Frederick Akalin's Home Page 2004-01-14T14:22:24Z It looks like you've stumbled upon my corner of the Internet. If you don't already know, I'm Frederick Akalin, and I'm currently a coterm student at Stanford University. I'm pursuing a B.S. and an M.S. in computer science as well as a minor in music. Also, my area of concentration for CS is systems (e.g., operating systems, compilers, databases), for lack of a more interesting sub-area. If you feel a sudden, pressing need to contact me, e-mail's usually the best way. (I sort of regret making my e-mail address a link, as it seems the spambots have found my page. But it's too late now.) You can also IM me as PikaDerf, if you prefer. And yes, I know it's strange name. tag:,2004:/1 Movable Type Copyright (c) 2004, akalin I finally own my car! 2004-01-14T14:22:24Z 2004-01-14T06:22:24-08:00 tag:,2004:/1.40 2004-01-14T14:22:24Z I finally got around to getting my car smog checked and going to the DMV to register my car. I've already been pulled over once before for having an expired registration, so this will keep the cops off me for... akalin Personal News
I had to wait two hours at the DMV, though. I've never quite understood the term "bureaucratic hell" until now; you'd think they'd just give out numbers and call them in increasing order, but nope. They have this byzantine system of letter/number tickets where seemingly random tickets are assigned to the next window available, with the only discernable pattern being that if ticket x/y is called now, the ticket x/y+1 will be called at some unpredictable point in the future.

Ugh.]]> I'm 21! 2004-01-05T13:47:29Z 2004-01-05T05:47:29-08:00 tag:,2004:/1.39 2004-01-05T13:47:29Z As of almost four hours ago. I am also drunk, from the second celebration of my birthday, the first being two days ago, and the third being this week Friday. Yarrr.... akalin Personal News
Yarrr.]]> One thing I've learned from watching the movie Contact 2003-12-30T11:55:10Z 2003-12-30T03:55:10-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.38 2003-12-30T11:55:10Z Primer is pronounced prim-er when it refers to a short guide on a topic; however, it's pronounced prime-er when it refers to a blasting cap. That is all.... akalin Observations
That is all.]]> Public Service Announcement 2003-12-30T05:13:05Z 2003-12-29T21:13:05-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.37 2003-12-30T05:13:05Z Aftershave and pimple cream don't mix. Ow.... akalin Observations Aftershave and pimple cream don't mix. Ow. <![CDATA[Evanescence's "My Last Breath"]]> 2003-12-30T03:07:48Z 2003-12-29T19:07:48-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.36 2003-12-30T03:07:48Z Did this song come out as a single yet? If not, it damn well should. It's easily the best song on the album; I don't know how I could have missed this the first few times around. Go. Listen to... akalin Music
Go. Listen to it.]]> Icons! 2003-12-29T16:44:30Z 2003-12-29T08:44:30-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.35 2003-12-29T16:44:30Z Shiny pretty icons! My site looks a lot less drab now.... akalin Site News Shiny pretty icons! My site looks a lot less drab now. Note Hysteria! 2003-12-28T12:16:09Z 2003-12-28T04:16:09-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.34 2003-12-28T12:16:09Z I've finally gotten around to putting my CS 248 project up. Enjoy!... akalin CS CS 248 project up. Enjoy!]]> Rhapsody progress 2003-12-28T11:45:39Z 2003-12-28T03:45:39-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.33 2003-12-28T11:45:39Z Well, I've gotten to the point where I can sight-read my way through the entire set. However, I'm concentrating on the hardest variations, namely the XIth, XVth, and the XXIVth, and so I've fleshed out my notes a bit for... akalin Piano notes a bit for those variations. ]]>
Three solid months. That should be enough time to learn this piece. However, I've never memorized anything this long before; the closest I've come was memorizing the third movement of Saint-Saen's third piano concerto for my high school orchestra's senior concert, and this piece is at least three times longer. I've never had any memory problems during recitals, but there was one time where I blanked out on the beginning of Beethoven's first sonata while playing at piano juries and had to ask for the score. That wasn't too embarassing since I was playing just for the piano faculty but it certainly wasn't pleasant.

Oh, well. Three months. I should at least know the piece well enough by then to fake the parts that I forget.]]> Liquid nitrogen burns... 2003-12-27T16:20:20Z 2003-12-27T08:20:20-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.32 2003-12-27T16:20:20Z as I found out today when I went to the dermatologist. But at least I'll get rid of this persistent wart on my finger, which has been bothering me for months. It looks awful in its current state, though. The... akalin Personal News
It looks awful in its current state, though. The doctor said it'll take at least ten days for the blister to fall off. I would happily take a picture and show the world, but my camera has a focal length of roughly two miles and no optical zoom. The Exilim looks cool and is handy to carry around, but once the novelty wears off, its limitations quickly become annoying.]]> Current known issues and planned improvements 2003-12-26T15:22:43Z 2003-12-26T07:22:43-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.31 2003-12-26T15:22:43Z akalin Site News
  • Japanese characters in any entry field get converted to &#xxxxx; form when put into a textbox or viewed in the entry list. This is more of an annoyance than an issue since I don't plan to write a lot in Japanese, and they show up fine on the webpage itself. Hopefully this will get fixed in the next version of MovableType.
  • The blog administration console is still over an unencrypted connection. It's protected by Stanford's WebAuth system but that only guarantees that non-Stanford people cannot access it. It is possible that this vulnerability is exploitable. I have to bother the IT people about this; hopefully I can get them to enable HTTPS, and then I could hack the code to check against WebAuth.
  • Blog text inside HTML tags are not checked for characters that should be escaped.
  • That stupid extra slash that gets added when redirecting to cgi scripts. It annoys the hell out of me. Fixed!

Planned improvements:

  • The MovableType icon will be displayed at the bottom of the page. Done!
  • The strange black-on-blue header style will be changed to something less ugly. Done!
  • More icons will be added, on the navbars as well as for topics. Done!
  • Icons for individual navbar entries will be added.
  • Syndication will be implemented.
  • More information will be added on the blog toolbar.
  • Tooltips for the links on the calendar. Done!
  • The web page title will consistently show up in the title bar.
  • An arrow will be added to show/hide the extended entry field of an entry, a la kuro5hin's dynamic threaded view mode.
  • Comments and other nifty blog features will be enabled.
  • The archive templates will get cleaned up.
  • The image pages will be automated. Then I can finally get around to putting my Japan pics up.
  • Make the calendar more useful.
  • Make the "Recent entries" navbar more useful.
  • Make the "Archives" navbar expandable.
]]> Surprisingly good music... 2003-12-26T15:14:10Z 2003-12-26T07:14:10-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.30 2003-12-26T15:14:10Z Evanescence is. Over half of their album I gave three starts or more in iTunes, and it even managed to draw me away from my J-pop for a while. Granted, the lyrics are a bit angsty to take seriously. (Highlights... akalin Music Evanescence is. Over half of their album I gave three starts or more in iTunes, and it even managed to draw me away from my J-pop for a while.

Granted, the lyrics are a bit angsty to take seriously. (Highlights include someone screaming "I want to die!") But the vocalist's voice harmonizes very well and the heavy guitars are a change from the oft sugary accompaniments of J-pop songs.]]> Adventures in OS land 2003-12-26T02:52:57Z 2003-12-25T18:52:57-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.29 2003-12-26T02:52:57Z So I finally got a basic kernel to work in my highly irregular Cygwin environment.... akalin CS Cygwin environment.]]>
  1. Make a GRUB boot image from the stage1 and stage2 files. Currently, I just cat them together and boot from that. It was a pain in the ass as I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get GRUB to compile under Cygwin and finally just downloaded the images from one of Stanford's Linux boxes. It is still a bit annoying, since I have to manually point to where my kernel is when I boot up; I'll have to figure out how to get a grub.cfg into the image.
  2. Compile the kernel loader code (which is in assembler) with NASM. You have to compile it in Windows' PE format.
  3. Compile the kernel code (which is in C++) with the appropriate switches to turn off runtime type information and the standard library.
  4. Link all the files together in Windows' PE format. Currently I get a warning that the entry point could not be found and that a default should be used, even though I do define the entry point. I'll have to look at that one, too. Also, g++ mangles function names differently from gcc, so instead of calling _main from the kernel loader code I have to call __Z6k_mainv. Needless to say, it is probably not a good idea to hardcode this. I suppose I could use objdump to modify the kernel loader on the fly...
  5. Convert the PE file into ELF using objcopy.
  6. Write the kernel ELF image to a floppy image using WinImage. This is problematic because WinImage has very little command line control, and so I have to manually type in the image filename every time. I'm still looking for a more command line-friendly program, which would probably help with the grub boot image, too.
  7. Finally, load Bochs with the boot and the kernel image as the first and second floppy drive image, respectively. Marvel as the words "Hello World" are displayed on the screen.

Also, there's the added caveat that debugging the kernel will be quite difficult. I wonder if Bochs has debugging capabilities. Hmm.

In any case, once I get these snags worked out, this is going to be sweet. This is what CS 140 should have been; not that lame NachOS stuff.]]> Stanford Concerto Competition 2003-12-23T15:22:27Z 2003-12-23T07:22:27-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.28 2003-12-23T15:22:27Z

Yep, I'm planning to enter that, which will take place around the beginning of April. I will be playing Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, of which the XVIIIth variation, incidentally, has been popularized by the movie Somewhere in... akalin Piano Somewhere in Time, and thus you probably know it, even if the name doesn't ring a bell.

I actually thought it was the easiest of Rachmaninoff's piano concerti, but I've searched for information online and it turns out some people consider it to be the hardest. Having dabbled in both the second and third Rachmaninoff piano concerti, I'll have to stick with my opinion, though. If it is indeed the hardest, at least it gradually builds up to the technically challenging parts, instead of beating you over the head with it two pages in (the third) or scaring you off with big scary chords in the beginning (the second).

Of course, claiming it's the easiest concerto isn't saying much, since this is Rachmaninoff we're talking about here. Some of the variations, especially toward the end of the piece, make me doubt if I can get it ready in four months. Some of the highlights include:

  • At least three cadenzas or cadenza-like passages that I can remember.
  • The XVIIIth variation which I have to know like the back of my hand, since it's the climax of the piece, and the most well-known part, to boot.
  • The last (XXIVth) variation, which is almost Scriabin-like in its chromaticism.
  • The orchestra tacet near the middle of the piece (the XVth variation) which might as well be a cadenza because of its sheer virtuosic demands.

But it's a fun piece. I'm entering the competition more to spur myself to learn it rather than any real desire to win it (although that would be sweet). Also, I've jotted down some notes.]]> The job search co...d'oh! 2003-12-18T22:48:08Z 2003-12-18T14:48:08-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.27 2003-12-18T22:48:08Z

Looks like I spoke too soon! I didn't move on to second round interviews for Cerner. I guess they just wanted to tell me that personally. Oh, well. The prospect of working in Kansas City was a little strange, anyway.... akalin Personal News
Also, I finally officially switched my music major to a music minor. Sad.

Oh, and my resumé got updated. It gets harder and harder every quarter to keep it under one page. Urgh.]]> Current mathematical interests 2003-12-16T15:17:47Z 2003-12-16T07:17:47-08:00 tag:,2003:/1.26 2003-12-16T15:17:47Z Infinitesimal analysis. Non-standard analysis. Category theory.... akalin Mathematics Infinitesimal analysis. Non-standard analysis. Category theory.
Category theory is a relatively new mathematical development; it has been fondly referred to as "abstract mumbo-jumbo." Basically, it abstracts almost everything out of mathematics--even more so than set theory. All you have to work with are objects and composable maps. It's been put forth as a possible replacement for set theory as a basis for all of mathematics, although not without opposition, which is why I'm interested in it. It also has connections to computer science via lambda calculus and type theory; I'm still a bit hazy about it since I've just ordered a primer from Amazon.com. Hopefully I'll understand more of it when I start reading up on it.]]>