Miscellaneous

Title: Various titles
Date: Various dates

Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans. For this reason, events in our lives rarely fit into neat little time-slots which is why I made this page for all those bits and pieces which don't fit anywhere else or are not directly related to graphic or interactive design...

During the years of 1991-1994 I worked as a Research Assistant in the Graphic Design Dept. of the University of Bilkent in Ankara. Apart from my usual duties, I also taught Basic Design, Typography and Advanced Design classes due to the prolonged absence of one lecturer.

In 1995 I did 6 months as a 3D Designer and Video Editor at a firm called Frame Studios. Here I received intensive training on WaveFront Advanced Visualiser, WaveFront Dynamation, WaveFront Kinemation, Parallax Matador and IRIX (the UNIX flavour which SGI workstations run). I built up an extensive knowledge base concerning computerised video production.

In 1996 I did 5 months as a pre and post sales engineer with Arttek Ltd, the sales representative of SGI (Silicon Graphics International) in Istanbul. During my stint at Frame Studios, I had become quite adept at troubleshooting all kinds of SGI problems so Arttek offered me a job at double the wage. Here, I worked for the clients of Arttek, which included major TV channels, production studios and government research organisations. I installed, maintained and supported such software packages as SoftImage, TDI Explore, Discreet Logic Flame and provided training for staff. I also did hardware installations of SGI workstations, set up networks and firewalls and solved connectivity problems in multi-platform environments.

After leaving Arttek, a few of these clients asked me to stay on as a freelance consultant. I continued in this role until the time I left for the UK (2000), often providing phone-based support but also providing on-site support on week-ends, holidays and other off-work times.

After I moved to England in March 2000, I worked 2 months with BSkyB at their Syon Lane offices. I was a kind of hands-on Macintosh consultant and I set up and installed various Mac based video graphics workstations, did some network troubleshooting and advised the Graphics department on various subjects, such as DTP and colour consistency problems when converting print based work to web based work.