I stumbled across Lollington’s store, saw a really cute octopi fabric* in their shop… and noticed that they also took orders for custom sleeves. Sweet! I fired them a few questions which were answered promptly, and then I placed my order.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this awesome with everyone. The quality is really nice. The sleeves are padded with high density closed-cell foam, are spill resistant… and if you custom order, you can specify the zipper placement as well as size to ensure that everything will fit snugly like it should.

Would definitely do business again. Maybe once I’m in the market for a new laptop. :)

* Designed by Heather Ross, from her Mendocino line. So cute!

She let me hold it, and I kind of fell in love. :] Now I’ve been a bit of a Wacom kid for about the last ten years or so, starting off with one of the original Graphire models (which I swear the Tupperware lady took the stylus to). I’ve been using an 6×8″ Intuos 3 for the past few years, and the Cintiq 12WX felt like a fantastic step up. I hardly noticed the size difference, and the weight of the device felt just like one of my hardcover sketchbooks.

Anyway, long story short, I used a few gift cards I’d received, payed the difference, and bought a Cintiq.

First let’s start off with the negatives:

• I wish all Wacom products came with a neoprene cover or sleeve of some sort. Specially the smaller models which are often carried around (you know, the entire product line except for the UX). Where is my snazzy Wacom branded sleeve? :(
• It gets a little warm down around where my hands generally end up. My Intuos 3 would also get a little warm like this in places, so it’s to be expected.
• I’d read about people getting “jittery” places (specifically the corners) on their tablet display. I haven’t encountered that problem at all. I’m going to assume that it probably has/had something to either do with the drivers, or general interference. The Intuos 3 would go absolutely batty if I ever placed it on top of my laptop keyboard and tried to use it. So far so good though.
• The “break out” box. It’s annoying. Specially if you want the Cintiq to be portable. It’s more portable than the UX, but only to a certain extent. Once we make a few leaps and bounds in regards to wireless technology though… Is it the future yet?
• It’s expensive, and a bit overpriced (if you break it down to individual components). However, I’ve had great success with Wacom products. My original Graphire is still alive. It required a little maintenance to fix the wiring which had come loose (thanks Mike!), but otherwise it’s still kicking. If the Cintiq can hold up to similar wear and tear, then good on it. Only time will tell here, but I’d like to think that it’s a quality product.
• Does anyone honestly use the stylus holder?
• Shouldn’t there be a little bit more stylus calibration going on? My Nintendo DS has more calibration features.

Now for the positives:

• Whoa! I’m drawing on the monitor! I’ve worked on tablet PCs before, but this was a slice of awesome. Just for the “cool factor” alone and the pressure sensitivity of a real tablet, I think it’s worth it. (It’s sort of reminds me of scribbling on a wall… it feels wrong, but so right.)
• If you’ve used the Intuos series, the “transition or learning period” is pretty much non-existent. At least it was for me. You don’t have to re-learn how to draw (you already know how! Right?). The buttons can be mapped to whatever you desire, and then you just pick it up and go. No more blind contour drawing! You work directly on the monitor and make things appear. This alone was worth worlds to me. I can actually zoom out on my drawing and still retain precision. I’d had extreme difficulty doing this with my other tablets.
• Lack of friction. Blah blah… it seems to me like the people who always complain about the lack of friction are those who have never used tablets before. Yes, there’s not much friction. I like it though. It feels exactly like any of Wacom’s other tablets.
• I actually kind of like the stylus that it comes with. Somehow this time around the grip doesn’t “feel” as awkward to me. I have fairly small hands and some of the previous (freaking fat and chunky phallic) styluses just didn’t feel right. Yes. That is what she said.
• No eraser bits! Hmm… yet I still go through the motion of physically wiping them away whenever I erase something.
• I can turn it around in my lap to get at angles that I would usually have to rotate my canvas to get at. This is going to make digital inking a breeze.
• The colours! I haven’t even gotten around to calibrating the colours on the display, but they look pretty close while using Adobe Photoshop just out of the box. We’ll see shortly how it compares to my 100% colour calibrated laptop.

The final verdict:

If you’re a digital painter or artist, I’d say get it. I don’t know why I waited so long (Oh wait, I do. I was a poor student). If you’ve never owned a tablet before or are just taking your first baby steps into the realm of digital art… then forget it. (Unless you happen to have some money to burn.) It does take a little bit to get used to the friction-less surface of any tablet, and often people find it so awkward to work with that they don’t take the time to condition their drawing habits.

I really, really like the Cintiq though. I think I’ll have to name it.

Dropbox allows you to synchronize files across multiple machines. The main draw that I’ve had with this software is that it is cross-platform compatible. You can set it up on your Linux, Mac, or Windows computers (and iPhone… still waiting on Android and other mobile releases *peer pressure* now also available in the Android Market), and it’ll sync your data across them all flawlessly. Never have to rely on a USB drive again (but keep them around because they can do cool things on their own)!

Have a look at the full list of features.

Here are just some of the things that I’ve used Dropbox for so far:

• NaNoWriMo
  For the entire month of November, I used Dropbox to synchronize my novel across the various machines that I was using. It hurts to loose a large chunk of writing. It also hurts to forget something you were working on on a USB drive, or even worse, suffer from some sort of computer malfunction that results in data loss.  Rejoice in knowing that if you religiously save your work, it’ll be auto-magically backed up elsewhere for you should you need to access it.
• Invoices & Time Sheets
  I keep copies of all my invoices and time sheets, neatly organized by year and company.
• Specific Program Settings
  Sometimes it’s something as simple as a collection of Adobe Photoshop brushes or a browser profile. Other times it’s game saves or gedit plugins. Anything program-specific that I don’t want to lose, I put it in Dropbox.
• Typography
  There are a few fonts that I can’t live without.
• School Projects
  Okay, I’m done school… but damn, this could have saved me a few times. Upload your essays and print them from school (why waste your own ink?). Need to make a midnight run to a 24/7 printing company? Dropbox would have been nice then too. Of course, due to the time sensitive nature of some school projects… your data access is about as trustworthy as your school’s internet connection. If it sucks (like it did at ACAD), you might just be better off using a USB drive.
• Passwords
  Wait, what? Yes, you can do this too. The servers that Dropbox uses are encrypted (AES-256) and inaccessible without your password, so that your sensitive data is safe. I use KeePass Password Safe (another nice cross-operating system application), to manage my passwords. It creates an encrypted password database file that can easily be stored and shared by Dropbox. It’s really useful if you’re like me and create a new randomized password for each site you sign up with.

Moogle is a two year old grey and white tabby, born sometime in December of 2007. She is also adorable. If you have me on Facebook, you’ve already seen photographs of her. I’d forgotten just how much I missed having something warm and fuzzy lurking around inside of the house. Every day after work she’s waiting at the door to greet us (loudly) when we get home. :)

Brimwylf

Yet another new addition to the apartment is Brimwylf. Brimwylf is the name that I decided to give to my new desktop. It’s also one of many names that is given to Grendel’s mother in the epic poem Beowulf. I found it fitting because it’s quite the beast. Aron and I spent Friday night building it, and so far I’m really happy with it. It makes playing games… well, amazing. I was long, long overdue for a new computer. My laptop lasted me a whole five years. It’s going to be retired and re-formatted to run flavours of linux only.

Here are my new system specs:

• Motherboard: Asus P6T SE X58
• Processor: Intel Core i7 920
• Video: Nvidia eVGA e-GeForce GTX285
• 6 GB RAM (Kingston)
• 2 x 500 GB hard drives (Seagate)
• Antec Performance One P183 ATX Case (Sweet case that has lots of room for expansion!)
• OS: Dual-booting Windows 7 & Ubuntu

I also picked up a Logitech Illuminated Keyboard, which is pretty awesome in regards to keyboards that actually “feel” like a laptop keyboard.  Plus it glows in the dark (very Mac/Apple-esque actually) for all that late night typing. Everything is so shiny and new! I’m absolutely loving it so far. Also… rather surprised that Windows 7 doesn’t really suck. I think I may finally be 100% finished with Windows XP. Of course, it can’t replace my Ubuntu development environment.

As far as other computer-related things go, shriker.ca is now being hosted on a dedicated server (Yes! It’s a dream come true!). I’m slowly in the process of moving all of my sites and hosted sites over to this new server. So if you experience temporary downtime, or a site of mine goes missing for a bit – that’s why. All of my domains/subdomains have to propagate to the new server. Goodbye shared hosting! You sucked. :)