Welcome to the blog of Can Sar, a Stanford CS major. This blog is made up of my thoughts on Computer Science and the computer industry, as well as ever exciting tales from my life.
I've been pretty busy with work this week, and did not take the time to update the blog with news of what exactly I was working on. My main activity for the week was reading "Operating Systems" by Andrew Tanenbaum. The CS-interested readers should know that this is the book that Linus Torvalds used when first learning about how OSes worked, and that he consulted in the 7 months in which he wrote the very first versions of Linux. Fewer people will know that Tanenbaum was the PhD advisor of Frans Kaashoek, who in turn was the PhD advisor of Dawson Engler, my CS 240 professor. That should be enough history for the day.
I will delve into my experience with Minix (the subject of the Tanenbaum book) in a later post, for now I must say that reading the book has been more difficult than I had at first imagined. This is mostly due to my lack of detailed knowledge of the x86 ISA and PC architecture, which is very prominent in the low level part of Minix. In order to stay concentrated I take hourly breaks from reading the code, during which I usually read novels in order to prepare for the verbal section of the GRE. This week I finished Uncle Tom's Cabin, Homage to Catalonia (an excellent read on the Spanish Civil War) and currently Tom Jones, an old English novel, that has nothing to do with the musician of the same name.
And finally, yesterday Nora and I had Sushi, at a place where the food is delivered on a conveyor belt. I was not sure what such a restaurant is called in English, so I asked Michael:
Michael: sushi boat?
Michael: sushi buffet?
Michael: sushi conveyer belt?
I think I prefer the last. So yeah, a sushi conveyer belt restaurant. It was delicious.