o.o you may or may not've noticed that i haven't been posting anything lately.

that's because i recently got myself a new tablet PC >.> an HP Touchsmart TX2 to be precise. it's pretty neat, came with a bunch of free upgrades and such; quite a nice machine for under a thousand dollars.

the only bugaboo about it is that it doesn't support wintab (at least not in windows; the hardware is capable of it....if you run linux and wine. c.c) as of the time of this writing, so that means no pressure sensitivity in photoshop, painter, oC, shipainter, etc.

it was almost enough to make me return it, but A: all of the other tablet PCs on the market i could find were well over $1300 and had vastly inferior hardware, and B: this thing plays games far better than i anticipated. c.c

speaking of openCanvas...anybody know how to get that running in vista? c.c i've not had luck with it, with compatability mode or anything, it just freezes up when i open it.

anyways, the reason i haven't been posting is because i've been practicing with this new tablet; getting used to the physically smaller but higher resolution screen, getting used to using sketchpad pro (as it and other MS InkAPI-supporting programs have fully functional pressure sensitivity), and whatnot. it's pretty neat working with a higher resolution screen, as it makes all my stuff come out somewhat bigger than it has in the past. o.o sketchpad pro kiiiiinda sucks for coloring and shading, at least if you're used to photoshop like me; the blur and smudge tools work differently and, while you can adjust their settings, i have yet to tweak them to be photoshopesque. and there's no burn/dodge. and the zoom tool has no option, that i'm aware of, to jump to 100% zoom; you have to sort of manually tweak it there with the weird mouse-based interface thingy...

but i digress c.c

the good news is that i can still use my 5-year old tabletPC (which i still use for IMing and email and web surfing and whatnot) to color and shade things in photoshop, so i may be working with two machines and two programs to produce full fledged finished works from now on. o.o

at least until someone hacks wintab.dll to be functional with 64 bit vista, at which point i will use photoshop gleefully on the new one c.c but that's for the future.

oh, and another thing that bugs me, there's no volume control knob T_T just three hardware buttons for turning it up, down, and toggling mute. and someone wasn't paying attention when they were designing their placement, as they are completely covered up when you have the screen down in slate mode for drawing. c.c but that's minor, and i can use the system tray volume controls if i really need to.

aaaaaanyway, i wanted to do something reasonably special for my first picture that i'll be posting here that i made using both machines and both programs. and now that i've finally completed that, hopefully i'll get back into the groove of posting more--sketchpad is quite good for sketching and inking, annnnd i guess flat colors if i were to work with it more...

so now i'm looking at a few requests i've gotten, a meme i kinda wanna do, and some other stuff. o.o..which i'll be getting to, all in good time.

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*abrupt subject change*

oh! and, would any of you out there be interested in hearing my political ramblings? i find most of my usual group of friends are not terribly fond of me spewing my right-wingedness all over them all the time.


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100 Themes Status:
[link]

1. + * Introduction * +
2. + * Love * +
3. + * Light * +
4. + * Dark * +
5. + * Seeking Solace * +
6. + * Break Away * +
7. + * Heaven * +
8. + * Innocence * +
9. + * Drive * +
10. + * Breathe Again * +
11. + * Memory * +
12. + * Insanity * +
13. + * Misfortune * +
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can't
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation