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Cameras and Lenses (2020)

ciechanow.ski

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Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#31

Post by fsckboy »

Sharlin wrote: post #27
fsckboy wrote: post #19

> ̶P̶i̶c̶t̶u̶r̶e̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ Art has always been a meaningful part of the human experience. From the first cave drawings, to sketches and paintings, to modern photography, we’ve mastered the art of recording what we ̶s̶e̶e̶ think and feel.

Your "correction" does not make sense. "Pictures" and "art" are overlapping categories but neither is a subset of the other. Pictures in and of themselves are plenty fascinating to humans, without bringing art into the equation.

it is your critique that does not make sense. I was not applying any hierarchy or subsetting whatsoever. Inseparable unity would be closer to the point.

I was making the point that the cave painters believed everything including rocks and trees were deeply invested with spiritual power, and they didn't draw a cave painting without investing it with spiritual ideas. Even if one of their goals was to capture an accurate image of some animals, and indicate when in the lunar or solar cycle they were expected to calve, when they went hunting for one a part of the goal would be cut out its heart and eat it raw because of the power contained within, and give thanks to the great mother. Inseparable.

even though I am not spiritual at all, I find your worldview too barren to explain human endeavor.

Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#32

Post by mal10c »

Y_Y wrote: post #3

Amazing as usual. I am always on the lookout for the classic sin of making it look like electromagnetic waves wiggle in space like a snake. I know it's convenient to glue the tangent space to the underlying physical space, but I think it confuses students. To be clear: the amplitude of the electric and magnetic fields (and hence their components in each direction) oscillate in space/time. Any particular wave though s…

I agree with your thought process. Factoring in antenna type and reflections also causes difficulties when explaining concepts like super position. The sinusoid is a good illustration of what a given receiver might detect at some location (X,Y,Z). A more accurate way to show that may be a light source fading on and off to match some frequency (below THz). Then factoring in the speed of light, at time zero, the light will be off, at some arbitrary time 1, the light will be illuminated at 0.25 (scale goes up to 1 here). The light energy peak at time 1 is at the light. Then at time 2, the light goes up to 0.5. That means that the 0.25 light is now 1 unit away from the light while the 0.5 is at the light. Step to time 3 and the light goes up to 0.75, meaning 1 unit from the light, the light is at 0.5 and 2 units from the light, the light is dimmer at 0.25. This repeats with the light hitting 1.0 then falling back to 0.75, then 0.5, etc. The movement of light is key and I think that's what is often either misunderstood or just not considered enough.

Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#33

Post by dpark »

sho_hn wrote: post #17
behnamoh wrote: post #4

Can we donate to creative individuals like the OP so they keep making amazing stuff? This is the kind of output LLMs will not be able to produce any time soon.

"Make a Bartosz-style website about $topic" seems like a fun benchmark idea. Maybe more so than pelicans on bicycles. To be honest, though, this seems like ideal content for an LLM to produce. It's basically fact regurgitation.

> It's basically fact regurgitation.

This page wasn’t a regurgitation of facts. It was filled with custom interactive applets that let you explore the effects of physical changes. The core value proposition here is not the facts but the ability to explore and intuit the physics.

Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#34

Post by dpark »

fsckboy wrote: post #31
Sharlin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "correction" does not make sense. "Pictures" and "art" are overlapping categories but neither is a subset of the other. Pictures in and of themselves are plenty fascinating to humans, without bringing art into the equation.

it is your critique that does not make sense. I was not applying any hierarchy or subsetting whatsoever. Inseparable unity would be closer to the point. I was making the point that the cave painters believed everything including rocks and trees were deeply invested with spiritual power, and they didn't draw a cave painting without investing it with spiritual ideas. Even if one of their goals was to capture an accurat…

> I was making the point that the cave painters believed everything including rocks and trees were deeply invested with spiritual power, and they didn't draw a cave painting without investing it with spiritual ideas.

Nonsense. We don’t know what prehistoric cave painters believed.

> when they went hunting for one a part of the goal would be cut out its heart and eat it raw because of the power contained within

Do you have a pointer to the cave paintings that show hunting animals at certain times in the lunar cycles and eating their hearts raw to harvest this power? Because this sounds made up.

Also this says nothing about art.

Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#35

Post by Sharlin »

fsckboy wrote: post #31
Sharlin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "correction" does not make sense. "Pictures" and "art" are overlapping categories but neither is a subset of the other. Pictures in and of themselves are plenty fascinating to humans, without bringing art into the equation.

it is your critique that does not make sense. I was not applying any hierarchy or subsetting whatsoever. Inseparable unity would be closer to the point. I was making the point that the cave painters believed everything including rocks and trees were deeply invested with spiritual power, and they didn't draw a cave painting without investing it with spiritual ideas. Even if one of their goals was to capture an accurat…

I still don't know what your comment has to do with the article at hand. If you want to branch the conversation to animism and spirituality, I guess that's fine (although rather far-fetched and arguably off-topic) but you should probably do it in a way that actually offers some insight.

Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#36

Post by KPGv2 »

zbendefy wrote: post #26
nntwozz wrote: post #24

Bartosz Ciechanowski's blog brings back the joy of surfing the web during the heyday of Adobe Flash (minus the 100% CPU). It's so much fun manipulating things, exploring and getting surprising feedback. I know it's not really fair to compare this highly scientific masterpiece to the artistic flash websites of the past, but for me at least it immediately evokes the same feelings.

Tangential, but Flash had a nice side effect that the "app" could be exported in a self contained way via SWF. Exporting this site for example in a future proof way is not that obvious. (Exporting as pdf wont work with the webgl applets, exporting the html page might work but is error prone depending in the website structure) 50 years from now, flash emulators will still work on swf files, but these sites might be lo…

> Or is there a way to archive sites like this?

A couple days ago, someone published their archive of HN that works in any browser.

Archiving sites is easy anyway. I wrote a Scrapy app that archives everything within the a specific fandom on Ao3. TH hardest part is remembering how beautiful soup queries work.

Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#38

Post by sho_hn »

dpark wrote: post #33
sho_hn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Make a Bartosz-style website about $topic" seems like a fun benchmark idea. Maybe more so than pelicans on bicycles. To be honest, though, this seems like ideal content for an LLM to produce. It's basically fact regurgitation.

> It's basically fact regurgitation. This page wasn’t a regurgitation of facts. It was filled with custom interactive applets that let you explore the effects of physical changes. The core value proposition here is not the facts but the ability to explore and intuit the physics.

I do understand the contention is that an LLM would be less thoughtful in editorializing which bits to make interactive, reasoning about the progression in understanding and delight by the user.

I'm not so sure it's that far out of reach, though. From what I've seen the reasoning models do, they're not too far away from being able to run a strategy of figuring out interesting increments of a problem, parameterizing them, making an interactive scene for those parameters, ... it feels within reach.

Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#39

Post by dekhn »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #28

Does anyone know of a lens that can make a laser look like a spotlight?

More details required.

Like the other comment says, this can be done with a beam-expanding telescope (which can be as simple as two lenses whose focal length ratios determine the magnification). https://www.newport.com/n/how-to-build-a-beam-expander and https://www.thorlabs.com/an-example-of-a-diy-keplerian-beam-... are a good place to start.

But it can be a bit more complicated than that , and it's often easier to use an LED.

Re: Cameras and Lenses (2020)

#40

Post by roywiggins »

KPGv2 wrote: post #36
zbendefy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential, but Flash had a nice side effect that the "app" could be exported in a self contained way via SWF. Exporting this site for example in a future proof way is not that obvious. (Exporting as pdf wont work with the webgl applets, exporting the html page might work but is error prone depending in the website structure) 50 years from now, flash emulators will still work on swf files, but these sites might be lo…

> Or is there a way to archive sites like this? A couple days ago, someone published their archive of HN that works in any browser. Archiving sites is easy anyway. I wrote a Scrapy app that archives everything within the a specific fandom on Ao3. TH hardest part is remembering how beautiful soup queries work.

Static sites are straightforward, yeah. Highly dynamic websites like this one commonly explode when you archive them naively.
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