along streets. (Berlin.de)

Plants that keep appearing

My father once pointed out a wild herb named (in Turkish) sinir otu to me on a Berlin sidewalk. He mentioned that it's a medically important herb. I did not care much at the time. Now I keep seeing it everywhere.

The German name is Spitzwegerich, in English ribwort plantain, and its Latin name is Plantago lanceolata. The European Medicines Agency lists it as a traditional herbal medicine used for throat irritation, dry cough, cough with cold, and minor skin inflammation. (European Medicines Agency (EMA))

Also learned that blackberry tea is great for eye pressure apperently. I am not turning this into medical advice. It is just good tea actually.

Barry’s Berlin

Barry’s gymb Berlin gave me a small anthropology moment :/

Luxury gym, waiting list, strange people waiting outside, weird Google Maps energy, and a visible upper class snob culture fitness.

NUMA finally clicked

I learned more about NUMA, short for Non-Uniform Memory Access.

Small server:
CPU <-> RAM

Large multi-socket server:
CPU0 <-> RAM0
CPU1 <-> RAM1
CPU2 <-> RAM2
CPU3 <-> RAM3

Each CPU socket has memory that is physically closer to it. Local memory access is faster. Remote memory access still works, but it crosses the interconnect and costs more latency. Red Hat describes NUMA as a design where memory resources are allocated close to a CPU to improve access time. (Red Hat Documentation)

Linux exposes this topology nicely:

numactl --hardware
lscpu | grep NUMA
numastat
numactl --show

The practical lesson: big servers are not just “more CPU and more RAM”. Placement matters. Threads and memory should ideally live close to each other. Otherwise, a powerful machine can quietly waste performance by moving data across sockets.

Linux also has NUMA memory policy support, which controls from which NUMA node memory gets allocated. (Kernel Documentation)

Strudel and TidalCycles

I tried to configure Strudel and TidalCycles locally, then discovered that Strudel already works in the browser.

Strudel is basically a browser-based live coding environment that ports the TidalCycles pattern language to JavaScript. (Strudel)

Music rabbit holes

A great house track from Saudi Arabia:

Shoft Alhala, Radio Edit, by Vinyl Mode and Moayad

I also learned about Assa’d Khoury’s Electronic Touches Belly Dance, a 1978 Lebanese instrumental album built around funky electronic keyboards and Arabic melodies. It was reissued in 2026 after nearly 50 years. (WEWANTSOUNDS)

The most interesting part for me was the modified Farfisa-style keyboard world: electronic organs adapted for Oriental scales and quarter-tones. Arabic music needs pitches that standard Western keyboards do not naturally provide. This similar trend of tuning off the keyboards can also be observed other sub-cultures in North and central Africa.

AWS “What is” pages

I appreciated AWS’s “What is” pages.

The computer chip explanation is simple, direct, and mostly free of forced metaphors. It explains chips, silicon, etching, analog circuits, digital circuits, ASICs, SoCs, and AWS custom chips like Graviton, Inferentia, and Trainium in a clean way. (Amazon Web Services, Inc.)

Good technical writing does not always need storytelling.

May '26 - Everything I Learned

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:30:00 +0000

Zirkus Mond

I went of the Zirkus Mond shows called "What is Zirkus". It was fantastic.

One thing that surprised me was a handmade "robot" used during the performance. The presenter explained how circuses have always followed new technologies closely and turned them into art. In some ways, circuses have historically been early adopters of technology rather than followers.

Where Have All the Sparrows Gone?

Apparently Berlin's sparrow population is declining rapidly and nobody is completely sure why.

One theory I found interesting is that while adult sparrows can eat seeds and crumbs, baby sparrows depend almost entirely on insects during their first weeks of life. With insect populations collapsing due to pesticides and increasingly manicured urban environments, many chicks simply don't get enough food.

Urban colonies are also vulnerable to diseases such as Salmonella and avian malaria, especially when combined with pollution and noise.

The Gold Under an Indian Temple

I learned about the enormous treasure discovered in the vaults of an Indian temple.

The amounts involved are so large that estimates reach tens of billions of dollars in gold, jewels, coins, and artifacts accumulated over centuries of donations. The discovery triggered legal battles, security concerns, and debates about ownership and preservation.

One of those stories that sounds fictional until you realize it actually happened.

The Smithsonian on Unsplash

The Smithsonian has published around 1,000 images on Unsplash.

What surprised me is the scale of the institution itself. The Smithsonian isn't just a museum—it's 21 museums, libraries, research centers, and even a zoo.

Hundreds of years of art, science, culture, and history are now much easier to access and reuse.

Bromantane

I discovered Bromantane, a Russian drug originally developed for improving physical and mental performance.

It acts as both a stimulant and an anxiolytic, which is a strange combination. Unlike classical stimulants such as amphetamine, its exact mechanism is still not fully understood.

It's sometimes described as an "adaptogen" or "actoprotector", terms I had never encountered before.

Yogi Kazım

I came across the story of Yogi Kazım.

One of those unusual figures who seem to exist somewhere between performance art, spirituality, self-invention, and local legend. Definitely a rabbit hole worth exploring.

https://tam-museum.org/yogi-kazim

Yogi Kazim lived long and his own developed methods which are influced from Yoga and many other studies.

Audio and visual work from Wikipedia updates and BTC trades

Sun, 17 May 2026 09:30:00 +0000

Attention: rapid image transitions, and visual effects that may affect viewers who are sensitive to flashing imagery or have photosensitive epilepsy.

Original

Version 2

April '26 - Everything I Learned

Fri, 01 May 2026 09:30:00 +0000

Georg-von-Rauch-Haus

A building next to my office has much more interesting history than anybody passing by expected.

The Georg-von-Rauch-Haus was occupied by activists in 1971 during West Berlin's housing protests and became one of the symbols of Berlin's squatter movement. It is named after Georg von Rauch, an activist who was killed by police shortly before the occupation.

There this amazing symbol song about the house https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYSFGT7UGS8

The Art Manifesto at Bethanien

I visited an exhibition at Bethanien and ended up spending more time thinking about an art manifesto than the artwork itself.

Bethanien itself has an interesting history. It started as a hospital in the 19th century and later became one of Berlin's most important cultural and artistic spaces.

Gecekondu at Kottbusser Tor Berlin

There is a small hut near Kottbusser Tor called "Gecekondu".

"Gecekondu" is a Turkish word meaning "built overnight". This one was built as a protest against rising rents and the privatization of social housing in Berlin.

Behind it is Kotti & Co, a movement formed by local residents, many from Turkish guest-worker families. What looks like a simple wooden hut is actually a political meeting point, community center, and symbol of resistance against displacement.

There are many dramas foing on inside this initiative but the hut standing there is a real statement.

Schwerbelastungskörper

I didn't know that there was a giant concrete cylinder in Tempelhof without an active purpose right now.

The Schwerbelastungskörper ("heavy load-bearing body") was built by Albert Speer between 1941 and 1942 to test whether Berlin's ground could support a gigantic triumphal arch planned by the Nazis.

The arch was supposed to be around three times larger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

The arch was never built, but the test structure remains. It is one of the strangest reminders of how ambitious and absurd some of the plans for Nazi Berlin were.

Timmy the Whale

I went down a rabbit hole reading about Timmy, a whale that became a national story in Germany.

What interested me most was the public reaction. Scientists argued that intervention would likely cause more suffering and that the whale should be left alone, but many people demanded that something be done.

Germans went a bit too emotional almost hysterical on this topic.

March '26 - Everything I Learned

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:30:00 +0000

I usually take notes and try to follow the slipbox technique for storing the new information that I find out interesting during a month. This month I didn't take notes as an experiment to see how much I will remember. Turns out slipbox note taking is important.

The Nepal Royal Massacre: The Impossible King

The 2001 massacre of the Nepalese royal family remains one of the strangest royal tragedies in modern history. In June 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal allegedly killed nine members of his own family, including the king and queen, reportedly over a dispute about his marriage, before shooting himself. The massacre did not just devastate the royal family. It also threw the monarchy into chaos, led to the surreal 54-hour reign of a king in a coma, and gave rise to conspiracy theories that would shadow the throne until its eventual abolition.

What makes the story especially interesting is how absurd the events after became. After shooting his family and himself, Dipendra fell into a coma. Even so, he was officially declared king and remained on the throne for three days before dying, creating the bizarre spectacle of a monarch who reigned without ever regaining consciousness.

Public suspicion quickly turned toward Gyanendra, the dead king’s brother. He was conceniently absent from the dinner, while his immediate family escaped with only minor injuries. His first public explanation, that the massacre resulted from an “accidental discharge of an automatic weapon,” was so implausible that it only deepened distrust and further damaged the monarchy’s legitimacy.

Cicero’s De Oratore

People say Cicero must be read in Latin but that will be impossible for me. I have a plan to read in English or Turkish in the future. I believe it will inspire many who wants to be better in public speaking. Writing in the crumbling Roman Republic, Cicero’s work on the "Ideal Orator" argues that technical skill is secondary to character. Search for Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore (Book I-III). For Cicero, rhetoric without wisdom is a weapon: persuasive power without ethics becomes a threat to the state. Cicero dismissed the idea that rhetoric could be mastered as a mere technique. A real orator, in his view, had to be a polymath, versed in law, culture, and human psychology. Without that breadth, one was not an orator, only a shouter.

music: 20:20

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:30:00 +0000

Sonic Pi work, named "20:20". It's a 20:20 long work with multiple layers of decomposing loops.

20:20 by H-T-B