weblog.musa

About

Born in 1978, July 17 (a typical cancer) in Turkey. In 1996, graduated from Antalya Anatolian High School and moved to Ankara. Since then, has been studying at Middle East Technical University; from 1996 to 2000 as an undergraduate student in Civil Engineering and later as a graduate student and a research assistant in Water Resource Laboratory. In 2003, completed MS study on "Modeling of uncertainty propagation in GIS integrated flood inundation studies". Currently, pursuing a PhD on the subject of "Radar remote sensing of soil moisture".

Currently dealing with microwave (mw) remote sensing of soil moisture by utilizing physical backscatter models and coupling the results with a hydrological model for increasing the model accuracy. As a part of this research, active mw sensors, the integral equation model (iem), estimation of surface roughness and vegetation parameters and hence topography related hydrological models are of the concern.

From previous studies; hydraulic or flood inundation modeling, integration of hydraulic models with geographic information systems (gis), error problem in such systems and effect of error propagation on model outcomes by simulation techniques.

General interests; gis integrated hydrologic modeling, remote sensing of hydrological parameters, coupling of hydrological models with weather radars and real time flood forecasting, use of gis and remote sensing techniques for water related problems.

Music (food for my soul): There is no single brand of music that I favor over the others. What sounds good to my ears is just “good music”! describes basically my musical preferences.

Here is a short list of artists that I love listening to:

Sezen Aksu, Şebnem Ferah, Teoman, Starsailor, Placebo, Vega, Bon Jovi, Ace of Base, Avril Lavigne, Candan Erçetin, Cranberries, Nazan Öncel, Erol Evgin, Frank Sinatra, İlhan İrem, MFÖ, Mor ve Ötesi, Nilüfer, Pink Martini, Işın Karaca, Zuhal Olcay, Madonna (all time favorite)

If you like listening to their music, please support the creativity in them and buy the albums. Instead of downloading some low bit rated and ill tagged rips, you can rip your cds with your desired bit rate (mine is 160-192) and listen on your favorite digital audio player. Despite its fame, I found the Apple’s iPod the ultimate in design, but the poorest in user flexibility. So I bought this gorgeous audio & video player (cowon a2), carrying my music with me all the time.

Reading (Give me a house full of books and a garden full of flowers, enough; Confucius)

For me, there are no other professions more respectful than being a writer. It is such a talent that no other work of art is more creative and more fascinating than books. Please do not understand that I do not respect other art works, indeed I love most of them, but writing is so special to me. A good or a bad habit, but I have a list of favorite writers that I won't miss any books of them. Moreover I like digging a bookstore in order to discover a writer (of course a book) that is not recommended by someone but find, read and loved just by myself. It is some kind of hunting but be sure that it is pleasuring. Hence, a library or a huge bookstore is heaven to me.

Here are my favorite writers of all time:

J. R. R. Tolkien (thank you for your imagination), David & Leigh Eddings (best couple on the earth), Paul Auster (the magician of stories), Ursula Le Guin (I strongly recommend “The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia”), Amin Malouf (a humanist like me) & John Fowles (author of "the collector")
Stage Arts

Drama (is my love) I especially like the musicals which are unfortunately rare. I had watched some of them, like Chicago and Evita (with Madonna), as movies, and has dreams of watching some, like Notre Dame de Paris, on stage.

Moreover, I tried to not to miss any plays on the amazing Akün stage of Ankara, and not to miss the annual play of METU Drama Society usually held in May.

Movies

Like comfortable seats, big screens and prefer no commercial or a mid break. Aimed to watch the entire Oscar winning (best picture) films.

Up to now;

Crash (2005), Million Dollar Baby (2004), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Chicago (2002), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Gladiator (2000), American Beauty (1999), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Titanic (1997), The English Patient (1996), Braveheart (1995), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Dances With Wolves (1990), Rain Man (1988), Out of Africa (1985)

On the horizon;

Schindler's List (1993)
Gourmet

Coffee: definitely filter (not instant ones), especially South American blends, if it is to be milked, I prefer the flavored ones: especially starbucks’ cinnamon latte (perfect)

Sushi: like nigiri ones, but prefer rolls, favorite (up to now) Californian inside-out

Cheesecake: is the only dessert which took 4 hours to cook, and one week to eat. My favorite (up to now) cheesecake factory’s godiva

Wine: prefer the red ones, open to all tastes but especially love the fruit wines of Şirince (a small town on aegean coast of Turkey)

Clothing: Absolutely Zara! Love this Spanish designer(s), durable, elegant & exquisite. (The picture at the top was taken in front of the Zara store at Vienna!)

Sports

Weight training (not just being muscular), swimming (like since childhood), skiing (awesome, waiting for the next winter), scuba (a long left hobby)

It’s been a while I am using this door note system, actually it is not a system but lets say as it is.. It was always a headache for me to leave a note of “where I have been to” on my office door. I was just exhausted of keep telling someone (one of the other RAs) about my reason of absence or either finding a number of “where are you” messages from the Profs upon returns.

Finally, I come up with this idea of using an A3 size paper with the possible places and reasons of my absence within several boxes on it. After attaching it to my office door, with a single arrow shaped post-it, it only took one second to place the arrow on the appropriate box and leave the building. So simple isn’t it? Later, according to my pleasure, I filled these boxes with funny clipart found over the internet, and (no need to say) recalibrate the A3 with experience of use.

It took a lot of attention from my colleagues and friends, but my supervisor took it by heart. Now, even without reading the door note closely, he can point out my presence or absence from 10 steps away.

For anyone, who wants to use this (so called!) system on his/her door, here is the original doc file and link to the site where I get the Speedline font. Download it, if you wish change it with your locations, icons and even the font, and please send me a copy of yours.

Met with computers and internet in METU as a freshman, which is like “love at first sight”. Now I think I can not live without them. Moreover, in one of my birthdays I get my second official name: Moogle, which is a hybrid of me and guess what (google). This name, which is accepted by my friends with cheers, is a reason of my never ending passion in digging the net for any piece of information. I like using the web as a major part of my daily life, and hence like google and appreciate their work, creativity and technology so much.

Beside its number one search engine, I prefer using Gmail, Scholar Search (heaven of papers) and Book Search. I adore the book search especially, since I can search for a single word within a single book of thousand(s) of pages, even if I own the book physically.

As a technology, gadget and internet ethusiastic I kept reading a number of news & blog feeds, for which I utilized another big G product; the google reader. In addition, I am a (time to time) good digger and believe the power of the digg community.

Finally, if you ask for my latest discoveries on the net, here is the link to my online journal on FriendFeed.

musa [@] musayilmaz . com