Money well spent

So for xmas, I got a Walmart gift card from my father-in-law for $100. Its taken me a week to figure out what I wanted from walmart lol. Liz's idea was to get an 8 gb Iphone... which woulda been great except that At&t wont let me upgrade till Im 3 months from ending the 2 year contract... to which I told them "I'll go start a new account somewhere else and get a better deal for being a new customer".

So knowing I need a new serpentine belt in my jeep I decided to see if they would do it.... nope. Only tires and batteries and a couple other little odd jobs they do.

This morning it came to me what I should look up. After reading so much about digital art/graphic design lately I decided to look up what exactly a graphics tablet is and see how much they cost... Turns out what I thought they were, are the really expensive ones that corporations use. I but theres ones out there that do great quality just the interface isnt quite as spectacular.

Im getting the Wacom Bamboo through Walmart for $70 after taxes with the site to store option that gives free shipping. It will take a little while to get here but after this weekend Im going to be working 12 hour shifts for the next 2 weeks with a trip to Alpena at the end of it anyway... whats the point of expedited shipping just to use it for one day...?

So it works like this, the tablet has a wire grid under it that senses where the pen is using elctromagnets. Moving the pen around the active area of the pad is like moving the mouse around. The pen only draws activates when you click a button on the pen. So when using photoshop I can see where the cursor is adjust to where I want to be on the pad then click and make my marks or draw or whatever. This is supposed to make photoshop alot easier to use, as well as more intuitive. I actually came across a tutorial today for a picture on photoshop I couldnt do, without alot of extra work, without the tablet.

To give you an idea of what I thought all tablets were, watch the following video... its badass. If I had an extra grand just laying around with nothing else to buy... I would do it in a heartbeat... Its just awesome.






On another note, related and not related at the same time. We had to get Liz a new camara yesterday. Her old one started dying on xmas day... the screen was going all fuzzy and not focusing... So she did a bunch of research and got a Nikon P80. Its a really nice camara. Pictures are pretty amazing. As close to a dSLR without actually being a dSLR camara. So shes been playing with that a bunch since she got it. The reason this is related to above is she'll be able to do any photo editing with a pen now instead of a mouse.