Monday, October 28, 2024

Planar / Tessar / Sonnar / Distagon

A recent question about the naming scheme adopted for Carl Zeiss lenses encouraged me to do a little research. So I wrote the first version of this article... but then I couldn't stop reading about lens design! So now you can enjoy an entire series by clicking on the banner above.

Creative names like Planar, Sonnar, and Tessar were initially used to describe families of optical designs. But later they were used for marketing reasons, so the original meanings were not always preserved.

I now have more detailed articles on the development of lenses in the nineteenth century and those that used the symmetrical pattern. This article repeats some of that information, but from the perspective of Carl Zeiss offerings, in particular the Contax-Yashica line. (Since these are personal favourites.)

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Brooks / Faustine / Seyrig / Karina

On Morel and Marienbad

I wonder why it has taken until now for me to read The Invention of Morel (Adolfo Bioy Casares, 1940), given the fascination it exerted on Borges. That writer's many stories, poems, and fake encyclopedia entries provided a fluid substrate for my own imagination. I read him early and enthusiastically, relating his fabulist output back to more conventional science-fiction. 

So how did I forget Bioy, his colleague and friend? Borges even wrote the (original) introduction to this book. 

There is a story here to uncover through figures of representation and obsession. Brooks / Faustine / Seyrig / Karina. I've made a few belated discoveries.

Saturday, October 05, 2024

Why you shouldn't learn from YouTube

This article risks being read as an "old man yells at cloud" post. But I am driven to write it to counter a lack of critical thinking about what YouTube means for education. Specifically, how that channel misleads learners and damages learning itself.

Before I itemise the problems with YouTube tutorials, I will provide some context.