Big Fat Ostrich

Aziz Ansari: “How’s those cashews Wacom?”

Wacom: “Hey they’re good…”

Aziz Ansari: “WHAT THE FUCK WACOM?!”

is what I thought the first time my friend plugged in her brand new Intuos tablet in her Windows 7  laptop. She had been using an old serial Intuos on an XP machine for years and was very excited to try out her new buy. The excitement lasted approximately the time it took for photoshop to start. The new software that comes with Wacom Tablets is so fucking annoying, I can’t think of ANY reason for the way it works now, other than a lot of crack smoking or an April’s Fool joke gone awfully awfully wrong.

The first of Wacom’s sins comes in the shape of a tray to the left of the screen that pops its head out whenever your stylus touches the tablet. It’s not useful, it’s distracting, nobody loves him. NOBODY!

There’s also the VERY irritating “Press and Hold” feature that’s on by default. It makes your cursor hesitate for a split second every time you start to draw a line.

Some people may also find the new “Water Drop” animation annoying.

Here’s how to turn off those three fuckers:

1.  Turning off the tray:

Click on the thing, click Options, uncheck everything in there.

Done

2. Turning off the “Press and Hold” bullshit:

Go to the Windows Control Panel

Select “Hardware and Sound”

Select “Pen and Touch”

Select “Press and hold”, click the Settings button

Uncheck “Enable press and hold for right-clicking”

Click OK

3. Turning off the Water Drop animation

This one is a bit trickier. There was a simpler way in Vista apparently. But yeah, Microsoft…

So first, you need to check if your account has administrative rights. Type “run” in the search thing in the Windows menu, then [enter]. This should open the “Run” dialog. In there, type “gpedit.msc” then [enter]. If you get a warning message saying you’re not administrator and bla bla bla, close everything and go to:

Windows menu -> All Programs -> Accessories

Right-click the “Command Prompt” icon, and choose Run as administrator. Of course you need the admin password. If you don’t have it, you’re screwed.

Now, in the command prompt window that you’re running as administrator, type “gpedit.msc”. Should work fine.

Time to find the policy responsible for the water drop animation.

In “User Configuration”, go to:

Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Tablet PC -> Cursors

In there, double click “Turn off pen feedback”, select “Enabled”, click OK.

Voila.

Have fun!

- D

This blog needs more tech posts. Here’s one. This time though, for your convenience, I’m offering a short version that cuts through all the bullshit:

For iPhone tethering to work on a Windows machine, you need to install iTunes first.

If you’re still with me, here’s the long version:

Like you all know, I recently moved into a new apartment. New place=new internet, which takes time because they always fuck up the order and send the cable modem to the wrong address and then charge you too much money for the first month and when you call them to complain about it they only answer after a 2 hour wait and then you get some guy from India trying to sell you the “Extreme sports TV channels package” in that awful awful fake New-York accent.

ANYWAY! I want to be able to check my email from my new place and I find the iPhone awkward for “real” internet use. Never really got used to the onscreen keyboard, the small screen feels claustrophobic, and you can’t run more than one app at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome alternative to the real thing, but I can’t picture myself living with only an iPhone for a whole month. Which brings me to the main topic of this post: iPhone innertsnets tethering.

“But Daniel” you ask, “what is this tethering you speak of?!?!?!?” Well, in Wikipedia‘s own words, “Tethering is the use of a mobile device such as a mobile phone to supply Internet access for another device which is otherwise unconnected, using the connected device as a modem. This can be done through Bluetooth wireless technology or cables (such as USB).” When this feature was first introduced (in iPhone OS 3.0 I think…) I was like “man, that word is really hard to pronounce”. Then I forgot all about it. A few weeks later I found myself thinking “I wish there was a way for me to use my iPhone as a mobile internet USB key…” Well well well! Whaddaya know! All I had to do was to call my provider and ask them to activate the tethering feature. I tested it on my main machine and it worked perfectly. Everything was awesome, until…

My work laptop broke down. It was 4 years old, so they replaced it with a shiny new Dell E6400. “Yay!” I thought, “Finally a computer I can bring to my new place to check my emails and chat on MSN while I’m scrubbing the floors!” So I tested the tethering thing on it and it didn’t work. Usually, you plug the iPhone in through the USB port and windows detects a new network device called “Apple Mobile Device Ethernet”. But on my brand new laptop, nothing happened! Oh it detected the “camera” part alright, but nothing else. After googleing and testing everything I could think of, I finally found the solution; That’s right folks, for iPhone tethering to work on a Windows machine, you need to install iTunes first! As simple as that.

Hope this one was actually helpful to someone

-Dan

I’m at that point in my life where I don’t give a fuck about the operating system anymore. Can I run my game on it? Yes? Well fuck everything, I’m installing it. Except when it comes to Windows Vista. Vista once managed to crash on me opening a text file in notepad. So anyway, I decided to try out Windows 7. Here’s an in-depth analysis of the differences between Windows 7 and the older versions:

Moontard drawn in the classic ms paint:

Moontard drawn in the new Windows 7 ms paint:

The Windows 7 moontard’s got a huge member, a classy hat, good lines and better eyes.

In conclusion, if you’re stuck using windows anyway, don’t hesitate, get yourself a copy of Windows 7 as soon as it comes out at the end of the month.

Cheers.

Dan