Bamboo Pen & Touch

Yesterday I got the pleasure of aquiring my very own Wacom tablet, a Bamboo Capture(Pen & Touch it says on the box). I had a look and I think it's the latest generation, a CTH-470, so it's really nice and compact. Only a measly $160. Becky got a medium Intuos 4 (after seeing that the large one was bigger than her laptop.) She payed a couple hundred more than I did, but she gets a hell of a lot more to work with. Workable touch area doesn't seem much more, but it's the control panel on the side which makes it worthwhile. She can scroll through layers, change pen widths etc with just a press or two.
The gimmick on mine is multi-touch support. So I can switch it to touchy mode where I can use my fingers to scroll, pinch to zoom in and out (just like on an ipad) and a bunch of other stuff I'm never probably gonna use.

Unfortunatly It took me the better part of yesterday afternoon and this evening to make Photoshop recognize that I indeed had a "pressure sensitive device" plugged in. So any pressure sensitive type things were completely disabled, making my Bamboo as useless as real bamboo, or my old Genius. As a few of you who read this blog already know, I have a history of bad relationships with tablets (jeeze, the title of that linked post sounds like an excuse a murderer would use). So really, it should be expected that my brand new one would give me grief. A lot of forums are filled with people who have had the same problem, and few of them seem to come back with "It's working and here is a definitive solution!" so let me give it to you.
First play this. Because you will be entering the magical world of the computer space highway.

Nuke all your old drivers and remove all the little widgets your Tablet squirreled away everywhere. Then start from scratch, making sure your tablet isn't plugged in when you do it and restarting when it tells you to. Also download the latest drivers and install them after you've nuked everything else. I work on an XP so I'll give instructions for that, if you have windows 7 tough biccies, it's what you get for living in the future.

If you right click on "my computer" (not mine, yours) and go properties you'l find a tab that says Hardware. Click him. Then click on Device Manager. In the new window that appears go to Human Interface Devices. Right click and remove all the wacom related drivers. Should be three of them.

Now go to your start bar and find Control Panel. If you're in the noob view you should see Add or Remove programs. If your in the pro view you should also see Add or Remove programs but it will be way smaller and hidden among a whole pile of crap. Remove Bamboo & Bamboo Dock. May as well remove the Webtablet apps as well. You're never gonna use 'em anyway.

Do a restart. Now install the drivers (noting the stuff I wrote in bold earlier). Bing bada boom. That little Orange exclamation mark of doom inside photoshop should now be gone. If not, best of luck to you. Remember! A pencil is cheaper, and is far more realistic than your tablet! But way lame. Tablets are like the next step on from your pen license.

APB: Reloaded

Shameless in-game advertising

Currently I have wasted 40 hours of my life playing a free to play MMO called APB: Reloaded. You can get it for free on steam and is about 5gigs of downloading.
I got it on a whim, because I saw the art for it ages ago and thought it was rad. What it is summed down to is grown up cops and robbers. You can be goodies or baddies. Baddies can mug people, ram shop fronts and steal stuff. Goodies can... Just stop them from doing that really. That and returning stolen cars. So the good guys can get tasers for stunning an enemy and arresting them. So far I just shoot them dead, it seems to be a more efficient way of dealing with the problem.

Woman parking

You get a huge open city to run/climb/drive around that's populated by AI civilians and 99 other real people, split evenly into cops/bad guys.
If you're ready you can get call outs to stop crimes/protect things/raid houses bunch of other stuff. You can be in the middle of doing a solo mission when suddenly a team of bad guys will be sent out against you, prompting you to call for backup if you need it.

A whole bunch of these Instances can be going all at the same time. So it's not uncommon to drive past a mall or an intersection with a firefight going on in the middle of it. If you're not part of their Instance you can't be harmed. But you can still nick off with their vehicles. Impeding peoples travel is the most effective way to troll others and I always get a good giggle out of knocking someones car rolling down the road.
Customization is intense. It's the first MMO I've played where your character/graffiti/car actually looks distinctive and different from everyone else.
You do missions for NPCs who level up and unlock new equipment for you, so that keeps me coming back the most. I'm one of those people that needs some sort of goal. And in APB it's actually an attainable one for a change.

It's a great game if your a corridor shotguny type person and also a fantastic game if your a sniper who likes finding hidden spots way up high.
Every mission feels fresh just because the action never occurs in exactly the same place twice. Most shooters bore me after a while when I notice I run around the same acre of map shooting the same little soldier man over and over again, but after 40 hours of playing I haven't once thought "Oh this bit of city again *sad face*".

Well that's my sales pitch, so I guess I'll just go to why this game could suck.
Cons: When my character first generated she looked exactly like Olivia Wilde, I wasn't sure if it was random or everyones character was Olivia. So I changed it. Now I kinda wish I hadn't.

Fighting people comes up with no lag (not that I have noticed) but driving has about a half second lag. Although after playing for half an hour you don't notice it anymore because you gain the ability to swerve for things well in advance.

The first 10 minutes of game time when you first start up are the most crazy confusing moments I've ever had with an MMO. I woke up in a police department, started reading how to play, randomly entered an Instance without doing anything, got shot by a crim who had the balls to come into the depot then respawned, stole a car and figured out how to play the old fashioned way. Who needs words!

Cars aren't set to arcade mode, so don't expect to recover from a crash very quickly.

When everyones leaning out the windows of the car to shoot at an enemy it becomes extremely easy to friendly fire all your team mates point blank in the back of the head.

There are people with shotguns.

If you get this game expecting it to have a storyline, a single player mode, or anything that doesn't involve teamwork and shooting people with briefcases then you will be gravely disappointed.

You get your arse kicked a decent amount of the time. But the times your not are glorious.

Watching civilians give a sickening thud and ragdolling all over the road after you hit them with an ambulance gives you a scarily satisfying feeling, making you call into question how humane you really are.

Is it worth the 5 gigs? Personally I think so, if you're in the mood for some action. And it's free as well. So how can you go wrong? My in game name is Finess and I'm probably not wearing much. It makes the pang of death more bearable when I get to watch my sexy ragdolling body flop around.

Vector Art Dump

I've been working on my Illustrator skills lately. Mainly drawing things within Illustrator without prior reference. One or two of these I drew beforehand, but the majority of these just started with a circle. A bunch of these have been suggestions made by peeps over on G+. If you aren't already you should really join in the fun. I might even make you your own background. I'm always happy to answer any questions you might have about Illustrator as well. But you have been warned that I'm still pretty fresh to this style of stuff myself.

I've had a cockroach in my room for over a week now which a caught under a cup. When I first got him I sprayed the cup full of deodorant. Unfortunatly poisonous gas is no match for a cockroach so now I've created the best smelling roach which gets all the ladies.

Sketch Crawl

Life has been keeping me busy recently, which is good. After Parachute I got an illustration job which I aced! First paying one I have had in yonks. 

Today I went to Becky's organised Sketch Crawl, which turned into more of a Sketch Sitdown and Stay Out of the Sun.

We had a decent turnout of people and had some fun. We all piled into the Snake Pit gallery that had just finished a show, so the guy kind of felt obliged to show us round some empty halls. It was kind of funky actually.

Anyway, here's a sampling of what I achieved over the day.