What are you gonna be in the future ?. Ever had difficulties in finding an answer to this tough question frequently asked during your childhood (May be you're still looking for the answer :) ?

It was rather easy for me to decide what would I be after fixing my electrical train at the age of 7. At that time, I was thinking of becoming an electronics engineer.

I've spent a great deal of my pocket money on electronics kits that I used to assemble at home for fun.

This turned out to be quite interesting when I recieved my first game & watch from my mother. I was literally attracted by the magic of those devices and started to invest on various kinds of game & watches. (Click to see a nice collection of game & watches)

All of a sudden, things started to change when I received a Commodore 64 as a present in 1985. Although this device was mainly used as a game console, a computer had to behave like a computer !

I had the very novice idea that computers knew everything and would give me right answers whatever I asked. This was becoming barely a bullshit (oops sorry :) when I kept on receiving the very famous "Syntax Error" message to whatever I've entered on that "38911 Basic Bytes Free" machine :)

I was totally shocked by the fact that the device wasn't behaving as I've expected (though it was behaving as its designers expected :) After packing and leaving the machine on its own for a week, I was restless by that defeat !

I took the user manual and started messing with it. Some pages were about topics such as System, BASIC and Sprites (part of the graphics engine, not the coke :)

At that time I've realized that the computer wasn't that clever to answer all my questions. It wasn't even clever enough to comprehend my native tongue !

Having a brain larger than 38911 bytes, I've decided to learn its language. After having another shock by failing to execute my first BASIC program that I've coded straight from the user manual, I tought it was the END :)

Leaving the machine once again on its own in total frustration, I was totally hopeless until one night when I realized that the zeroes in the line numbers (used in BASIC) weren't so clear in the manual and could be the cause of my failure.

I've decided to change the zeroes in line numbers from 10 to 11, 20 to 21 and so on and coded the sample BASIC program once again. When I hit the Return key, I had one of the most fascinating moments in my life :)

Eureka, it was working !

That caused a new leak in my pocket money :) I was investing heavily on almost every book I found about Commodore 64 and within a very short time, I was even writing pure machine code (6510) that moved Sprites, captured keyboard interrupts and so on at the age of 16.

All these things gave me a new vision and instead of becoming an electronics engineer, I've studied computer & control engineering at the university and done my M.Sc thesis on image processing and face recognition.