And here’s Tumbler

I’ve written so much about Tumbler without a single picture. Let me rectify that. Here it is in tablet mode, while I was testing my rotation script. The photo doesn’t do the screen justice, it really looks a lot better.

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.

Drawing on Tumbler

More Tumbler. Copied over my Neovim and Krita configuration. I still have pending to setup a Git repository for my dot files.

Anyway, Krita works. And I persevered on drawing and trying other tablet modes. While, yes, the X200 Tablet’s pressure levels are terrible (you have to push hard in order to register strokes), I think it’s usable with my fixed-width art style. And, yeah, handwriting is far better and legible when writing directly on the screen.

Two things I didn’t consider:

One, the screen is now closer to my eyes, which means I need to use my glasses. I tried in a second session without glasses and it was acceptable. No issues with that. I use my smartphone without glasses mostly anyway.

Second, the ergonomics of drawing on the screen and trying to use the keyboard at the same time is uncomfortable. I tried transforming to tablet mode and relying on the on-screen controls. Everything’s doable albeit a lot slower. Tapping with the stylus on the Undo button, or having to pick the Pan or Eyedropper tool is a lot slower and cumbersome than hitting hotkeys. But, it’s usable. I just have to be more patient.

So, for lazy, hobby drawings, it’s OK; but definitely not for professional, paid work.

A rotating Tumbler

Resuming work on Tumbler, configuring all those little things I never got to set up properly. Like the automatic rotation triggered you swivel the screen to tablet mode. Or toggle the screen orientation with the screen button.

I also setup Onboard, on-screen keyboard that looks pretty cool! So Tumbler is cool to use now.

I wish I had an SSD disk, no matter if it’s small, to make it really fly.

Resurrecting Tumbler

I had the unusual itch to boot up Tumbler, my Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet. I’ve set up hibernation because… don’t know, I want to move it around and since it’s battery is dead, having hibernation working is a good, useful thing.

I can’t get the Fn+F12 key shortcut to work. It’s strange. When doing acpi_listen, the event triggers, but if I try again, it does not. It works intermittently. If I lock the screen with an ACPI event, it seems to reset. Not sure.

Anyway, while it would be great to have the shortcut working, it’s not a big deal.