side project

i've mentioned it before, i am a distracted person. i have tons of side projects,

after almost a year, i was finally able to write the following part of the blog post!!! record delay!

i think it was may or june of this year (2026). alongside my bipolar disorder, i have now been officially diagnosed with ad/hd.

i was regularly traveling to stockholm, sweden for a client project. on my way back to london, i left my 15" macbook—which i had been using on my lap and then stuffed into the seat pocket—on the plane. realizing the unusual lightness of my backpack only after taking the train from the airport to my house was the straw that broke the camel's back. throughout every stage of my life, i used to think that everyone experienced this kind of forgetfulness and the problems it caused, or even if it happened to me a lot, i would just blame myself and continue living in the exact same cycle.

anyway! i deviated from the main topic again. wait! actually i didn't; i wrote all this to explain why there are so many side projects and why they are left unfinished.

but my ultimate goal in this post is to share what these never-ending projects are—the ones that made my brain light up as if i had found the greatest software project in the world, only to fade away just as quickly. maybe in this sea of hypertext that we are rapidly losing to ai, another fierce and, more importantly, highly capable developer who actually gets things done can take the idea and advance it, or twist it around and turn it into something entirely different.

so, here are the folders i've carried from computer to computer over the years, either completely empty or containing just a few initial files:

• bitter: an attempt to bring together a group of internet users—who are still trying to maintain communication as a very small minority after friendfeed shut down—using friendfeed's minimal features. my favorite feature in this project is that avatars change according to your mood. i know it's a total over-feature, but at the time it felt like the most wonderful avatar mechanic in the world.
• bitter.foundation: in this community-based project, the dates of entered posts settle onto a timeline, and events or news that everyone attributes personal importance to based on dates/days are added to the portal. in a way, i wanted to bring wikipedia's "on this day in history" feature closer to the modern day. i used "bitter" as a codename just because the word sounds very nice to my ear. i still haven't found a proper name suited for this date-based social content site.
• bitterx: continuing with the bitter codename! a clone of the twitter(x) platform, but every single letter costs a credit! it's an ecosystem where you earn letters equal to the amount of likes you receive. a model where those who can produce value with their words get to continue writing, while others remain read-only. i was so hyped about this, thinking maybe i'd sell letter packages like sms bundles and become the new elon musk (god forbid).
• lokal: a local-first "bitter", it's that simple. the project where i built a proof of concept experiment with the idea of making a small-scale social network completely local-first, just because i really love the own-your-data concept. an alternative tech-stack version of bitter.
• mind.the.door: i step into the gaming world. in this game, there is only a single door right in the middle of the screen. clicking, lots of clicking. sounds and effects trigger according to certain interactions, but the door just won't open. the doormat is a clickable button, and you can open the door for one dollar via stripe. what happens when you open the door? absolutely nothing! once again, getting rich the easy way and the door of fortune opens for me!
• neset: an adaptation of the johnny cash internet project. an internet user draws every single frame of a turkish folk song (türkü) music video, and the pictures drawn for each frame are voted on, resulting in a community-contributed music video. it goes viral, millions watch it!
• nook.blog: a micro-blogging project! yet another one! its difference from the others is its pricing model: fair-share dynamic pricing. my formula to surprise the entire micro-blogging world and make them come running to this platform was this:
  user bill = base fee + (user's monthly traffic / platform's total traffic) x total monthly infrastructure cost
• shopini: a simple storefront/marketplace to save the world from shopier. a platform i wanted to run on a cost-sharing shop rent model. a very naive startup idea for a real commerce platform!
• user-bricks: every user visiting the site can request to change any part of the site or specify a new feature. the rule: the site must be navigable on a timeline (like webarchive) with full backward-compatibility between its first version and all the features added over time. you can take a look here - https://user-bricks.vercel.app/
• voltronjs: a super isolated micro-frontend framework that loads import maps and es modules directly into the browser and embeds react, vue, and svelte entry points right into web components.

countless other projects flash in and out of my mind throughout the day, but nowadays i mostly manage to hold myself back from getting carried away by these ideas.

❤️