A cool talk about team building

Carla Schroder posted an article on linux.com with the keynote video for LinuxCon North America, held by Dr. Margaret Hefferman.

Dr. Hefferman compares successful team building with the work and research from William M. Muir, Professor of Animal Science at Purdue University, who did research on poultry – which is why Carla’s article is headlined “How Building Strong Open Source Teams Is Like Raising Chickens“.

If you have the 20+ minutes, listen to the keynote of Dr. Hefferman – it’s worth it. Especially if you’re a manager.

This is dedicated to Robert, my boss, who has birthday today. With congratulations…

Thanks for reading.

Arno

During today’s lunch break I was out with the camera, the normal (25mm) lens, and my circular polarizer in front of it. I wanted to get a bit more contrast into the half blue half cloudy day. And when I returned from my walk, my colleague Arno was in front of the building, speaking to someone on his mobile phone. So I walked right up to him and took his picture:

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Arno, September 2016 (with circular polarizer)

He laughed and told whoever was on the other side that he just got photographed. And upstairs, later, he said “cool image” – he liked it because of the reflections which give the illusion that there’s lots of background, while in fact he was sitting right in front of a window.

Thanks for viewing.

Update, from October 8th:

Here’s another one which I took yesterday, and which just got “explored” in Flickr:

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Arno, October 2016

The colour version of this one had a few elements which were too distracting, and it’s also taken with both natural *and* artificial light (the bad ones from the office ceiling), so I converted it to black & white using Silver Efex, simulating a Kodak Tri-X (400TX) film. But it was taken with my E-M10 and the Zuiko Digital 50mm/2 macro lens from the Four Thirds system, used wide open. Only the left eye is sharp, you can see the different sizes of this photo on Flickr (as always, when making prints, take the original size).

Thanks again for viewing. Or thanks for viewing again (and sorry about not posting that much lately).

Busy times

We’ve been doing a lot during the last weeks, and then again, not so much. First it was Ramadan, so we slept during daytime (with times like 21:40 to 2:50 for eating and drinking approximately, you don’t have much time left to sleep during those nights).

I also didn’t take many photos. Some of colleagues, some of friends, and lately of our new office (we’ve moved within the same building). So here are a few:

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Working during lunch break

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The heavens above

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Three girls and a dog

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Dog

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Sebastian and friends

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A new place to sit and to work

We also got Tuna vaccinated, but we don’t have to give her to some cat “hotel” during our upcoming holidays – we’ve found someone who will care for her here.

Thanks for reading and viewing.

Current affairs: IBMers protest

Today at work, we’ve had a short get together to demonstrate against massive job cuts which are planned for IBM Germany. I took some photos with my camera, and also with the one of Bert Stach, chief negotiator of ver.di (our labour union who were the organizers, together with our workers’ council). Here are some taken with my own camera:

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

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IBMers in Germany protest against planned job cuts, Frankfurt 2016

Thanks for viewing.

P.S.: Tho I converted these photos from the raw .orf files of my camera, I haven’t made any changes to them, except adding meta data like titles, exif tags, and so on, which makes them a bit easier to find for interested parties. So you have to excuse if some lines aren’t as straight as usual – this is documentary photography with its own set of ethic rules and such. Also, the light at “5 to 12” (which was the title of this happening) isn’t perfect for photography as we all know.

Cameramen

It all began when my colleague Arno asked me about a camera. And this time his question was about a real camera, a Sony A6000.

Well, I told him, that one is at least as good as mine – its autofocus should be way faster especially on moving subjects, the sensor is APS-C, so a bit bigger, dynamic range could be better, whatever – you know the drill. No built in image stabilization was the only contra argument I could memorize without comparing actual spec sheets. Oh, and – how many – 20 Megapixels? Anyhow, more than enough of these as well. The fact that it’s not too expensive – in the same ballpark like an E-M10 or -Mark2 – was an additional plus. Everybody’s darling, I told him, and that he should get one if he saw a good offer.

A week went by, then another one, and finally I asked if he bought it, and he said no. He still wanted to make financial plans for this year together with his CFO 😉

In the end I decided to lend him my Olympus E-PL5 together with its kit zoom and the VF-2 electronic viewfinder. That would still leave the E-M10 in my bag, so I could live with that for a while.

Well, it never actually happened. He was about to take the camera – which he put into a bag first – into his car after having a smoke together with me, but he forgot to take his car keys, so we stood outside, smoking, bag with camera in his hand.

“See?”, he asked, adding “I guess I would never take that camera with me, it’s just too big, you cannot put it into a pocket, so it would probably stay at home all of the time”.

Ok I thought, thinking about alternatives. If my camera was out of the game, then so was the A6000 he had asked about, and I recommended a Sony RX-100 instead.

“Ask Basti”, I said, “he has one. First generation, they should be quite affordable by now”. Short internet check when we were up again – yep, slightly above 300€, fits. And Basti offered to bring his camera as well, so Arno could have a look before making a decision.

And that is what happened today. “Perfect”, was Arno’s comment, “that is the camera I want”. And so during our lunch break we took some photos:

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Cameraman (my colleague Arno, trying Basti’s – or Nadine’s? – camera on me)

He really seemed to like that thing. While I took one photo of him, he took three of me (and several more):

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Don’t directly compare these with the one I took. The Sony pictures are out of camera, while I “developed” mine from the Olympus raw file (.orf). Plus I had the 45mm/1.8 M.Zuiko lens on my camera – the Sony has a very good Zeiss zoom, but it can’t be opened that wide – and it’s of course way shorter to fit the 1″ sensor inside that camera.

Still, pretty good detail as far as I can tell – and these should have detail, 20 Megapixels of them. More than enough, like I told him.

Always glad if I can help. And thanks to Nadine and Basti who helped as well.

Thanks for reading.

Pictures from paradise

My colleague Arno and his wife are on Ko Samui, and our colleague Nabil is on Phuket. Some ten days ago, Arno sent a picture which he took with his phone, writing that he doesn’t really want to come back…

Reminded me of our last time in Malaysia, which is five years ago already. Well, paradise, yes, maybe. For us. But first and foremost, it’s hot. You’re sweating without doing much:

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Zuleikha, Malaysia 2010

So after noon, you sometimes just sit around, feeding keropok to the cats:

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The kids – here are some of our relatives – play and pose, but even under the trees in some other kampung further North, it’s hot – and at night, you’ll get eaten up by mosquitoes:

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Finally, here are two portraits I made during that holiday (I’ve shown them before). The first one is of Comel who is now married and has a baby boy herself:

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Comel, July 2010

And the second one is of her brother, who sadly isn’t amongst us anymore:

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Mohammed Haniff, July 2010

So is Malaysia, or is Thailand paradise? Like I wrote above: Well, paradise, yes, maybe. For us. But that is only because first these people – relatives or not – will do everything they can to make it paradise for you, and second we’re ignoring most of their problems.

Have to go back there soon…

It’s green again

First of May, and finally you see that it’s spring. I took this photo three days ago at work while having our usual lunch walk (and it shows my colleague Arno):

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Spring in Sossenheim

And I took this one just a few minutes ago on our veranda:

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It’s green again

We’ve had a bit of rain lately, with probably more to come. Still this is very good for the plants – we don’t have some tropical rain forest around here yet, but it surely helps. 😉

For the first picture I used the Panasonic Lumix 14mm/2.5 lens (and a Marumi Super DHG polarizer in front of it), for today’s picture it was the M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 lens, both with an aperture of f/4.

Thanks for viewing.

A photo, not taken by me

Normally I rarely show photos here which I didn’t take myself. But here’s one I found at work:

IBM Debuts Analytics for Everyone

IBM Debuts Analytics for Everyone, by ibmphoto24 on Flickr

The photo shows IBMs next big thing, called Watson Analytics. And the slightly blurred colleague who holds the tablet PC is actually IBMs youngest Vice President (of IBM Big Data and Analytics, and since I’m working in Business Intelligence and in the IBM Software Group like her, she’s actually one of my highest bosses), Mrs. Inhi Cho Suh.

It’s an impressive technology, and if you want to know more about it, just visit IBM. I’m just showing it here because I also think that this is a nice photo.

Thanks for viewing.

My DSLR, long

So today I had the longer 40-150mm “kit zoom” lens on my DSLR, but I didn’t have time to take too many photos. Therefore, I’ll show you one from today and one older one again:

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Leaves. Olympus E-520 and 40-150mm lens at 150mm.

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Arno, June 2013. Olympus E-520 and 40-150mm lens at 150mm.

In that second one you see how you can blur the background on closer distances to your subject. The first one above is a bit “busy”, but you can also see how thin the depth of field really is – one of those leaves is really sharp.

Also a really nice lens, and for the price as good as unbeatable. A long zoom like this is really recommended if you want to concentrate onto a single subject, and leave as much as possible out of the frame. Or to blur it into oblivion like in picture #2.

Now I have to find some even nicer light, maybe at those golden or blue hours of the days. Oh well, maybe on the weekend which lays ahead.

Thanks for reading.