Murteza Yesil

Recent posts

  • Analytics is enabled on this site

    I don’t like being tracked. I expect you to not like being tracked too. This post is to explain the reason I have analytics enabled on this site.

    I would like to help when help is requested

    I became the “go-to tech guy” of my family and friends. They probably think that I eat and breath tech, day in and day out. Which means I receive request to help in many IT related topics. Some times that help is regarding which analytics software or service to use.

    The only answer I had so far has been “Google Analytics”. I don’t really like this answer.

    Analytics is valuable for organizations

    People want to have the correct insight about the things they are spending time on, such as a business, or non-profit. If they don’t have good understanding of how things are going, they might be wasting time and money. That is a scary thought.

    If interpreted correctly, I believe web analytics is an important data source to make better decisions.

    My answer was always lacking. I know that analytics can be invaluable, but also easy to misinterpret, which may lead to misdiagnose of issues. I included questions in my answer to get them to understand what analytics can and cannot help with.

    I can’t recommend anything I wouldn’t use

    And I wouldn’t use Google Analytics for few reasons:

    • Google is famous for exploiting its market dominance.
    • I grew up hearing that monopolies are bad for economy. Google is almost synonym with online analytics monopoly.
    • Google has a bad track record when it comes to respecting our privacy.

    I can’t recommend anything I never used

    That is why I never recommend high heels 🙂

    I feel like recommending something I never used would be hypocrisy. But only thing I can recommend is the thing I don’t want to recommend. I am aware of few alternatives to which seem to be good enough that I wouldn’t mind recommending, such as Plausible, Umami, Rybbit.

    I may not need to know analytics of this website, but it is the only website I have on which I can test these tools, and learn more about them.

    Reason for starting with Umami

    I am starting this experiment with Umami for one reason, convenience. I wanted to check out PikaPods, and noticed that Umami was available to start using immediately. Umami is running on analytics.murtezayesil.me, and connected to this site via Integrate Umami plugin for WordPress.

    Unrelated, but I wanted to share anyway. Whenever someone asks for an IT related help, I try to be helpful by guiding them to the solution. I more and more rarely, but still get replies such as “But I can’t do that because I didn’t study IT like you did” when I mention that they need to fill a form on a website, send an email, or get the phone number of Edmonton Yellow Taxi from their website. This is just pure laziness, and I am glad that these are not my family members.

    Dear not-at-all computer savvy people, we love helping those who are willing to learn, and despise doing things for those who are just being lazy and trying to use us.

  • Logitech MX Master 3S – Review after one year of use

    Great mouse with 1 fatal flaw. Left mouse button breaks fast. It is a well known wide spread issue. At only 99 USD, this probably was the most recommended model of mouse under 100 USD. I saved money and paid Logitech that price. After little over a year, here we are. I have many good things to say, but I have to mention that for it to be stay usable, you will either have to do some soldering, or relearning how to hold and use a mouse.

    (more…)

  • My view on finding the right words to relay a message with as few words as possible while being clear

    I envy those who can describe what they mean with very few words without muddying the minds of readers and listeners, almost immediately. It is surprisingly difficult to me if I try to do it immediately. I have to dump all my thoughts out first, then attempt at turning them into a coherent message.

    Future articles on this website will be more coherent, just because I probably took multiple days to think about them in the back of my mind, which is the case for so many things in my life. This is one of the many reasons why I switched to WordPress to be frank. I wanted to be able to have access to my articles in draft and be able to modify them on the fly. Sorry for this article being worded weird, or words coming out in some weird order, as if every single word is one or two words off from where it was supposed to be. I wanted to show how thoughts come and move in my head before being put into a draft to be turned into an article for you to read. Good luck to you in deciphering my mind. I won’t be making you suffer through this again, hopefully.

Go to all Posts