Earlier, I noted that Julian Cash was to do some “light painting” at the MySQL Users Conference. And boy, did he do it!

He had a normal conference room, the Bayshore at the MySQL Conference, made a bit darker. Not pitch dark, but let’s say too dark to read. Then, he had us sit down on a chair in front of a neutral background, and took the pics with his camera mounted on a tripod. A picture took perhaps 30 to 60 seconds. After opening the shutter, the object was supposed to sit still. Julian then lit up our faces, in my case with blue and red light sources (”mini-torches”) which he moved top-down. Then, he sprinkled in some additional stray light in various colours.

I had asked for a picture of an angel (with halo, above — perhaps to be used at my own funeral?) and a devil (with red horns, below — perhaps as an alternate funeral picture, depending on my then-current CV?). Being the guinea pig for the setup, Julian spent over a quarter of an hour on the pics.

It was great fun, and I remain a great admirer of Julian’s.

Ah, and just to be clear: Note that the pictures are not digitally edited. They’re originals. I.e., the tricks work also with granddaddy’s analog cameras. However, seeing the pics on the camera display does help; in my case, the final pics were the fifth and sixths tries. So if you experiment yourself (and at least I will), do go with a normal, modern camera, mount it on a tripod, and use some creative sources of light.

If you click on the thumbnails below, you’ll see a number of other pics taken by Julian in that session.

References:

• Julian Cash’s Flickr set “MySQL 2008″: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliancash/sets/72157604716923223/
• Julian Cash’s web site: http://www.juliancash.com/
• The Human Creativity Project: http://www.humancreativity.com/about.html

First of all, thank you, Jay Pipes, for setting up the Bayshore Room tomorrow between 10am and 2pm, for Julian Cash to take pictures of us!

Second, I am a big fan of descriptive subject headers. So I thought I could promote this memorable event even more explicitly than what Jay did in his posting “Yes, It’s That Time of the Year Again…“.

It’s Julian’s fault that I bought my 8mm Sigma lens. He has one, and takes weird pictures with it. As opposed to mine, his are good (yup, he uses fancy high-tech equipment like flashes, and white background paper — one day I’ll go there, too).

This is MySQL’s very own Brian Aker, as distorted by Julian.

The new thing Julian is doing is Light Painting. This means he creates pictures that look like they’ve been PhotoShopped through some strange filter, but they haven’t.

Let me quote Julian:

Light Painting

Light painting portraits are distinctive, innovative, and magical. The photos have a dreamlike futuristic feel and lend themselves to editorial work, advertising, book covers, and portraits of musicians.
I do not digitally manipulate the images. All of the effects are created simply by painting the subject and the surrounding area with colored light in a dark room while the camera shutter is open. This makes for images that feel especially organic and believable despite their surreal nature.

My subjects and I have a great time creating light portraits together. The style of the images is both unique and varied. My proficiency comes from 15 years of experience and experimentation with this type of photography. It also helps that I am an illustrator and painter as well as a portrait photographer. The process is fun and is a natural combination of painting and photography.

If there is a concept or emotion that you want expressed in the image, I especially enjoy using that as part of the creative process. I’m happy to work with an art director, or I can take the initiative to come up with a powerful and satisfying image.

So if you’re at the UC, do stop by at Julian’s event and have your picture taken!

References:

• http://www.juliancash.com
• http://www.HumanCreativity.com

Allow me to provide some relaxed photographic observations from this morning’s MySQL UC keynotes.

Warning 1: My view is distorted, by my favourite lens, Sigma 8mm.

Warning 2: I took the pics with a shaky hand in low light, so they’re not sharp ones, of the James Duncan Davidson type (the guy who takes all the great pics for O’Reilly).

On Johnny Good’s command, doors open, and the audience starts pouring in.

Zack Urlocker has challenged me in the James Callis Lookalike Contest (of Battlestar Galactica fame), but is himself clearly in the lead.

Journalist James Niccolai of IDG, taking a picture of Rich Green and Mårten Mickos (Note: I am a fan of recursion; it would have been even better if Zack had taken a picture of me taking a picture of James, Rich and Mårten).

Mårten Mickos talking to Sheeri Kritzer Cabral.

Jay Pipes’s head is moving so fast talking to Gina Blaber of O’Reilly, that it gets blurred.

James Duncan Davidson, one of my two favourite contemporary American photographers. The other one is Julian Cash, whose fault it is that I now have a Sigma 8mm lens. He takes weird pictures with his fisheye lens (way weirder — and, above all, better — than mine), and now he has turned his interest into something he calls light painting. Speaking of Julian: He is here. Do come to the Bayshore Room (on the Mezzanine level of the hotel) tomorrow between 10am and 2pm, and have your weird picture taken!

Me showing my favourite gadget (remember? the 8mm fisheye lens) to Jonathan Schwartz; Rich Green and Mike Zinner look suspicious.

Everyone has found their way in and we’re ready to go!

Mårten complains he got only 35 minutes, of which Jay had already burned 5 when Mårten got on stage.

Sheeri Kritzer Cabral’s video camera recording Mårten.

Mårten asked everyone in the audience who had reported bugs to stand up.

Mike Zinner wearing a MySQL Workbench t-shirt doing his great demoes, with an amount of superlatives that is more American than Austrian (prompting Mårten to mention that Mike could have an alternate career in Hollywood; perhaps, later, Mike could run for governor somewhere).

Ah, did you note that MySQL Workbench went GA and is ready for download today? At least Mike Hillyer did. And of course Patrik Backman did, but it would be strange if he didn’t, as he is Mike Zinner’s boss.

Mårten Mickos and his SunVisor Rich Green (Note 1: Rich Green doesn’t want Mårten to call him “boss”. Note 2: A “SunVisor” is a helpful person working for Sun Microsystems that adopts an employee of an acquired company to guide him through the first rough times with a new employer).

James Duncan Davidson taking pictures of award winners.

The Community Award Winners between Rich Green and Mårten Mickos: Diego Medina, Baron Schwartz, Sheeri Kritzer Cabral.

How bright (not)! I didn’t take any well-lit pictures of Jonathan. Perhaps because his captivating presentation kept me focusing on the content? But I did take this picture of the stage when Jonathan explained the world map in blue and green dots. The light blue dots depicted places downloading MySQL. And if you look really carefully in the top-left corner of this picture, you’ll see green dots. That’s the US East Coast, and Europe, which are eager at downloading the GlassFish application server for Java EE.

Today’s keynotes were concluded by Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO, on “The Power of Infrastructure as a Service”.

Yesterday, we concluded the Sakila Express World Tour, more aptly named “Sakila Tour of Seven Top European MySQL AB Sites Using Decadence Airlines“. The last two were in Germany: Hamburg in the north, in Sun’s offices, and Munich in the south, in Hilton am Tucherpark.

In Hamburg, we went directly into the meat with three hardcore developers. Onboarding, intellectual property, and contractors were the hardcore topics.

Ulf, Jan and Kay experienced Izhevsk and Kiev vicariously through the blog

The discussions added plenty of colour to the picture for Julie and Dave. Julie has a great metaphor for explaining the purpose of Sakila Express: To understand how the integration message comes out in the other end, in the Telephone game (also known as Chinese whispers, in German as Stille Post, in Swedish as Ryska posten, in French as Téléphone arabe, where the German version is the only one which would pass all tests of political correctness).

Sadly, Dave had to depart for the US after Hamburg, and sadly, Julie and I had to go back to reality from having used the rental jets of our beloved Decadence Airlines, into using normal airlines, in our case Lufthansa.

Lufthansa departs from the “normal” part of the airport in Hamburg

Me getting back to real life, in a real aircraft

The last stop in Munich saw plenty of local MySQLers, but this time also quite a few Sun employees and MySQL community members from Mayflower and other companies.

This time, my thank you note goes to Julie Ross and Dave Douglas. We had a fantastic week together! It was superb to meet with MySQLers, as a team of three, in so many different locations in such a short time. Your comfort zone when travelling was wide, and when in distress (not being allowed into the Moscow hotel without an immigration card, having lost the pilots in Izhevsk, not knowing how much time was left to get to the airport in Kiev), you still were a charm to travel with. You listened to the concerns of the MySQLers with interest, respect and an open mind, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say that your presence was highly appreciated. Well done!

P.S. Julie: Do expect me to verify your knowledge of three key phrases whenever we meet from now on: Nasdrovye, Budmo and Zum Wohl!

Today in Izhevsk, we had the best welcome a group of Sun-MySQL integration people could ever imagine. “As you’ve been flying a Corporate Jet, you now need a corporate car”, our reception committee said.

And, we travelled in style. After some shampanskoye, we were shuttled into the white limo (somehow exported from the US into Izhevsk) fixed by the local MySQLers.

Today’s Tip #1: If you look for meaty MySQL stuff, look elsewhere. If you look for travel tips for Russia, read this report of one of the most exciting day trips I’ve had in my life.

The Royal Welcome in Izhevsk

Today’s Tip #2: If you want to go to Izhevsk, then start in Moscow, fly due east towards the Ural mountains, and land after two thirds of the distance. Be sure to bring a Russian speaking co-co-pilot.

The first red carpet that has literally been rolled out for the MySQL Ambassador to Sun

Today’s Tip #3: If you want to pronounce “Izhevsk” and get away with it, pronounce the “zh” as the “s” in “pleasure” (which going to Izhevsk was at least for us).

I’ve been in a limo once before, in New York, but this was clearly the more fun one.

Wannabe-Izhevsk-employee Lars Thalmann pays for our dinner with a smile

The MySQL Izhevsk office has the corner room with the best view of all MySQL offices /me has seen

After having a great dinner (I had broccoli soup and a delicious sturgeon with black rice) and sending the latest emails and blog entries from the wireless in the Izhevsk office, our local hosts guided us to the local sights. The first one is the Kalashnikov museum. A must!

/me in front of the Kalashnikov museum

My main goal in the Kalashnikov museum was to see an AK-47.

Today’s Tip #4: This is how to decipher the code AK-47: A as in Automatic, K as in Kalashnikov, 47 as in 1947 (similar branding to Windows 95).

The majestic entrance to the Kalashnikov exhibitions

And an AK-47 could be observed right from the beginning, as could the Windows error messages “File not found” in the video shows above the booths with soldiers from various centuries.

Mission accomplished: Kaj with an AK-47

The AK-47 is very similar in design to the Stg (Stormgevär) I used in Dragsvik serving in the Finnish army 1983-84. In fact, the AK-47 was commercially licensed to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries. According to our local MySQLers, the Chinese used the GPL version.

A modern-day AK-47, the Nikonov from 1994

Having seen the Nikonov, we looked out for the Kanonov, but found neither that one nor the Hasselblattov.

After that, we went for a test of how much we trusted our co-workers. There’s a shooting range in the basement, where you can pick amongst sniper guns, handguns and an assortment of other guns produced in the belligerent city of Izhevsk.

Dave Douglas, Julie Ross and Alexander Barkov prepare for the shoot-out

Dave Douglas trains in the usage of backup motivational methods for making the Sun-MySQL integration work

/me tries the Big Mac of the Izhevsk guns — the AK-47

Today’s Tip #5: If you want to try out plenty of guns with little waiting time, at a low cost, and without signing heaps of legal indemnifications, go to the basement of the Kalashnikov museum in Izhevsk, the capital of Udmurtia, wear protection for your ears, and be sure to really trust the colleagues you’re going with.

After this much aggression, we had to go for more peaceful activities. Last year, the rebuilding of the cathedral of Izhevsk was completed, based on the original from around 1908 which was, ehh, deleted in the 1930s.

Alexander Barkov going up the stairs of the “chram” (cathedral)

Gospodi pomiluy! Lord have mercy! The contrast to the shoot-out couldn’t have been bigger. We came into an orthodox mass with kneeling locals, sacral music and an atmosphere of complete tranquility.

An orthodox service in the cathedral of Izhevsk

The atmosphere in Russian Orthodox churches is peaceful

Today’s Tip #6: If you want to have a look at the frozen pond in the Izh river, early March is a good month, and the central square of Izhevsk is a good spot.

The pond on the Izh river through Izhevsk

But all good things must come to an end. Ours came at 19:30, when we had to be back at Izhevsk airport, to catch the flight which we had booked for 20:00. You may have your own set of excuses for missing flights and flight times, but we ended up with a novel one: By 20:10, the pilots hadn’t yet arrived. By 20:15, movement was sighted in the airplane and by 20:20, we had noticed the mixup being due to the one hour time difference between Izhevsk and Moscow.

Kaj, Dave and Julie departing from Izhevsk — a day trip we’ll never forget!

Anyway, it worked out, and we’re now on our way to Kiev, in the Ukraine, with a short stopover in Vnukovo, Moscow.

Let me conclude by thanking our local MySQLers Alexander “Bar” Barkov, Alexey “Holyfoot” Botchkov, Ramil Kalimullin, Sergei Vojtovich, Sergei Glukhov, as well as the co-visitors Georgi “Joro” Kodinov from Bulgaria and Lars Thalmann from Sweden for arranging a most magnificient and memorable visit for Julie, Dave and myself! We’re most grateful. Thank you also for the music, and the Kalashnikov vodka.

After five days of powder skiing and mountain climbing on ski, I’m back in business. This is how I looked out-of-business:

My son and I did not meet with Ötzi the Iceman, but we got a few blisters, a lot of Alpine sun, plenty of powder skiing and the experience of climbing more than 1000 height metres to K2 (in Tirol, not its namesake in Karakorum). And we conquered Austria’s second highest peak, the Wildspitze at 3772 metres above sea level.

The group consisted of our Austrian mountain guide, four ladies and four gentlemen, all of which were German except ourselves. I was happy to note that although I was clearly the least seasoned on ski, my physical shape was above average. When I was at my most tired going downhill, my son claimed I looked like his little sister when she learned to ski at five, “and that’s an insult to her, not to you”. Ah, there’s nothing like the honest encouragement of one’s own children. My excuse is that since discovering snowboarding in 2000, this was my first time on skis this century.

In theory, this is what you see on a ski tour:

However, this is how most of the uphill climbing looked like in practice from my standpoint: The rear end of my son’s skis.

Climbing with skis on can get messy when you need to make a sharp V-turn uphill. This is my son Alexander just after a Spitzkehre, in this case a successful one.

I’ll spare you the picture of the blisters on my legs. Let’s just say that will power helps alleviate pain. Instead, I’ll conclude with a picture of Alexander and myself on the K2:

Our Web team has just installed the newest Wordpress MU edition for blogging, and Akismet for spam fighting — plus a new layout. I’m already relieved from lots of spam, which feels great!

I’d like to make a couple of remarks on the banner, which has pictures by my two favourite portrait photographers, James Duncan Davidson and Julian Cash.

The two leftmost pictures are by Duncan, from panels at the last two MySQL Users Conferences. The first one is from the Clash of the DB Egos at the MySQL Conference and Expo 2007 (no, I am not chewing my nails or eating sweets — I am blowing a whistle to keep the egos apart), and the second one from the 2006 conference panel interviewing the MySQL founders.

The rightmost one is by Julian, who regularly goes not only to Burning Man but also to Open Source conferences (such as ours 2006). Julian’s passion for fisheye in turn has inspired myself to buy an 8mm fisheye myself.

Thank you, Duncan and Julian, for your great photography at various Open Source conferences, and for being a great inspiration for myself as an amateur photographer!

Last Sunday, just before the MySQL Dev Meeting in Heidelberg ended, we went to see a falconry. Strictly speaking, the German Raptor Research Centre isn’t a falconry (which is a commercial venture for raising falcons), but a privately funded research station dedicated to the preservation of birds of prey, or “Eagles, vultures & co” as they say on their home page at deutsche-greifenwarte.de. Their actions over the past 30 years have given concrete results for many raptors, such as the eagle-owl (”Uhu” in German and Swedish), which is no longer on the list of endangered species in Europe. The German Raptor Research Centre has successfully set out 37 sea eagles (Seeadler, havsörn) in Central Europe, an admirable investment in nature which now including second and third generation offspring has grown to about 400 eagles.

Through a donation in part from MySQL GmbH, in part from MySQL AB, but mostly from individual MySQLers attending the Heidelberg Dev Mtg, Jim Starkey and I had the pleasure of handing over a cheque of 4500 euros to Bettina Fentzloff, the wife of the research centre’s founder, Claus Fentzloff, who brought another falcon for the audience of MySQLers to admire. I hope the donation will enable the Deutsche Greifenwarte to give freedom (as in speech) to many birds of prey in Europe and worldwide!

Jim, as the creator of the Falcon engine, seemed to have a good hand also with the namesake birds.

OK, so I am a late adopter. Flickr is a great place that any photographer should be aware of. And not just be aware of, but posting in.

So it shouldn’t be a big surprise to me that half of PlanetMySQL.org bloggers have Flickr accounts. After posting my initial photo sets I registered my first few contacts. By looking at my contacts’ contacts, you’ll likely find most any photographically active MySQL blogger.

There’s a lot to learn and to use (what’s the difference between a friend and a contact? does it matter? will friends merely labelled as contacts be offended, or vice versa?) but it’s an excellent way of sharing pictures.

The topic of my first sets? Snapshots from a recent visit to Moscow and Sergiy Posad, with local MySQLers in both Development and Support.

Thanks to all the visitors to my three pages of Body painting pictures! A bit of statistics from the click-throughs in the httpd access log helped me change my entries in the Photo Awards 2005 competition that I mentioned in an earlier blog. You seemed to like the Belly Dancer a lot, so I chose the following two pics for the contest!

Alex Barendregt, the event organiser, promised to put my galleries online on the official gallery collection of the World Bodypainting Festival. Let’s see what happens!