Old Camera: Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/2

I recently bought the oldest camera in my collection so far, the 6x9 medium-format german Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/2. Don’t mind the huge name, this is how it looks: Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/2 And some technical information, according to Camera-wiki.org: Manufacturer: Zeiss Ikon Country of Origin: Germany Production period: 1951 to 1953 Alternate name: Nettar IIc Film Format: 120 roll film (8 exposures format 6×9cm) Viewfinder: optical, built into top cover Lens/shutter combinations: Novar Anastigmat 1:4.

Retrospective 2023

One more year and one more retrospective. I’ve been doing it for some years on twitter and since last year in this blog. All the retrospective posts will be listed here. I think 2023 wasn’t a very productive year for me, as I didn’t finish any projects, but I traveled more than the previous years and I reflected a lot about life. Overall There’s a few things I’m proud I started doing this year.

My Second Gameboy

Following my first GameBoy, It was the time to get a GameBoy Color! Not my favorite color, but the one available. Weird blue color The seller said it was “working”, but didn’t mention some of the buttons weren’t. Also, the d-pad was so soft that it kept pressing after only a touch. And it was filthy! So I got the replacement parts and started working. Thanks for the gummies, Sandra!

My First Job Interview for Intern Programmer

Back in 2008, I was in my last year of high school (or medium school, as we call in Brazil) and I learned about this program called Students2Business by Microsoft. That was basically a couple-month class on their development platform that would connect a student to a brand new intern job in a dream corporate company. I’ve been programming little games for fun since 2002, when I was 11 years old, and I was finally leaving school and getting ready for university.

On C++ Modules and Containers for Build Systems

We recently rebooted the development of our toy game engine annileen. Teo really wanted to make it with modern C++ and he spent some good time converting it to use C++20 modules. However, the current state of modules in the compilers is a bit complicated, and that requires a big effort to make it compile in any platform but Windows. I also wasn’t very happy with all the libraries we were using in the engine and decided to start from scratch and make a renderer with Vulkan and not BGFX.

Simple Vector Implementation in C

I’ve been watching the excellent series Creating a Compiler from Scratch, Recreationally by nashiora where he’s writing a compiler for his language Laye, that is C-compatible, in C. I’m having so much fun and I’m learning so much watching that, that I couldn’t recommend more. Please go there, subscribe to his channel, and watch the videos if you’re interested in programming languages, or just want to watch a skilled C programmer writing code.

Prosperity and Self Help

Unfortunately there wasn’t many books in the house I grew up. My parents weren’t exactly readers and there’s nothing wrong with it. But I remember once my dad bought a “prosperity” book from a newspaper stand and brought home, very excited, to my mom: “we should read that and maybe our life will improve”. I’m not sure if they read it, but spoiler: our life didn’t improve. Years later, however, I was so bored that I decided to read that book myself.

Installing Portaudio for Racket on Windows

I recently wanted to play with some procedural audio generation in Racket. So, after some research, I found that there’s a port of the cross-platform audio I/O library Portaudio. However, installing it through raco was not doing the job for me, on Windows. I investigated the issue and figure a problem with the compiled libraries that were out of date with the Racket interface and then I rebuilt it and submitted to another repository.

My First Gameboy

It is 2023 and I got my first Gameboy. My parents never had the finnancial condition to get me one when I was a kid, and to be really honest, nor did most of the families of my street friends and school colleagues. It was probably only by the early 2000’s when I first heard about it. Pokémon Yellow was the reason I downloaded my first emulator and pirate roms.

Analog is a Privilege

I recently posted about my rather recent hobby of film photography. Since I moved to Germany, I’ve been thinking a lot about the current rise of analog technologies and what that means. I’m from Brazil and I lived there for 28 years of my life. I left for Ireland in 2019 and now have been living in Germany for almost four years, and the culture clash has been a profound and impactful experience for me.