Japanese art

I recently spent a week in Japan and while there had the opportunity to visit the national gallery in Ueno park, in Tokyo.

The visit was wonderful and I had the chance to see amazing 500-year-old pottery from all over Asia, including this Ming bowl. That, of course, was one of the younger pieces as the gallery has many older pieces, including this incredible 400-year-old jar from the Manjiayoo culture of ancient China:

After touring the Asian sections of the gallery, I went to the Japanese art section, featuring paintings on huge screens or panels – where I was not allowed to take photos. This was fascinating and enjoyable, but … confusing.

I’m used to Western art. While I’m not an expert by any means whatsoever, I can “read” it to a degree … understand it … appreciate it. Japanese painting, on the other hand is very different … in many ways I cannot read it and do not understand it.

Japanese art, especially traditional Japanese art, seems to almost be more about what is not there than what is. In my limited understanding, this does not appear to be negative space in the western architectural sense, though. Rather, the landscape and objects that are not there are not omissions – they are not removed. Rather, my sense of it is that it’s more of a fading away … a merging with the background which is not background but is also foreground.

Later Japanese art from the 20th and 21st centuries seems more detailed, more western. It employs more tricks of perspective to spatially place objects and scenes in a more “realistic” way. It’s more accessible to my Western eye.

Perhaps next time I go to Japan (if I go) I’ll read up on traditional Japanese art and be able to understand it better.

I did notice, however, that other sections of Japanese art, including sculpture and carving, were far more accessible – though I’m certain that I’m missing many things when viewing these as well.

Japan so far

This is my experience of Japan so far, in pictures and video:

Note: you can click the little small/big box control to view full-screen.

Also, click through to Flickr to see all picture titles and information.

Recent videos from Osaka, Japan

I’m in Osaka to speak at ACE 2009 on Google and intelligence in the modern age (I’ll upload some assets from the presentation sometime next week).

But I had a free afternoon today, and here’s a few things I saw:

Sonezaki Markeplace:

Robo-concierge in the HAL building:

Yodobashi Umeda (electronics store):

Portlandia

Some pictures from my recent trip to Portland, OR …

We were meeting a group of people at Intel, which has a fairly major presence in Portland. It was my third visit to an Intel office – head office in Santa Clara (Silicon Valley), Intel Shanghai offices, and now one of their Portland offices. I had a 4-hour presentation (!!!) which went extremely well, thankfully.

And, as you can see above, I was fortunate enough to have an afternoon in Portland to do a brief photowalk. The side-benefit? It was the first Thursday in the month … and every first Thursday Portland art galleries stay open late. So it was very enjoyable to stroll downtown and stop by at least 15 different galleries.

My favorite painting of the night was this one by Claudio Tschopp:

Prepping for Tokyo, Osaka … what else?

I just bought the tickets and confirmed: I’m heading to Japan in October.

So far, I know 3 things:

1. I’m going to land in Tokyo
2. I’m going to be in Osaka on the 24th and 25th speaking at ACE 2009
3. I’m going to fly out of Tokyo

The question is: what else should I do?

Should I try to visit Mount Fuji? How far is it from Tokyo … and how much time would it take to climb? Should I spent all my time in Tokyo – in a city of 12 million or more there’s got to be plenty to do. Questions, questions, questions!

I’ll be researching this in the next week or so – any suggestions would be much appreciated!

It’s a beautiful night in Shanghai

It’s a beautiful night in Shanghai.

Lashing rain from the regretful remnants of Typhoon Morakot has now left the region, cleaning the air and drenching the streets. A thin mist is still falling, invigorating evening walkers. And a low fog is blanketing the city, obscuring the tops of skyscrapers and deepening the mystery of this city of almost 20 million.

As if Shanghai needed help in mystifying visitors. Some cities easily foster the illusion that they are known … San Francisco with the TransAmerica and Coit towers serving as beacons and reference points, Chicago defined by the lake and the blank black Mies van der Rohe towers, other cities with definable and visible landmarks.

But Shanghai, like London and other megacities, seems too big and too complex to grasp for the casual visitor. Shanghai, with a million towers under construction … Shanghai, with elevated freeways and expressways and bridgeways like spaghetti in a Salvador Dali painting with even less connection to reality than most.

I’m now back in the mundane if luxurious world of the Shanghai HIlton, just returned from my nightime stroll through Shanghai – or, the tiny fraction of Shanghai within walking distance. Tomorrow I have meetings, and probably the day after, but then I’ll have at least some time to explore this single city that has almost two thirds the population of my entire country, Canada.

But I’m glad I stole a few precious moments from tonight’s pillow time to allow the experience of being in China and being in Shanghai be more than an airport and a hotel.

More later!

Memories of London

Here’s a small selection of photos that I took on my recent visit to London:

People I want to remember from eLiberatica

I met such great people on my recent trip to Bucharest for eLiberatica 2009. There’s something about conferences and trips: you compress so much experience into so short a period of time that you feel like old friends with people you met just a few days before.

Here’s a few that I want to remember and stay in touch with …

Georg Greve
Georg is passionate about free and open source software … and also passionate about good user experience. Totally unexpectedly, we completely connected, discussed software and life passionately and humorously … spent a lot of time together. It’s funny, but in the way we joked about each other and poked holes in each other’s ego, he kind of felt like a brother.

He’s the president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, a great speaker, and about as smart as they come (he was trained as a physicist and was planning to go into nanotechnology before being seduced by free software).

Anca Luca
Anca is a software developer for Xwiki, a corporate collaboration company/community in Romania and around the world.

She’s wicked smart – working on a better online word processor/text editor than currently exists on the market – and is very definitely totally switched on. (I know something about the challenges about creating word processing capabilities in a browser, as I’ve done that for a past project. I’ll be very thankful not to have to do it again in the future!) She’s also extremely articulate, and I told her she should be on the panel of speakers for eLiberatica 2010.

Jeroen van Meeuwen
Jeroen is a geeks’ geek. VP of the Fedora Linux association for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, he coordinates a ton of open source development. He’s also very funny and personable … and definitely knows how to party. I’ve heard, however, that trying to out-drink a Finn is like trying to win a land war in Asia: don’t even bother … and I think Jeroen might have discovered this fact.

Monty Widenius
If you know open source software, you know Monty. He’s the co-creator of the MySQL database. He’s an extremely successful software developer as well as entrepreneur … but here’s the thing: he has no ego. Zero.

Or maybe I should say attitude. He’s got some programmer’s ego about technical stuff, although he’s always willing to listen to other viewpoints. But he’s got zero I’m-a-bigshot attitude, in spite of having created absolutely iconic software and successfully selling his company to Oracle.

David Axmark
David is the other half of the creation of MySQL, and he’s very similar to Monty in that he has absolutely no attitude … he’s a regular guy, approachable and easy to talk to.

He’s a fairly avid photographer – has 6 cameras – and was always taking shots of people from odd angles when least expected.

Oana Iordache
Oana is part of the Agora team, along with Anca, Marina, and Andreea, who took amazing care of the speakers at eLiberatica 2009, and made everything else in the conference run smoothly as well.

More than that, she’s a funny, patient person who accomplished the gargantuan task of teaching me a couple of dance steps when we all went out Saturday night. As I mentioned on Flickr, when I dance, women faint, strong men weep, and small children run away screaming … but I think I made a scrap of progress that night. Thanks!

Romulus Meier
Aside from having about the coolest first name you can get in Romania aside from Vlad, Romulus is the general manager of Agora Media, the company that puts on eLiberatica conference. He’s smart, engaged, and isn’t unwilling to have a little fun, too, which is important in a leader.

He’s also an amazing dancer, and told me that if I came for 10 eLiberatica’s, then I’d probably be pretty decent as well! I really appreciate the fact that he and the Agor team absolutely made the event an experience to remember for me, and I think all the other speakers as well. And he fed us like kings. Wow …

Danece Cooper
Danece is the “open source diva,” and she had an excellent, excellent talk on open source success stories in government and corporations.

She’s worked for just about everyone in tech … Sun, Microsoft, Apple, and other companies, and is currently with a start-up – a new experience for her. Funny and friendly!

Ismael Alea
Ismael is the kind of guy that you can meet for 30 seconds and be talking like you’ve known each other all your lives. He’s Spanish, and very definitely has a high-tempo Latin personality … passion, excitement, laughter, and lots and lots of hand talking!

. . .
. . .

There were others as well … I’m thinking of 10 or so people that I met and chatted with during the after-conference party on Saturday night, whose name I either don’t know or can’t remember, and who I don’t have photos of. But they’re in my memory, fondly.

. . .
. . .

Staying in touch is a hard thing to do across a continent. There’s Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more …. but it’s not like face-to-face. Monty won’t be able to try to convince me to have some 60-proof jet fuel online, and Georg and I won’t be able to riff back and forth the way we did in person.

But I’m hoping to stay in touch, and meet each of these people and more in person again. Perhaps eLiberatica 2010?

We’ll see!

Carpe diem: on spontaneity

The best things in life happen by accident. Or, at least, partially by accident … to those who are open to opportunity and change.

Last Sunday I was wandering around old Bucharest when I happened on the remains of Vlad Tepes’ old castle. It’s a fascinating place, and as I wandered around, checking it out, I struck up a conversation with Radu, part of a troupe of medieval revivalists who put on demonstrations of medieval arts and warfare at the site.

Vlad Tepes, as you probably know, is better known to North Americans as Dracula, and he was an integral figure in fighting off the Turks and helping the region we now know as Romania win its freedom.

For whatever reason, the show didn’t go off that evening, but Radu and I kept chatting. After a while, he offered to give me some lessons in medieval longsword fighting. Hardly believing my luck, I jumped at the chance and spent the next hour learning how to attack and how to defend myself with a 5-kilo training sword.

I learned the standard defensive and offensive postures … he taught me the basic arm and upper body techniques for defense, and a couple of different options for offense.

It was hot and we were both sweating profusely by the end, but this was just about the most incredible and wonderful experience of my whole trip.

I also learned that a swordsman never touches the blade of his sword with his bare hand, as the oils and sweat of your skin can corrode the blade. That lesson was rammed home when I inadvertently touched the side of my blade with my hand after a few ringing slashes and parries, and got a piece of Romanian steel inserted under my skin … which I had to dig out with a needle the next day.

On every single trip I’ve made (and it’s got to be close to a hundred by now) I’ve had the most amazing experiences by first learning a bit about the location, thinking of a couple of possible things to do before I even get on the airplane, and then completely going with the flow when I’m actually there.

The pre-work ensures I don’t miss anything that’s an absolutely must-see (from my perspective, not some guidebook), and forms a basic background of knowledge about the destination. Then, when I’m actually on the trip, I have some backstory, some clue, as to what might be a great experience or not. But it can all go in the fire if something that appears better in the moment turns up.

The reality is that you can’t plan for your moods, for who you meet, for the weather, or any of a hundred other factors that play into what will be the most amazing opportunity. So planning a trip – or a project – extensively and sticking to the plan robotically is a waste of time.

I think it was Clauswitz (and if I had internet connection on this airplane I’d verify it) who said, “In battle, planning is essential, and plans are useless.”

I think that’s true about a lot of things in life.