Who am I?
Hellooo! I'm Barış or you might know me by my online name shinysquirrel.
A little bit about my academic life
I'm currently a mathematics student at Middle Eastern Technical University. Topology and geometry currently interest me the most but we'll see what I end up doing as I'm a first year student as of 2026.
My Interests
Nowadays origami is my biggest interest. Of course there's some curiosity towards Japanese culture that comes with origami too. I'm also one of the coordinators of the
Japanese Culture Club at METU. I'm mostly responsible for the origami workshop there, but I try to take responsibility outside of the origami workshop aswell. As of right now the club (and me of course) is busy with organizing the Japan Days event in our university. About my music taste I try to listen to all kinds of music. From all the different genre's of metal to the very niche of jazz bands, I try to give all of them a chance.
About the tech I use
I use a E14 Gen 6 Thinkpad with debian installed on it. I have a e-book reader (Pocketbook) and a dedicated music player (Hiby R3 II) that I carry everywhere with me. My phone and tablet are Nothing Phone 2 and Lenovo Tab P12.
Why make a website?
I was inspired by a youtube video I saw a while back to get into making my own website. Basically this whole "a few big corporation's controlling all of the internet" bullshit was frustrating me. Because nearly every single aspect of today's internet (rather what most people consider as "the internet") is designed to generate profit for these corporations. We are constantly pulled into these apps by their addictive and engagement based algorithms. We are constantly feed the propaganda that the best way to stay connected with our friends are these platforms, by the very people that benefit from these platform's success. I wanted a way out of this loop. I wanted a way to rebel against this corrupt system. That is kind off why I made a website.
