Preach notes

Last Sunday I preached Galatians 1:16-24. Took my time to get the context right.

By the way, I now write my preach notes in Markdown and use them on the Kindle. Printing them has all the wonderful benefits of paper, but I write faster on Vim with all my snippets, filters, dictionaries and stuff. LibreOffice is a fabulous piece of software, but writing as fast as possible is the name of the game.

Artflow again

Last week I had tummy ache in the night and couldn’t sleep. While trying to cope with it, I doodled something on Artflow, an Android drawing app. I haven’t used the app for months. Strangely, I found it very easy to draw now. The problem I had with all art programs on the smartphone is the imprecision, the fact that I want to draw from here to here and the strokes goes somewhere else. But not now. What changed?

Somehow I’m now better at drawing. I got out the old stylus Thalía gifted me, had to dig it out of a drawer, but then it was enjoyable to draw.

I’m amazed. Really, what changed? It was always something imprecise and frustrating. It’s not like I’ve been using it for a week and hey, now I improved. So strange.

I’d like to pick up Colors! someday. I want to remember how the experience was. I drew a lot on that program on my old Nintendo DS Lite, a device made for gaming, not for artistic precision. And yet, there’s drawings and paintings I made that I’m proud of.

CLIP Studio Paint 1.13.1 on Linux

Installed CLIP Studio Paint 1.13.1 and the installation went without any problems with WINE Staging 7.22. It couldn’t connect to the internet for validating the license but its “offline” alternative validation worked.

But it’s not usable. CTRL+N and CTRL+Z didn’t work, I think it’s not catching those shortcuts. And my zoom in/out shortcuts work intermittently. My Wacom Intuos3 tablet worked flawlessly.

And it kept working at 70% CPU. So, not really usable. I was interested on the new features for the 3D models but looks like I’ll have to bite the bullet and learn Blender for real.

On taking breaks

This year I’m re-learning the importance of taking breaks. If I keep pushing and striving to solve a problem, I gain nothing but increased frustration. I must force myself to take a break, clear my mind, set aside the issue or maybe work on it the next day.

And then, with fresh eyes and a rested mind I can attack the problem again and perhaps notice some detail I missed or think on another approach that would work.

Trying the Wacom Graphire3 on Tumbler

Tried the Wacom Graphire3 on Tumbler and worked right out-of-the-box, except for the eraser tip. Ok, it seemed to work, but then it didn’t? Honestly, didn’t care that much to look into it.

I’ve adjusted the main pressure curve in Krita. It’s miles better than the integrated Wacom tablet. I might setup the tablet for the kids on Jupiter (our desktop family PC)… but I’m not sure the cable will be long enough (CPU’s on an upper shelf).

Actually, drawing on Tumbler with the Graphire3 is a lot more fun than I expected. I have much better pressure control and I find myself to be more precise with the tablet to click controls and move around sliders. Figures. One would think working directly on the screen would be better, but it’s not because of one reason: the screen is actually below the screen’s glass, so there’s parallax.

How many levels do Tumbler’s integrated tablet have? 32? Haha. The Graphire3 has 256, I know that for a fact.

Look at this. I have these two old things, my Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet and my old Wacom Graphire3 drawing tablet, working together flawlessly. How cool is that?

Reading comics on Tumbler

Configured the Epson printer, installed Eye of Gnome and Geeqie on Tumbler.

Copied over a couple comics to read with mcomix. I found that having it open as a book provides a good reading experience, albeit a heavy, mildly hot and corded one, heh. Man, I do wish to get my hands on a working battery.

But this is the biggest portable screen I have where a comic page is full-sized, even a tad bigger than a real paper comic page. I’ve left it rsync’ing all the comics I have.

Tumbler is growing usable as a secondary leisure machine. I’ll cry a lot the day it breaks.

More drawing on Tumbler

Declan came into my office while I was trying Krita on Tumbler, and I handed him the stylus. He had to keep pushing hard on the screen, confirming to me that, yeah, it really needs a harder pressure than one would intuitively think. I drew a dinosaur and he colored it.

And then he asked to have it printed.

I thought about using my old Wacom Graphire3 graphics tablet, but it kinda defeats the purpose, right? It’s got a Wacom graphics tablet built-in already! Anyway, it will never compete and it’s unrealistic to expect Tumbler to match my professional-level (albeit old) Wacom Intuos3.

So, this is what I have and, if I get used to drawing on it, I could potentially have a separate device for drawing Journal Comics, with its own workflow.

So Tumbler will become something more than a Music Computer. Pretty cool.