January 5, 2021

Course Work and Another New Lens covid-19: day 288 | US: GA | info | act

Working on my classes in D2L this morning. It is truly time consuming, and I’m running out of time. We received an email this morning that the Provost wants students to be able to access their classes on Monday instead of the first day of class on Wednesday. That means I have to have something up for at least my two full-session online courses. I have completed through unit 1 of World Lit mostly, and I spent this morning working on WritDM.

I’m pleased at my progress, even though it’s slow. I still have reservations about the “MGA Direct” content that was written for me and that I’m seemingly compelled to use. I think this is a poor practice, but whatever. EduCorp’s motto might have been borrowed from the Borg: “resistance is futile.” Is that what we are supposed to do: train automatons for the workforce?

                    

On another note: I used my accrued eBay cash and ordered an Asahi Super-Takumar 1.8/55. It seems pretty clean, and with the $25 discount, I got it for a pretty good price. With this, I’ll have three new vintage lenses to play with soon: the Takumar, the Industar 61 2.8/55, and the Helios 44m-4 2/58. These are all pretty distinct lenses, and they each will require some getting used to. I’m particularly excited to get the Industar 61, as it is a true old-skool lens from the Soviet Union—a Tessar-design, Leica copy that’s supposed to be sharp with excellent color reproduction. In fact, each of these is on some YouTubers’ recommended lists, probably this guy’s.

I hope we get some good weather this weekend to try it—that is, if the seller bothers to ship it. I guess that time between the holidays is not conducive to shipping? Hm and grumble.