For a long time I’ve wanted to have a graphics tablet to draw with. So, a couple of days ago I’ve decided to finally order one. Yesterday I received it. It’s a Wacom Graphire4 Tablet.
The Mandriva Linux 2007 operating system recognised it almost out of the box. All I had to do was to install the package named linuxwacom and restart the computer. After that the tablet worked almost correctly. In order to get it to work properly I had to open the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the lines for three input device sections (Eraser1, Cursor1, Stylus1) from
Option “Device” “/dev/input/event0”
to
Option “Device” “/dev/input/event2“.
I’ve tried the tablet with three graphics applications: Krita (you enable and configure the tablet by going to Settings > Configure Krita > Tablet), GIMP (File > Preferences > Input Devices > Configure Extended Input Devices) and Inkscape (File > Input Devices). There is a bug in GIMP. When you draw with the pen and move over the rulers, GIMP crashes. Other than that it works quite well.
At first it’s a bit of a weird feeling drawing with the pen, but you quickly get used to it. It’s much more practical than using the mouse. All in all, I’m extremely happy with the purchase and I highly recommend Wacom tablet also because it works well in Linux.
As usually I’ve been playing the game of KPatience today. But something funny happened when the computer was automatically putting one card over another as it does every time one wins the game. If you know the rules you definitely know in which order the cards are put, that is: ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen and king. But a little bug sneaked in and put six of diamonds over four of diamonds. It looks like five of diamonds just wasn’t fast enough:) You can see the situation on the screenshot I made.
But not to fear, my brother Jure is on the top of things. He will make sure that that doesn’t happen again and he will report the bug immediately to programmers of the game. Actually I’m a little sad because the bug will be fixed. It really made me smile and I’m still smiling because of it.
I watched a short film named Elephants Dream yesterday. It’s about two men, Emo and Proog, who are trapped in a big machine. It is beautifully made and the makers of the film used two free and open source programs - Blender, which is program for 3D modelling and animation, and Gimp for textures and image editing. I can only hope that more projects like this will happen in the future. At the end I invite you to watch the film and truly appreciate the hard work and talent that has been put into the film. If only I could master the tools the same way they do.
My computer broke down about two weeks ago. I’m pleased to say that today, after several complications during the past two weeks, I can finally connect to the digital world again. With the help of my brother we have assembled the new computer. OK, I admit, he did almost all the work. While he was busy as a bee I’ve been taking pictures of every step of the process. So now I have new processor (much faster than the old one), twice as much of memory as before, a new motherboard and a stylish new case that holds everything together. I wanted to upload the photos to Flickr but they have some technical problem so you’ll have to wait until it is fixed. I have to go now because I have some catching up to do.
UPDATE: Well, the problem with Flickr was fixed just a few moments after I published the post. The photos are avalible in the New computer 2006 set.