Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet

Yesterday I had an overwhelming urge to buy something, since I had a pocket full of gift cards from Christmas. I landed upon the tablet pens at Future Shop and thought they might be fun to try. Given the history of items I have randomly purchased, I knew there was a very good chance I would be taking it back. Needless to say, I bought the Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet.

The pen itself is fascinating. It’s wireless. It has buttons. It doesn’t use batteries. How the hell? After some googling, I got the jist of how it works. From what I gather, there is a grid of wires inside the tablet pad. When the pen becomes close enough, the grid induces a current into a small winding inside the pen which is then stored in some capacitors momentarily. This magnetic coupling with the grid also provides all the tracking information when the pen is hovering above the pad. Pretty epic if you ask me.

So anyway, here is what I think.

Pros

– The pad feels very well made. The plastics are nice and everything is solid.
– It’s very sleek and pleasant to look at.
– The pen tracks exactly how I’d want it to track. It feels accurate.
– Pressure sensitivity works well in Fireworks and Photoshop.
– The pen is weighted well.
– Battery-less design is very nice.
– Three extra pen tips are included.

Cons

– There isn’t many options for the programmable pen buttons. The default settings are pretty good though.
– The “Bamboo Pen” does not have an eraser on the back of the pen, and yet the “Bamboo Pen and Touch” does. This doesn’t make sense. I want an eraser =(.
– The dual monitor support is flawed. When using multiple monitors, the horizontal tracking is faster than the vertical tracking and it impossible to draw properly with. An option to only track on one monitor is needed. I have to disable one of my monitors to use the pen properly. This is a big issue.
-The pen is a little too fat for my liking.

Overall, the pen is good. I’ve had a ton of fun trying to paint and draw with it for the past day. There is no way I will be taking it back. Here is a painting I did with it earlier today. I’m not exactly an artist, hopefully I can get better.

Windows Exposé!

There is a free application for Windows Vista and Windows 7 which implements the exposé functionality found in Mac OSX or a Compiz enabled Linux distro, and it does it very well. It’s called Switcher.

If you have Vista or 7, I strongly suggest you try Switcher out. It’s smooth, responsive, and extremely tweakable. It works good on dual monitors too.

Credit to criccio for the video.

You can download it here http://insentient.net/

Modern Warfare 2

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Update:
Campaign: Beat it in about 6 hours, but it was very intense
Online: Getting frustrating because a) I suck and b) there is frequent latency issues
Special Ops: About halfway done on veteran, pretty difficult and fun

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This game is fun. Really fun. The weapons are awesome. The gameplay is awesome. Haven’t played campaign but I’m sure it’s relatively awesome too. But! there is a few things I will never get over (for the PC version).

1. (minor) Why Steam, WHY!? This game doesn’t need to be on Steam. What a horrible excuse for a gaming service.

2. (major) Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE  has heard about this one; no dedicated servers. That said, I don’t find the p2p type gaming all that bad. I played online for about 3.5 hours last night, and I only had one bad experience with lag. At least me and a few friends can stay grouped together as we bounce around hosts and games, *sigh*.

3. (minor) Special Ops, Campaign, and Multiplayer are not integrated into one. Not even the graphical settings and control options are linked. I wasn’t impressed when I had to change all their effed up control settings three times, and observe the game fail at detecting my default resolution over, and over, and over. Nor was I impressed when the campaign started before I could even change the campaign settings. Watching the intro movie to the campaign at 1024*768 wasn’t too pleasant.

4. (minor) The menus look awful. Especially the first menu to choose which game type I want to play. The game hasn’t actually launched at that point, only that menu to choose what game type I want launch. Either they could have a) not had a menu and just gave me the executables for each mode in the Start menu, or b) made the menu NOT look like it’s from 1994. It could have been a windowed box about 480px wide. I’m not blind, I don’t need three massive low res boxes full screened across my 23″ monitor. Once the game is launched it becomes evident from the menus that the PC version was a direct port from the Xbox360, as my friend Benson pointed out about 5 times. No optimization whatsoever.

5. (major) No coop in campaign mode. I really do not care if it doesn’t fit with their “story” or overall experience. It’s fun. Options are always nice. CoD:WaW did it, and that campaign was clearly not designed with coop in mind. I’ve come to the conclusion that IW didn’t put it in solely so that when Treyarch makes the next CoD game off the exact same code, people will have a reason to buy it.

6. (major). 12 players max online. What the EFF. IW marketed it as 18 player max online, but they failed to mention that was only in the Groundwar mode. I can’t remember the last online shooter I’ve played that only allowed 12 players. I’m going to contradict myself now and say that the maps are still super intense at 6v6. It’s just that the OPTION to play with more isn’t there.

Well that is my main gripes so far. Infinity Ward was one of my favorite developers. I remember the good ol’ days when they only released a polished product. The gameplay IS polished; I couldn’t ask for a more addicting experience, but the presentation and feature set is a complete slap in the face.

Some not-so good news.

Yesterday I found out my Grandma had a stroke (2am  Wednesday morning). From what I hear, she is doing relatively okay at the moment. Although one side of her body is [temporarily?] paralyzed, her brain was not significantly affected.

Amidst a flurry of not-so good midterms, this really puts things into perspective. My last midterm is tomorrow morning, and then I will be taking off to Lethbridge for the weekend.

School, Games, Computers

Lately I haven’t had much motivation to post about anything. I’m now settled in Edmonton for another year of school, and everything is going smoothly; however, Math 201 (Differential equations) and Math 209 (Calc. III) are freaking me out. The last few lectures pretty much everything has been going over my head.

Besides school, not much else is new. I bought NHL10 this week for my PS3, and it’s a pretty awesome game. There isn’t any major gameplay changes, but it feels like they made a ton of minor tweaks to enhance the realism. One popular “enhancement” I don’t like: fighting after the whistle. a) It slows down the games pace a lot, and b) my cpu team-mates like to take penalties during this time and it’s frustrating.

I also tried Resident Evil 5 and Need For Speed: Shift for the PC:

RE5 was a let down to me. The controls are very sluggish with a keyboard and mouse. It’s pretty pathetic that I have to use my Xbox 360 controller on a PC shooter in order to have decent controls. Other than controls, the game is beautiful and immersive.

Quite surprisingly, Need For Speed: Shift is an excellent game! I’ve only played a few races, but I’m impressed. The graphics are a little dated, but the driving mechanics have been overhauled to handle more like a racing simulator. The game just feels good.

Oh yeah, and I ordered a new printer and a new mouse from ncix.com:

The printer is a monochrome laser Brother HL2140. It is my third printer in less than a year. I’m quite happy with it, but then again I said that for the last two printers.
Pros: only cost $72.57; short power-on time; fast 23 ppm; relatively quiet; crisp text; cheap toner; compact; large paper tray
Cons: no duplexing ability (not even manual); included toner rated at 1000 pages while replacement toner is 1500 pages

As for the mouse, it’s a Razer Mamba! Right off the bat, let me just say I have no rational reasoning as to why I ordered this VERY expensive mouse. The last few months I have been looking for a new mouse since my Habu continued to have a double-clicking issue. I clicked through lists and lists of mice, and the Mamba is honestly the only one that caught my eye. I would have went with the Logitech MX Revolution but I HATE the free scrolling wheel ability (because it comes at the cost of the middle click). So anyway, the Mamba is amazing. Everything about it is pure overkill. I’ll do a mini-review in another post.

And one more thing. My friend Simon altered his website so his Facebook status would automatically update in his website description. Not to be left out, I found a widget that would do the same for me. It’s called StatusPress. I particularly like this version. It was kind of a pain the ass to find/make a Facebook RSS feed of my own status. This used to be very easy, it was right on the main page. Instead, I had to make a new Facebook account, add the real me as a friend, find the notes page and copy the rss link, then edit the rss link so it was for status instead of notes. Why Facebook, why…?

Video Equipment Stand

video equipment stand 9A few weeks ago my dad’s friend asked me if I could make him a small compact stand that could house his satellite video equipment for his semi-trailer truck. It sounded like a fairly intriguing little project to me. Here is some pics from the beginning to the final product:

The material I plan to work with in my messy garage.

An angle grinder with a zip disk is one of the most satisfying tools for me. It’s so versatile when working with metal.

By clamping a scrap piece of angle iron onto the side needing protection, I am able to cut a very straight line with the cutting disk on the angle grinder.

All the pieces for the two removable trays before I begin welding.

The trays above are made to the exact dimensions of the satellite equipment. I’m not a huge fan of doing it that way, (what if something is replaced?) but the main purpose of this rack was to be as compact and sturdy as possible, and this is what I was asked to do.

I cut the middle out to reduce the weight, and as a bonus the equipment will cool better.

A big jump ahead; here is the final stand. It might be hard to tell but there is two removable racks that are fastened by thumb screws on the right side. The top mesh tray is for random stuff like remote controls, cables and whatever. The left-most compartment is for DVD’s (see last picture).

It ended up being more work than I was expecting. One thing that took longer than anticipated was the top mesh tray. I just couldn’t think of how to make it sturdy and light at the same time. I pop-riveted most of the mesh onto the steel, except around the DVD compartment where I threaded small screws in. A lot of welding rods and burnt fingers went into this very little project.

Wipeout HD Fury!

Here is a captured video of me trying out the WipeOut HD Fury add-on pack. In this video I’m playing the eliminator mode. Basically you try and destroy other racers and you get points for doing so. It’s a race to 200 points in this video.

I think making game videos is actually pretty fun. Unfortunately due to the limitations of the capture card I can only capture the ps3 at 720×480. Such a poor resolution makes me feel like I’m playing my Wii… Maybe I will upload some PC content in HD some time.

This is a random picture I admire. It makes me proud to be a Coke lover.

56′ Ford F-100 Savage Body

Yesterday I bought a 1956 Ford F-100 body for my Savage RC truck. It came clear and uncut, so I had the task of painting, cutting the edges/holes, and applying a few stickers. Click more for pics. It looks pretty classy. I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

Painting was pretty easy, I just had to make sure I had the appropriate areas taped off. The paint is on the inside of the plastic, that way it wont scratch off.  Cutting it was a lot harder than I expected; I used a mixture of razor blades, heavy duty scissors, and a dremel tool to cut it. I think if I do another body ever, I will cut it before I apply the paint because I don’t want to risk scratching it.