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I talk about programming a lot. I can’t help it. It is my life. But now I feel obligated to talk about something of a non-programming topic. Like puppies. No, not puppies. It’s about writing. If you can’t tell by my writing here, I do enjoy writing and when I am not programming, I am always reading or writing short stories. It’s a great release that exercises the other part of my brain. Plus it gets my eyes off a computer screen for a while (and my eyes definately need the break). So there you have it. I do other things than programming. Next blog: probably something about programming again.

Well, I have talked about good programming practices before, and when I did, I talked about understanding error messages and learning to fix your code’s problems to become a better programmer. Well, now I’m talking about another type of error: your own. Understanding your own limitations and being able to accept other people’s help is the sign of a great programmer (and a great person). Know that you can’t do everything, and there are people out there who are better than you in certain regards. So don’t feel bad if you ask for someone’s help in developing a better layout or something computer-related that you THINK you should know. The sooner you realize that you don’t know everything the less time you’ll fake that you do and slow down the completion of any project you do.

My one and only complaint about my WACOM is the inability to fully mimic traditional art techniques with the stylus. Once the line is down the textures that are applied in the program of your choice is sufficient enough to get the idea across but not enough to sell the concept to an experienced artist (or a perfectionist like me).

At least three quarters of traditional art technique involves how one holds the pen, brush, etc. and the how one moves it to make the desired mark. The WACOM allows you to do the movements, to a degree, but allows no tolerance for how the stylus is held. I cannot hold the stylus like I would a block of charcoal but rather it forces me to hold it like a no. 2 pencil. The way the stylus fails in movement recognition is that it does not register the rotation or the stylus while drawing a line. During my days in architecture classes I developed the habit of spinning the pencil while drawing my lines. Doing this keeps the point of the graphite from being warn on only one side, thereby distorting your line. The act of spinning the pencil wears the graphite more uniformly and keeps you from having to re-sharpen more than is absolutely necessary. There are a few techniques in painting that call for you to rotate your brush while performing a certain length of pull to create different effects as well. This is where the WACOM and stylus fail in their mimicry of traditional art.

It could be related to the fact that I have not experimented with different nubs. WACOM does distribute 5 different nub styles that fit specific stylus types. These nubs may allow for the ability to spin the stylus and get that effect to translate to the computer, but I do not know. I know no one who has these nubs and have not found any reviews on their performance either positive or negative.