title: What is `self` in Akka?
body: <p>Just reading through Akka samples, cant't understand how is <code>self.reply</code> defined? As far as I can see, <code>self reply</code> is used inside <code>receive</code> blocks to reply to a message. But as far as <code>reply</code> is a method of <code>self</code>, then <code>self</code> is what?</p>
  
  <p>PS: BTW, may you recommend a good quickstart article about Akka basics and remote actors with Scala - I'd appreciate if you could post a link as a comment here. Right now I am reading <a href="http://akka.io/docs/akka/1.1.1/intro/getting-started-first-scala.html">this</a>.</p>