Urban Exile

Following up on my last post, I managed to get a stylus fully working with the Motion Computing tablet. I received the new stylus that I ordered from Motion and gave it a try, but it acted the same as my current stylus. So I had to do some more digging and I found out that I was using the wrong device driver.

The driver on Motion’s website does not add pressure sensitivity. I originally found some old forum posts saying that legacy Wacom drivers will work, but I was never able to get any of them to install. So I went to the official Wacom driver website and downloaded the drivers from the “Legacy Drivers” section, All of my attempts failed with “no compatible hardware found” errors.

Then I noticed a different link on the main Wacom driver page: “Wacom Feel IT”, also subtitled “Visit our Table PC driver page”. It turns out that the driver on that page successfully installed and added advanced features, especially pressure sensitivity.

I have played with it a bit since getting it working, but not extensively. However, I have found that when I use the eraser side of the stylus, I still try to brush away the eraser dust as if it was a real pencil. It will take a while to erase that habit, I guess.

At the beginning of the year, I was in the habit of drawing and sketching on a regular basis. But in the last few months, I haven’t drawn anything. After reading Pi Visuals’ post about getting a stylus for his iPad for drawing and animation, I started thinking about getting that stylus, too.

But then I remembered that I already have a tablet computer with a stylus, the Motion Computing LE1700. My wife originally used it at work, but she preferred a laptop so eventually this came home and ended up in my closet.

So this week, I looked into the details of the the LE1700 and found out that the stylus technology is from Wacom, maker of probably the best stylus and tablet hardware. The LE1700 includes pressure sensitive input, which is an amazing feature to use for drawing. This particular model does not have touch input, but for my purposes that is actually better: I can rest my hand on the screen and it will not affect the drawing. And it runs a full version of Windows (Vista, unfortunately), so I can install full applications like Photoshop or GIMP.

The downside to the machine is that it has a very short battery life, is very heavy compared to an iPad, and it tends to get pretty warm. But, considering that I already own it, I cannot complain too much.

Unfortunately, the pressure sensitivity on my machine is not working. I have spent a lot of time this week trying to figure out the problem, hoping that it was just a software or driver issue. The device was also exhibiting some strange behavior in Internet Explorer (probably caused by its tour of duty at my wife’s work), so I ended up doing a full restore from the initial factory image. Actually, due to some bizarre patch problem that completely broke Windows, I had to rebuild it twice, which cost me about a day. And after all that, the pressure sensitivity is still not working.

I read online that the stylus itself can lose pressure sensitivity. So, I am buying a replacement stylus from Motion Computing and hoping that fixes the problem. It would be great to have a full Wacom slate computer with pressure sensitive stylus for drawing. But, if the pressure sensitivity is still broken with the new stylus, at least I can use it in the same manner as an iPad, but with a more full-featured OS and applications.

To promote his brand new record, Weird Al has created eight music videos and is releasing a new one each day. You can view the new videos as they are released at his website, WeirdAl.com (four have been released so far).

In Tuesday’s video he parodies “Blurred Lines”, a song I find extremely annoying and repetitive but with a music video I cannot help but enjoy (warning: NSFW). Weird Al’s version, “Word Crimes”, is a huge upgrade to the original song. Pay attention to the video and you might learn a little about good grammar!

Another great video is “Foil”, a parody of Lorde’s “Royal”. This one was created with CollegeHumor.com and features Patton Oswalt!

“Tacky”, his first video of the week, was produced by Nerdist and is one long continuous camera shot. Unfortunately, it is another piece of otherwise solid comedy that was fatally tainted by the addition of Kristen Schaal.  You have been warned.

I found this cool fan-created movie trailer for a (fake) Calvin and Hobbes movie. I loved Calvin and Hobbes as a kid (still do) and the trailer does a great job of including a lot of small details from the strip, like killer snowmen and attacking food.  The creators also posted some behind-the-scenes videos, so you can get an idea of some of the work that went into the final product.  Enjoy!

Syfy is adapting Frank Miller’s Ronin comic book story as a series.

I have not read Ronin, but the story sounds pretty interesting. It is about a 13th-century masterless samurai with a magical sword that is suddenly thrown into a dystopian 21st-century future, where he tries to track down and slay the demon that killed his master.

Sound familiar? It should, because it was a big part of the inspiration for Samurai Jack. The show is scheduled to air next year, so I hope I remember to check it out.