[me]

La Femme Makita ...
Akkana's Home Page

[Comet Hale-Bopp]

[Castle Valley] I'm a software engineer and writer living in northern New Mexico (previously in the San Francisco bay area).

Previously, I've worked for Netscape Communications as a software developer in the Mozilla editor group, and for Sun, SGI, Competitive Automation, HP, and Apple, and written a book on image editing, Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional. Here is my resume.

I don't update this page very often, but you can see what I'm up to lately on my blog, Shallow Thoughts.


Extracurricular interests:

[Comet Hale-Bopp] Astronomy
featuring the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Moon. Also available: Comet Hale-Bopp photos; Shallow Sky mailing list for discussions of lunar and planetary observations; lunar eclipse pictures, and some useful Java programs: a star chart program, a moon phase calculator, and a program to locate Jupiter's moons.

I also like to sketch astronomical objects (and some terrestrial ones)

[Akk at the keyboard] Open Source Software
Various programs I've written, all free, open source and available for download.
[Tux] Linux and Open Source. Okay, that's not entirely extracurricular, but I do spend lots of my spare time hacking on open source projects, evangelizing Linux, helping others to use open source, and writing howto articles.
[Self Portrait in Droplet] Photography
I do wildlife/nature photography, motorsports photography, and occasionally dabble in astrophotography. All the photographs on my web pages which aren't of me were taken by me.
[Red Rock Canyon fault] Geology: trying to understand the beautiful and fascinating rocks I see around me.
[Paddling the Otter] Bay Area Kayaking
Bicycling
Mountain biking (I'm pictured here with my Cannondale at the top of Porcupine Rim, near Moab), and also try to use a bike for transportation when I can.
(I also love hiking -- which these days I do a lot more than biking -- but don't have any web pages on that.)
Autocrossing and Fiats
I used to autocross a Fiat X1/9 in SCCA's D Street Prepared class, in the San Francisco Region Solo II program, and picked up one DSPL national championship as well as several second-place trophies. I finally retired the X1/9 and now drive a Miata.
Motorcycles
I used to ride a Honda CB-1, a Kawasaki EX500 (seen here, and I raced it very briefly) and an RM80 dirt bike.

Comments? Mail me.