Now being back from last week’s trip to Ukraine and this week’s trip to Russia, it’s time for an overview.

MySQL was prominently present at both Sun events, the one in Kiev on 26.11.2008 and the one in Moscow last Tuesday 2.12.2008. It was good to discuss with local Sun guys, and to meet MySQL community people and colleagues in both places.

The two first pictures in this post are from the community event at a university of economy in Moscow.

Like elsewhere, I started in the local language (which, perhaps surprisingly, frequently seems to be Russian also in Ukraine), followed by a “MySQL in the Web Economy” presentation in English.

Russia and Ukraine are interesting places, so I blogged quite a bit about the event. But I don’t want to spam Planet MySQL with travel tips and reports of Russian saunas, Russian taxis and Russian food. So here’s a short overview of the other blogs I wrote.

In Swedish:

• A report about the comfortable overnight (18:23-08:25) train journey from Helsinki to Moscow, on the Lev Tolstoy.
• A How-to study on using local metro (subway) to get from Leningradskiy station to Holiday Inn at Lesnaya.
• An account of a Russian banya (sauna), involving steam, birch and oak twigs, kvass, tea, and a special treatment called parit. Including a note about the Italian-Japanese anime Calimero.
• Some tips on taking a black taxi to get from A to B in Moscow.

In German:

• A few ideas on how to learn Russian by simultaneously reading Fandorin in German and in Russian
• The same banya (sauna) story, but from a German, rather than Scandinavian, perspective

In English:

• Out of Ukraine: On sequential interpretation, non-smoking and the concept of “Europe” as interpreted in Ukraine and Finland
• A comparative study in dress code at airports, with Istanbul, Ankara and Kiev as examples
• A nostalgic note to fellow Moscow traveller Zack Urlocker called Moo-moo: Russian fast food
• A self-centered description of food I like, introducing the concept of “kajsher” in Russia serves kajsher food at Elki Palki

In Russian:

• An attempt to describe my Helsinki-Moscow train ride in Russian

Let me conclude by sharing some of the pictures found in the detail blog postings, in miniature format:

MySQL powers many of the social networks of Web 2.0. While it’s great that we constitute one of the tools of Web 2.0, we should also ourselves utilise the tools Web 2.0 provides for social networking. Comparing myself to colleagues, I feel like a slow follower in this discipline. “Everybody else” is already on Twitter, has hundreds and hundreds of contacts on LinkedIn, Xing and Facebook, puts their pics on Picasa and Flickr, bookmarks their pages on del.icio.us, and has fancy blogs that are registered everywhere. Myself, I have been half-heartedly entering contacts into LinkedIn, I have mismanaged my Xing account, I uploaded a tiny amount of pictures on Flickr two years ago, and have now taken my first steps trying out Twitter and Picasa. I’m not even registered on Facebook or del.icio.us.

And therefore I thought I would take a look at how to improve my online manners.

So what I’ll do over the next two months or so is to take a look at both the websites I’ve been mismanaging, and the new ones others have invited me to. I’ll do my best to fit in, but I’ll also come with some subjective commentary on what I experienced.

First in line is Dopplr, the social network for travellers.

I got invited to Dopplr by David Axmark in September 2007. I didn’t do anything with the invitation, as there were “other more important things to do”. In December 2007, I got invited by Giuseppe Maxia. One would think that these two invitations would have triggered me to do something about it, but no. I waited until I had to fix a complex set of travel involving David replacing myself in Japan so that I could go to South Africa. At the same time, I was asking Giuseppe about his travel plans and felt silly I had to ask and re-ask Giuseppe only because finding the relevant, freshest email was too cumbersome. That was the trigger that made me accept Giuseppe’s Dopplr invitation.

So I entered my basic data, which didn’t take many minutes. I could then see David’s and Giuseppe’s travel profiles, conveniently available under http://www.dopplr.com/ traveller/DavidAxmark and http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/gmaxia respectively. Looking at the right hand side on David’s data from today, it’s easy to see when he is where. I don’t need to ask him, nor does anyone else.

Next, I entered my travel plans for the rest of the year. Then, from my own itinerary, I noted something I hadn’t thought of. On the way back from Buenos Aires, I have a stopover in Frankfurt, which happens to coincide with when Giuseppe is there for a meeting. If the stopover is long enough, or Giuseppe has extra time to come to the airport, we might meet just because we happen to be in the same place at the same time. And that’s what Doppler is a lot about: Facilitating serendipitous meetings with people you know.

Next, I saw all the cool stats that Giuseppe and David had, based on having joined Dopplr a lot earlier. So I entered my 2008 travel, which took quite a while as I’ve travelled a lot and emitted carbon in a most horrible way. But it didn’t help — Dopplr still said I had travelled “0 km so far”. All that data entry in vain! Too bad.

But luckily, the stats were calculated for me overnight, in some kind of a batch job. I now have a nice timeline, telling me that I’ve been more on the road than at home in 2008:


I also have learnt that I’m as fast as a squirrel, with an average speed of 22,93 km/h.

Coolest of all is The Dopplr Raumzeitgeist, which tells me where I’ve been for the time period for which I’ve entered data into Dopplr:

If I had a cool web page to which I aggregate blogs and other stuff, such as Colin Charles does, I could paste the nice badge Dopplr provides me onto it. Either the small format (the first pic on this blog), or a big one, like this:

And this brings me to my first frustration with Dopplr. It tells me I’ve frequently been to “Nauvo”. No, no, no! I most certainly refer to the place I’ve been to as “Nagu”, not “Nauvo”. It’s a place with two names, of which in this case, I happen to use the same name as the majority of people living there. In the case of the second-most frequently visited place, I personally use “Helsingfors” (the Swedish name), but I can understand most people would use “Helsinki” (Finnish). And again, on fourth place, I’ve got one more place with multiple names. With most people I’ve discussed that trip, I’ve used the name “Wolkenstein“, which Dopplr expands to a long dual name, “Selva di Val Gardena - Wolkenstein in Groeden”. Better than just Selva, but still, not what I would pick myself.

Which brings me to my summary:

	Positive experiences: Many, and significant   + Great to instantly see where friends and colleagues travel + Great not to have disturb them with questions on “when are you where” + Great to get alerted to serendipitous presence in the same location, for my own planned trips + Cool to get all kinds of travel stat + Cool to see pics from Flickr automatically associated with trips
	Negative experiences: Few, and all related to Dopplr Big-Brother-changing place names   - Very irritating that Dopplr converted names like “Mariehamn” and “Nagu” to “Maarianhamina” and “Nauvo”, which are used only by a small minority of their respective inhabitants - Irritating that Dopplr converted “Helsingfors” (which is how I refer to my birth town) to “Helsinki” - Irritating that Dopplr converted “Wolkenstein” to the very long “Selva di Val Gardena - Wolkenstein in Groeden”
	My own confusion — no fault of the social network itself  I was first disappointed that Dopplr didn’t calculate my past travel stats, but happy again the following morning when they had been done My bad conscience for my carbon footprint didn’t exactly diminish It isn’t 100% clear to me whether it’s in my interest to allow the data to be visible for everyone, or just my approved co-travellers
	Remaining questions from my side   Will I have any real benefit from entering past data from years before 2008? Will there be an easy way to enter many past trips in batch, e.g. over email? When will fellow travellers allow me to see their travel plans? Should I enter “travel tips”? Will I find some benefit from using the data entry from my mobile phone or Twitter?

All in all, Dopplr was a very positive experience, and I do expect to manage my travel in it, and get lots of good vibes from it going forward.

Links:

• Dopplr: http://www.dopplr.com
• My Dopplr page: http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/KajArno
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopplr

Salle (MySQL EMEA Support Leader) just told me over IRC: “One has to be crazy to do the job Kaj is doing :)”. While it may not be mandatory, it does help. It also helps me in my free time, where I just climbed Mt Blanc with my fourteen year old son.

Die-hard marathoners or mountaineers I recommend to scroll towards the bottom. There, I have an account of the exact times and heights of ascent, how to survive Refuge Gouter etc. But let’s start from the beginning, in the spirit of the http://xkcd.com/77/ web comic “bored with the Internet”.

It all starts with a leisurely walk up the Gran Paradiso, 4061 m.

The usual sight is the heels of my son.

A MySQL cap protects me against excessive Sun.

It also helps when it’s snowy.

Valley panorama.

Specifically this view, of my son’s heels, was next to mandatory as I was tied to him with a rope.

Taking off some gear near the summit of Gran Paradiso.

The final ascent to Gran Paradiso.

Waiting for crossing the tough spot.

View from Gran Paradiso (it’s in Italy).

Alexander made it, too.

Father and son, and the Madonna. Austrians and Germans do “Gipfelkreuz” (a cross), Italians do madonnas.

A happy Alexander at Gran Paradiso. It was his first 4000 m high mountain, and mine too.

One step forward, and I would fall hundreds of metres.

I miss my 8 mm fisheye.

Hooray!

As long as we’re on the glacier, we’re tied to each other.

The glacier isn’t exactly clean.

And it has plenty of cavities.

Next day! More exercises. This is close to Courmayeur.

Taking off the shoes afterwards is rewarding.

No, I didn’t Photoshop the ski pole onto the … toilet cleaning device.

The true adventure starts! We’re heading up the Mt Blanc. Now, we’re at Bellevue, waiting for the railway.

The train is driven by a cog wheel.

Alexander, in anticipation.

The first day (out of two) has 1500 height metres. And it was the more arduous one. Headache. Not fully acclimatised.

It’s getting higher.

We’re now on 3800 m height, in the Refuge Gouter. That’s the one from which the ascent starts tomorrow.

The writing on the wall says in essence “if you come too late, don’t expect to get a place to sleep — and if you do, expect it to be on the kitchen floor”.

First dinner serving 18:00, second 18:45. And first breakfast at 2:30 (for those going for the summit), second at 8:00 (for when weather doesn’t allow you to go to the summit, i.e. those going back to the valley).

Alexander in front of the Refuge Gouter.

And myself.

Thomas and Abi, two of our three excellent guides from the DAV Summit Club — the trip organising subsidiary of Deutscher Alpenverein.

Father-and-son bonding.

My son thinks either this picture …

… or this one reminds him of the ZDF Wetterstudio, i.e. German weather forecast pic.

Beds at the Refuge Gouter are spartan.

Fellow DAV climber Frank admires the ZDF Wetterstudio.

I slept fully dressed: Trousers, outdoor trousers, three layers on top.

More father-son bonding.

It’s now about 2:15 in the morning, in Refuge Gouter. We ate, took our gear, and made ourselves ready.

2:54 Alexander and Kaj leave from Pole Position, lead by our fearless Mountaineer Abi. About 40-50 groups right behind us, breathing in our necks.

3:50One group passes us.

4:00 — 5:00 — 6:00 One step after the other. Endurance. This is not the worst part; waiting yesterday was. That made it into the most demanding physical endurance test of my life. It combined the next-to-worst aspects of a marathon (not the last few km, but almost) with height related headache and nausea, as well as the next-to-worst aspects of hiking in the Finnish army: Limits in stopping to dress (because it’s cold), undress (because it’s hot), or cater for some other physiological needs (drinking, eating, or the mirrored processes thereof).

6:20 on Tue 2.9.2008 We’re at the top, Mt Blanc 4810 m, as the second team! Whether it made much sense to hurry, is another story entirely.

Kaj at the summit.

Sunrise.

Sunrise, put into larger perspective.

Sunrise was indeed impressive.

More of it.

And more!

And more!

Myself, admiring the sunrise.

8:30 we were back at the Refuge Gouter. We had some spaghetti, and left again at 9:30. And back at the cog-wheel railway, we were at 13:05.

Mt Blanc the following morning, from in front of our hotel.

Same thing, but closer.

Ahh, and a final note. We drove home to Munich with a navi. We meticulously followed its advice, only playing with the language, in which the navi bossed us around. And according to the navigator, this is the main road between Chamonix and Munich. (But we refused to “Do a U-turn, if possible!” on this road).Technology is great!