In case anybody was wondering what Golabutron was all about, I should point you to this
Product Listing at The Prior-Art-O-Matic.

And for the more discerning customer, there's always the upscale model:

Okay, I'm a sucker for these dorky text randomizer toys.

Bastichlabz is finally moving from WebIntellects to Lunar Pages. It's in that funky in-between stage where sometimes the lookup goes to the old server and sometimes it goes to the new one.

What's weird is that here at work, I was getting the new server this morning, but now I'm getting the old one again! Oh, that zany DNS! I guess I'll just have to sit this out for a few more days until all of the DNS servers agree on the truth.

I'm switching because I'm a cheapskate. WebIntellects is a good company, but I'm paying an extra $10 per month for the privilege of having a MySQL database, which LunarPages provides at no additional cost.

Well, I should have seen this coming. This news is almost 2 weeks old and I just found out. Some friends told me about it, but I didn't want to believe.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

I should be used to all of my favorite Sci-Fi shows getting canned, but it still stings.

The Sci-Fi Channel has decided not to pick up Farscape for season 5, even though the series had been optioned for both 4 and 5. The whole thing happened so fast that the moya sets have already been torn down and the show is pretty much kaput.

To be honest, this season has been kind of a disappointment to me, but it was still the best show on the air to my tastes. I'm not so upset that the show is ending; it's more that it will be ending on such a bad note. They were just wrapping up the last episode when they got the news, so there was no time to try and set up an appropriate ending.

They were clearly building up to some big payoff for season 5 that we'll never see. Season 4 will end on some huge cliffhanger like every season before it, only this time it will be worse because they thought they had a gurantee that the story could play out in the next season.

I'm still not totally believing this. There's still a chance that somebody will come to save the day. Some huge outcry from fandom will lead to TNN picking it up or maybe A&E, TLC or BET. Babylon 5 was cancelled at the end of every season, and it still got through to the end, though that last season was painful. Maybe Farscape will find a way to continue, but for now it really seems like the show is dead.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

Why couldn't it have been Alias or Buffy or some show that other people watch and not me, dammit!

I need to start watching shows that other people like, apparently.

Here is one of those blog entries the detractors hate the most.

$90.99 in balance adjustments since 09/02/2001!

Yes, my anal-retentive tendencies run so deep that I keep track of my cash spending in Quicken. I just ran a report to see how I've been doing on balance adjustments, and $90.99 was the damage.

That's just under a quarter per day! When you consider that all of that error is from the last three months, I've really been losing track of a dollar per day. The first 9 months, I kept flawless records, and now I've really slipped. I guess gainful employment will do that. I spend more cash on lunch breaks now, and I don't have the time to update Quicken before some of it has slipped from memory's grasp.

Luckily it all goes to food anyway, so I can still run reliable monthly reports to satisfy my anal retentitude for all time!

The blog has now officially transfered to Movable Type on the future host of Bastich Labz. I'm waiting for my friend Alan to move his tech humor archive to the new server before switching the DNS. However, this URL will work before and after the switch unless you and your puritanical browser cower in the presence of redirects:

http://www.bastichlabz.org/golabutron3000

Big thanks go to Pat for writing a handy Python script for porting my Radio entries to MT. You saved me from a heap of cut-and-pasting, man!

All of my old comments are gone forever, now, but I'll survive!

Golabutron 3000 is moving to its permanent home at BastichLabz.org as soon as I get the domain switched to the new host. My Radio evaluation period ends tomorrow, so the current URL will soon be invalid (or whatever they do to people who don't pay up).

This URL should always work, though...

http://www.bastichlabz.org/golabutron3000

(Right now, this is a redirect back to this page, but soon it will go to my new Moveable Type setup)

Well, it looks like things for Marvel and the comics industry in general are going better than I thought:

• Marvel Prepays Bank Debt by $10 Million
• Comics Clamber Back from the Brink
• Marvel swings to profit with help from Spider-Man

(Some of this is pretty old news, but I haven't been paying attention)

I wonder how long this current upward trend can continue... I want to believe that comics sales follow the quality of the output, which in my opinion would track perfectly with the slump that began in the mid-nineties and continued unfettered through to 2000. Obviously, inflation and the encroachment of anime and video games were big contributors to that slump, but it's not the whole story. Comics rather sucked through most of the nineties. The Lee/Liefeld wannabes, the multiple embossed dice-cut holofoil covers, the 22 straight splash pages, how everybody started wearing bandoliers, strapped a beltfull of pockets on their thighs, ran around with dinner plates on their shoulders and two-fisted toaster guns. It was a horrid time.

But now, comics are good again. Marvel is making a lot of bizarre and rewarding editorial decisions, and the industry is following them back into prosperity. Of course, the Spider-Man flick is a huge part of this, but we know from the X-Men film that a blockbuster alone can't get people to buy comics if they aren't any good.

Maybe if comics continue not to suck, things will continue to get better. Eventually, the pulp will be left behind, and we'll be readin comics online, but that's not the death of the artform so I can live with it (even though I prefer paper aesthetically).

So, way to go Marvel! And everybody, quick! Sell your collection before the bubble bursts again!

BTW, go check out these guys... they are why I didn't give up on comics while the mainstream was still sucking (yeah, I know, everybody's list looks like this):

• James Kochalka
• Jordan Crane
• Brian Ralph
• Alex Robinson
• Mike Allred

Newsarama has posted an update to the RADIX vs DOD story.

All right. A public apology has been issued by MIT to the Lai brothers for the use of their artwork in winning the $50 million military contract. I still believe that this was an honest mistake, and that the Lais should back down from their aggressive legal stance toward MIT.

The linked Newsaram article also has some words with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s legal counsel about the legality of what happened, which doesn't seem to be under debate. At least, not any more. There was a period of time where MIT tried to cover up what happened and make excuses, but now they've come clean and admitted that they simply made a mistake.

The real culprit here is the artist who stole the images from Radix #1 and passed them off as her own. That has to be an "actionable" offense, as they say. It's strange to me that nobody seems to want her side of the story, but she could be refusing to speak. If anybody owes the Lais restitution, it would be her.

Kat posted to her blog about this story last week, but her take was more on the bizarre relationship between Sci-Fi and real technological developments. A pretty decent discussion came out of the comments on that one. If there is anybody on the planet reading this who doesn't read her blog, go there now!

I didn't comment on that take initially because it doesn't seem very strange to me that Science Fiction eventually becomes reality. To me, they're both part of the same overall future-looking endeavor of human society. Or something like that. Sci-fi is just the artistic wing of innovation, and it's basically their job to imagine what comes next while the real-life inventors are busy working on what's happening right now.

Newsarama has posted an update to the RADIX vs DOD story.

All right. A public apology has been issued by MIT to the Lai brothers for the use of their artwork in winning the $50 million military contract. I still believe that this was an honest mistake, and that the Lais should back down from their aggressive legal stance toward MIT.

The linked Newsaram article also has some words with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s legal counsel about the legality of what happened, which doesn't seem to be under debate. At least, not any more. There was a period of time where MIT tried to cover up what happened and make excuses, but now they've come clean and admitted that they simply made a mistake.

The real culprit here is the artist who stole the images from Radix #1 and passed them off as her own. That has to be an "actionable" offense, as they say. It's strange to me that nobody seems to want her side of the story, but she could be refusing to speak. If anybody owes the Lais restitution, it would be her.

Kat posted to her blog about this story last week, but her take was more on the bizarre relationship between Sci-Fi and real technological developments. A pretty decent discussion came out of the comments on that one. If there is anybody on the planet reading this who doesn't read her blog, go there now!

I didn't comment on that take initially because it doesn't seem very strange to me that Science Fiction eventually becomes reality. To me, they're both part of the same overall future-looking endeavor of human society. Or something like that. Sci-fi is just the artistic wing of innovation, and it's basically their job to imagine what comes next while the real-life inventors are busy working on what's happening right now.

Check out this article from Newsarama!

Copyright issues are a real bitch, aren't they?

Take this recent semi-scandal between comic book artists Ben & Ray Lai and MIT. The Lai brothers put out a comic through Image a while ago called “Radix,” starring a hot chick in battle armor with mystical powers. Later on, they were surprised when an image that was an obvious swipe of their cover for issue #1 was all over the news as a conceptualization for a real-world, $50 million “Soldier of the Future” contract that MIT successfully won with the US Army.

The Lais were understandably upset to see that their artwork was used without their permission, and immediately issued a cease and desist to MIT to have them take the image down from their project website

MIT obliged, saying they had no idea the artist they commissioned had swiped the images, but the Lais aren’t satisfied. They claim that the very existence of this image calls into question their ownership of the armor design, which has hurt their chances to cash in on the Hollywood buying frenzy of comic book properties that kicked off when the Spider-Man movie turned out to be such a big hit.

But it’s also clear that there is some bitterness involved, considering that their art was used as part of a $50 million winning proposal, and they won’t be seeing any of that cash.
So the Lais are currently speaking with their lawyers… exploring their “options”…

What a mess!

First off, the proposal was in the area of 100 pages long. One would hope that the decision makers at the Army didn’t just look at the drawing and rubber-stamp their approval right away. What, did the competition all use stick figures? For all we know, the competition wrote Luis Royo a fat check to paint a mural of their super soldiers.

Second, it’s not like the armor design is the most original one ever made. It has basically the same lines as a typical superhero outfit, only it’s bulkier and made of metal rather than spandex. This is exactly the kind of design I used to crank out every day when I was a kid. I’m not saying there is nothing unique to Radix (since I’ve never read it) but if there is, it’s definitely not the armor design. The same goes for the specific pose and detail of the artwork. It’s nothing you don’t see every day on the stands.

Third, there is no doubt who owns the armor design, since neither MIT nor the Army is contesting the allegation that the art was swiped (any more). So if Hollywood isn’t pounding down the Lais’ door now, it’s because they’ve found some other hot chick in battle armor to make a movie about.

Fourth, it was an honest mistake (at least for those at the top). One of the faculty members commissioned his daughter to do the drawing based on his description, and she’s the one who used Photoshop to composite scans from Radix #1 into the final art. Before the bid was won, the art was only seen by a handful of people. It wasn’t until the news broke that anybody saw it, and it wasn’t until they got the “cease and desist” that anybody even knew there was an infringement, and at that point they stopped using the image (at least at MIT).

So, all that said, it was still plagiarism. Would this be treated the same if the bid had been lost and only those involved in the bidding process had ever seen it? The big money and the news blitz cloud the issue, but at its core it was still one artist using the work of another artist and putting her own name on it.

If this were the People’s Court, I would probably have the artist give her commission to the Lais and call it a day.

Here’s an interview transcript from CNN with one the Lai brothers.

(Thanks, kuch, for the link to this NYT article...)

I'm not sure what all of the confusion is about concerning the absence of a viable all-in-one Win32 system. There is a strong philosophical disconnect between Macintosh and PC thinking when it comes to prioritizing aesthetics versus economy for a desktop computer system.

PCs are there to "get the job done" in the fastest, most cobbled-together way possible. They're not fun to use. Nobody complains that they're not fun to use. Computers aren't supposed to be fun... they're for work, fool! If anybody does complain, they find themselves the target of ridicule.

People who buy Macs know what they’re putting their money into. I'm not sure PC manufacturers know just what that is. They always try to copy some surface aspect and then find it to be a total flop. PC all-in-one designs make the assumption that the user just wants a small case that fits the rough technical specs of an iMac, while Apple puts tons of resources into designing a machine that looks good sitting on the desk.

I'm not sure PC manufacturers even have the option of pulling off the same aesthetic appeal within the current environment. For one, as long as they rely on Windows as the user interface, it doesn't really matter how pretty the box is, the thing is going to be a kludgey mess to use. But there are other reasons.

Mac users are accustomed to Apple's monopoly over Macintosh hardware, and they're used to getting no respect from hardware vendors when it comes to device drivers. They know they can’t go to the store and grab just any commodity part, plug it in, and have everything work. So buying an all-in-one Macintosh system is not much different from buying one of their towers if you think in terms of building out a Frankenstein box.

At least, it's not as much of a difference as all-in-one means to the PC world. All-in-one PCs are almost as expensive as Macintosh all-in-ones, and they're far uglier. You don't get the usual PC advantage of being able to extend the life of the machine indefinitely by swapping in new parts over time. You're stuck with a box that can't be upgraded, in a market where constant innovation guarantees that your machine will become obsolete in no time.

In reality, most home users probably don't upgrade their PCs often, or maybe ever. But they do seem to get old faster because the hardcore gamers and office users keep pushing the envelope, and applications continue to be written with the expectations that more and more resources will be available to them.

It's a funny point to make, but I think innovation for its own sake has this side effect. Mac users can keep their computers longer basically because Apple's absolute control over the architecture stifles innovation and keeps the app writers from getting greedy with system resources. So again, people keep their Macs longer and get more back on their investment before pawning that iMac off to a third cousin and getting a new one.

I'm not trying to be a Mac bigot here. Both systems have their advantages, but I can totally see why all-in-one PC systems just don't cut it. It's just opposite of what the PC architecture is all about. We don't even call them "IBMs" any more! The PC philosophy just can’t be frozen in a little box and expected to stay put like a Mac can.

HFS! Check out this press release from LucasArts!

Sam & Max is one of my favorite video games of all time, and I've always been partial to the LucasArts adventure games (well, the non-Star Wars ones, anyway). There's also a sequel to "Full Throttle" on its way. It's about time!

I've tried all kinds of adventure games, but those old LucasArts games were the only ones I ever felt compelled to play all the way through. I dig their philosophy of designing games that can never be made unwinnable, no matter how lame the player (me) is. It's less realistic, but in the interest of making a game that is fun rather than frustrating to play, I think it was a good call.

I just hope those two sequels will run on my Win32 laptop, because they don't seem to be planning any Mac versions. No, I'm not bitching, just stating the obvious! My Mac rocks without any crummy games! Full Throttle 2 is coming out on the consoles too, so chances are that includes a version for my GameCube.

What am I thinking! I don't have time to play these life sucking games! I can dream, though...

Jamie Zawinski, proprietor of the DNA Lounge (I think) wrote a cool summary of last week's "Wil Wheaton vs. Barney" event. Those who weren't there missed out BIG TIME!

It was awesome to see the part Pat played in all of this. I particularly appreciate this shot of the bastard handing out cease-and-desist orders to the crowd. I get those all the time, but it doesn't stop me from giving him shit.

Here's Pat's entry on the event.

(From the trying-to-be-clever department)

A friend of mine was asking why so many interfaces are mapped to SCSI in the Linux world. Some people make some bogus argument that it acts as a handy abstraction layer that improves code reusability and reduces errors and blah blah blah.

Do not be fooled! This is just another example of software engineers overwhelming the public with heavy buzzwords in an attempt to distract them from the true goal, which is to prevent the obsolescence of one of the coolest acronyms the tech industry has ever produced. And make no mistake, cool acronyms are the primary product of the software engineering industry, and they always have been.

SCSI is one of the last great acronyms. It's kind of edgy, almost profane, and you can actually pronounce it. Just say it... "SCSI"... it just rolls off the tongue. Doesn't that feel good?

Now try sounding out "USB,", "IDE" or "IEEE 1394". They don't have the same ring to them, do they? And while we're at it, as Py once pointed out to me, why use the 9-syllable "WWW" in speech as an abreviation for the 3-syllable "World Wide Web"?

Acronyms are a dying art.

We need to hold onto SCSI for as long as we can. If I can't say "SCSI" at least once a week, I don't want to be a programmer any more! Luckily, I'm not alone. The kernel hackers are doing everything they can to keep it in use. True SCSI devices can die out for all we care. Even if it means we'll have SCSI sound, SCSI keyboards, SCSI mice, SCSI networking, and SCSI power switches, emulation will preserve SCSI forever!

Ted Rall: One Year Later, America's Leaders Take Stock

Recommended Editorial Cartoon reading from Ted Rall.

I also recommend "To Afghanistan and Back" by Rall. It's not going to answer any of your questions about the conflict, but it does a good job of showing what it's like to be a wartime journalist in the third-world, which I found interesting on its own.

Ted Rall is so bitter, so full of hatred and angst that I just can't help loving the guy's work. I've been following him for years, but he's really hit his stride reporting on the post-9-11 political scene. I'm glad we have guys like him getting all bent out of shape about this stuff. It makes me feel less alone (but not necessarily less powerless to stop what's going on).

The latest Tom The Dancing Bug rocks as well. Go read it!

All right, I did it! I've been saving up, and building up the guts to do it, and now the deed is done!

No, I didn't get the Yakuza-style tattoo of Genma Saotome on my back. That will have to wait.

I am now a Mac owner, thanks to my new Dual 867 MHz G4 tower and 17" Studio Display. Pat already outed me, so this is no big surprise. You can go to Apple.com and get a good idea just how much money I spent on this stuff!

So far, I'm very happy with it. The display KICKS ASS! and although I prefer the previous model's case design, the new G4 tower is quite a nice-looking and zippy little box.

The trip to the Apple Store in Palo Alto was filled with bad omens, however. I missed two offramps and then found a street fair blocking Univeristy Avenue when I got there, so I had to park several blocks away amid heavy traffic. Then, after I made my purchases and went to get my car I got lost again trying to find my way back to the store! Could there be some greater force warning me that this was the wrong decision? Or have the subliminal messages Windows XP has been beaming into my eyes through the LCD of my laptop for the last year successfully hijacked the navigation centers of my brain? Will the FUD never end?

Well, just got back from the Wil Wheaton vs. Barney fundraiser for the EFF, and of course, it rocked.

One thing that I almost forgot about the DNA Lounge was its net access, and Pat and Beej dutifully plugged my image of the day to a bunch of people, not the least of whom was Wil Wheaton himself. He said he liked it and wanted to post it to his blog, which was a pretty awesome outcome for what was just my lame drawing of the day... I was more afraid that he might see it than hopeful. I mean, how many charicatures of himself has the guy seen in his life?

The brawl itself was superb. Wil Wheaton's speech was pretty powerful, and the way he finished Barney off with the lightsaber at the end gives me a newfound level of respect for the guy. Barney had it coming to him after that dirty hug bait-and-switch move he tried eary in the match.

Pat makes a surprisingly good weasley lawyer. Okay, so it wasn't such a huge surprise! He hung out at the ropes waving his arms around angrily, and then ran into the ring with a stack of "cease and desist" notices to hand out to the crowd. There was a beautiful moment where he just tossed the rest of them in the air, and at that point, Wil Wheaton in berzerker mode chased him out of the ring with these letters still raining down. It was the purest form of performance art I had ever seen!

Overall it was a great night for me. I had those random moments of depression I always get a clubs, where I feel really isolated and sink deep into myself, though. And I have no idea how anybody ever hooks up at these places. It's a complete mystery I may never unravel.

One thing is certain. The EFF knows how to throw a good party.

Please forgive this amorphous rant...

I'm torn. I like being me, but I hate having no real culture to call my own. Geek culture is the closest thing I have, but it's not like I couldn't be a Geek and have some other interesting background to cling to.

American culture is weird. The melting pot has made it into a deadened shapeless mass. It's like in printing, where if you mix too many colors, it just comes out as flat puke-gray. That's how I feel. I'm a whole lot of nothing.

I look at people who were raised Catholic or Jewish, or are from 1st- and 2nd-generation immigrant families -- or whatever -- I hear lots of complaining, but it helps to define them, and gives them a place to run and hide when the existential weight of it all gets too much.

Sometimes I really wish I could have that feeling rather than feeling like such a blank slate all the time.

I remember one of the last things one of my ex-girlfriends said to me. She said "Don't worry, you'll find yourself a little white trash girl and you'll live out a happy little white trash life!"

Jeez, why couldn't she have just said I was lousy in bed and that she never really loved me like any halfway decent ex-girlfriend would do!? No need to leave behind the kiss of death like that!

So, anyway...

My only hope, being basically devoid of my own culture, is to leach it off of my friends and maybe someday marry myself into some.

Here's some sad news:

[NEWSARAMA] Chaos! Comics Files For Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

I've never been a big fan of Chaos! Comics, the publisher of "Lady Death," "Evil Ernie" and their countless spin-offs, but the publisher always filled its niche well as the place to go for hard-rockin' big-breasted in-your-face testosterone-flavored comics.

It was a perfect formula! What the smeg went wrong!

It could be that the continuing snob-ification of the comics industry has helped to push Chaos! out of the market. Everybody (or is it just me?) has been flocking to the re-vamped, edgier Marvel books and scouring the Top Shelf and Fantagraphics backlist for our next comics kick... meanwhile, there was Chaos! still plugging away with their bad-girl-with-sword comics that in theory should never have gone out of style...

I hear that their titles fell in quality after their mainstay artist Steven Hughes unexpectedly passed away a couple years ago, which could be another reason for the drop in sales. But I think the loss of the 13-year old boys looking for an over-the-counter Playboy stand-in was a big hit... those kids are now too busy hoarding their money in anticipation of Dave Mirra BMX XXX to shell out $3-4 for a 22-page skin mag.

Which is too bad. I hate to see any comics publisher fall, and Brian Pulido always seemed to me to be an okay guy. There were rumors going around that he was going to sell the company to CrossGen in order to save it, but it turns out that that was never really an option.

Chapter 7 means they are calling it quits and selling everything they can in order to pay off their creditors. I guess this means Lady Death and Purgatory will be able to find a new home, since the niche they fill is now basically empty... they will have to return to disgust me yet again someday.

After getting our asses handed to us at trivia, Pat, Py, Adam, Beej and I went to 31 Flavors for Ice Cream and to chat some more about this insane world of IRC Bot patents and Ashcroft internment camps... then I stood in the parking lot chatting with Beej for like an hour about stuff before we thwarted hypothermia and headed our seperate ways at 11:30pm.

Man, I missed hanging out with my friends while I was locked in my latest warp-speed mega-project at work. It's become such an important factor in my overall well-being that I begin to suffer exhaustion from the lack of social recharge that results from too much isolation. Last weekend a bunch of us went to Lava Beds for an extended weekend, and it could not have come a second later.

I mention this because it wasn't too long ago that I considered myself to be an incurable introvert, with few friends and little need for anybody else. Maybe it was just some kind of self-induced, 28-year phase I'm finally growing out of.

Wouldn't that be great!

I had a horrifying realization tonight. I may actually like some of Madonna's music.

I thought I was just being ironically detached, singing along to "Like a Prayer" in my goth metal meat-grinder voice... but you know, I think she has talent, even if it's in finding the best people to surround herself with.

And though the point has been put across enough times to almost guarantee it's promotional spin, I really feel that she has grown up over the years in front of everybody. People criticize her for "reinventing" herself constantly, but I just see it as the same kinds of "phases" that we all go through. Of course, the grief she gets over this is just the price of fame...

So now I must crank up the Joy Division and cleanse these thoughts from my mind.

I'm referring to a weblog entry from my friend Kathleen (the one who got on my case about the Battle Chickens) because her comments echo thoughts I've been having a lot lately. Go read it! Now!

This bizarre idea that life should flow like a narrative is, I think, the cause of more misery than most people realize. People who may otherwise be happy with their lot in life are feeling ripped off because they aren't getting the full John Hughes treatment.

But what can you expect? A work of fiction allows us to get into the "heads" of its characters in a way that real life can't match, making imaginary people seem more "real" than those of us who actually are real, but lack the required telepathic hookups. At the same time, fiction has the option of filtering out inconvenient ambiguities that come in a world where there are no real good guys or bad guys... if you watch "Friends" for 25 episodes a year, you probably do know those characters more than you know anybody in real life, because their motivations are so clear and their personalities so, uh... streamlined.

The real people I know are all inconsistent, with fuzzy motivations, and they never seem to be there just in the nick of time when I'm being chased down by a gang of alien thugs. Some friends you all are!

"CLICK ME FOR A LARGER IMAGE, EARTHLING!"

Welcome to my first weblog entry. What can I say, everybody else is doing it! I intend to use this weblog to post random thoughts and doodles as they come to me. This is still shaky territory since I'm hardly an extrovert, but it just looks so fun, I have to try it out!

Who the heck is this "GOLABUTRON?!"
Golabutron first appeared here, years ago, in an old online comic strip of mine called "The Bastich". He's basically just a wannabe over-the-top, megalomaniacal, Darth Vader villain-type who was going to invade the Earth some day. The funny thing is that I just now realized how drastically his design has changed since then, including a complete shift of his superfluous tubing from the back to the front of his head. Now he's gone from Darth Vader to the scumbag who ratted Luke and Obi-Wan out at Mos Eisley. How did this happen! I have no clue. Call it a theme. Anyway, I've always liked the name, so now it's the title of my weblog.

How WACOM has ruined my life
So my first doodle (above) was created with my brand-spanking new Wacom Intuos2 4x5" graphics tablet. I'm obviously still working on technique here.

This purchase is actually a huge step for me, as I've been kind of a ludite artwise for the past few years. I realized a while ago that I wasn't a such great artist, but that most of my enjoyment in illustration basically came from shoving lead and ink around a sheet of paper anyway... so I've never been big on 3D rendering or even vector art because it was always so detatched from the pacifying experience I yearn for. Staring at meshes is not what I really want to do right now.

Don't get me wrong... this isn't some debate on what is "art" and what isn't. This is the kind of thing you always hear blurted out in art classes: "It isn't art if you didn't make it with your own hands!" Well, I say thee nay! Art is so utterly in the eye of the beholder that I'm not sure there's anything in all of creation that doesn't qualify somehow. Every new technology is going to be challenged in this way. Just wait until the robots start writing music! What! You say they already are!? Well, eventually it will be just the robots creating art for other robots, so we may as well get used to it now.

Anyway, it's meaningful to me on some primal level to doodle, and I hope this new Wacom tablet will free me up to do cooler things without losing what I enjoy about this stuff in the first place.

But MAN, is it a pain to learn. It's better than using a mouse by far, but I'm still having major coordination problems across the board. Nevertheless, I intend to plow through this and become the Wacom Master.