La Femme Makita ... Akkana's Home Page

I'm a software engineer and writer living in the San Francisco bay area. I'm currently taking time off from professional software development to write a book about the GIMP for Apress.

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. Here is my resume.

Extracurricular interests:

	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)
	Software Software I've written, all free, open source and available for download.
	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.
	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.
	Geology: I'm currently taking classes in geology.
	Bay Area Kayaking
	Bicycling I love 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 like hiking, 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. I still drive an X1/9 (an '86, now) but haven't raced in a while -- too little spare time, too many hobbies.
	Motorcycles I ride a Honda CB-1. I used to ride a Kawasaki EX500 (seen here) and an RM80 dirt bike.