Taking photos is easy. Processing them is hard. By processing I mean, going through them, ditching ones that didn’t quite make the cut, and then uploading them. Note processing does not even mean editing them in The Gimp.

View from the Miraikan, looking towards Daiba, at the UC-J reception
(view the other 31 photos from that night)

The reception was amazing, heaps of people won gifts, and kudos again to the organisers. Drinking black vodka, aka Salmiakki that Monty brought, was definitely a treat for those who rocked up to the reception.

Dinner at Kyotatsu (best viewed …

Its been a while since I last blogged. I’ve shifted through many countries now, since my post on UC-J Day 1. Since then, I’ve updated the set, and there are way more photos, even from Day 2. Day 2 photos are more interesting, because I bothered to take my 70-200/2.8 lens with me (no monopod though, so I bumped up the ISO for stability).

Basically, day 2 went on well, with a little less attendees in comparison to day 1, thanks to the horrendous weather. Most of us took cabs, but some brave souls got an umbrella and walked. Heh. Pictures from many sushi dinners should also make their way online soon. There was a very nice reception later on in the evening, with lots of people winning prizes and so on.

The general consensus from all the …

In this modern Web-based world, I figure I should try and keep things, well, really, up-to-date as quickly as possible. For those of you not in Japan, I do hope the pictures of the UC-J interest (and tempt) you… The master set: MySQL Users Conference Japan (UC-J) 2007.

Some quick snippets follow. I’ve tagged them uc-j (flickr should treat it as “ucj”) as well as uc-j2007 (because, this may be the first, but it’s definitely not the last!).

Mats, Mr. Ruby

Big, big, crowd. Room holds 600. 1,200 registered. Standing room!

Jimmy, Mr. Carrier Grade Cluster

Here are some random thoughts, notes, observations, etc.

Jay Pipes - he made the conference possible

• Friendster uses Bugzilla internally. Yes they’re still alive, even though MySpace and so forth are around and kicking. Had to Google them (I wanted to find their old talk about their storage engine), and found MySQL Customers - Friendster, instead. From 2005, Dathan’s (now at Flickr) presentation. Never did find the storage engine stuff, beyond random bits in the press.
• Probably the best blog post that hit Planet MySQL, as opposed to the session summaries and so on, comes from …

I’ve always been a big Flickr fan, and user, and love them even more now that their 2GB limit is gone. So this was a most interesting talk, and I think photographers and Flickr users alike will find it interesting what’s behind Flickr. Dathan also has a very interesting blog.

Federation at Flickr: Doing Billions of Queries Per Day, Dathan Pattishall

Database guy - query, performance, troubleshooting, application building, etc. Previously worked at Friendster in 2003.

Master-Slave lag - unable to keep up with the demand that Flickr was having. So they have multiple masters, the had multiple single points of failure (SPOF).

Everything had to be real time. Write intensive, so more than 1 master needed. No more slave lag. Serve pages fast, with many queries. Get rid of the SPOFs and be redundant.

Need ability to make live …

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 …

On top of everything else I saw at the MySQL UC, I saw enough snazzy digital SLRs to make me green with envy (curse you Stewart, Mike, George, Colin, Jeremy and Julian!)

So, I decided to whip up a way out-there camera wishlist to rule them all! I may not actually have any of this, but when some generous millionaire buys it all for me I shall have the mightiest setup of all at the next uc!

Ok so it is just an excuse to play with the wishlist plugin for wordpress.

So the last few days have been randomly fun. I’ve been to Fry’s several times to grab random bits and bobs. Things I don’t need, but now have. Hung out with Mikal and Stewart quite a bit, which is always fun. Had lots to drink, and have gotten some work done!

All that aside, today was reserved mostly for our CEO’s house party. It was highly fun, there was drink, great food, and even song!

Stewart by the bar

There was Foster’s beer! Haha. Go Australian export beer. And Morgan was caught having some. I got to meet so many MySQLers its going to be hard to remember them all. I’m sure by the time the UC is over, all will be well.

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