The Wacom Graphire Bluetooth

The Graphire Bluetooth 6x8 Tablet is a great tablet.

There's no getting around the fact that it works great, looks good, and it's wireless!

And yes, if you're wondering, it's the tablet I currently own. So why shouldn't I do a review on it?

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About Wacom

Wacom is probably the most well-known maker for computer tablets. From the general computer artist to famous illustrators, Wacom offers tablets for each person. This is the brand that will most often be suggested on any forum if you ask about tablets.

Keep in mind, however, that Wacom is quite expensive. Their cheapest tablet runs around $80 (the new Bamboo), which seems great to the starting digital artist, but it's not what you want. If you want to purchase a tablet from Wacom, make sure that you WILL put it to use and get your money's worth!

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About the Graphire Bluetooth Tablet

It's made for the in-between people who enjoy digital media but don't do it for a living. (Though it can be used for professional work, make no mistake).
Let's take a look at the pros and cons!

Pros:

Lightweight and portable

BLUETOOTH! Wireless is great!

Long battery life

Customizable faceplate

Pretty design

Pen-holder IN the tablet

Cons:

Only 512 levels of pressure sensitivity*

Costs $40 to replace the charger.

Controls not very customizable.

You need Bluetooth**

*If you're really into control of your digital tools, 512 levels may not be enough. Some don't think that this is much of a difference, but if you're an artist, this may be a big deal.

**Bluetooth adapaters, if you haven't bought it standard, can sometimes cost anywhere from $20-40 (it all depends). Sometimes another thing taking up one of your petorecious USB ports can be annoying.

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Review Summary

The Graphire Bluetooth is a really great tablet. Perfect for those who enjoy art as a hobby or profession. Though it's relatively expensive at a price of $250, it's well worth it. So far it's worked out great, despite it's lacking of fine artist customizations. Great for those with laptops (if you have intergrated Bluetooth) since it's easy to take everywhere and there's the nifty little pen holder at the top of the tablet.

(P.S. Hey look, I'm a tad bit early!)

Notice

One: No update for this week. Sorry. 
My bad. I'm leaving today for California and my family is moving so I have to pack not only my college stuff, but everything else as well. Lotsa shit going on right now. Crazy times. So you damn hos just have to be patient.

Two: Out of ideas.
With my brain all hectic with these damn life changes, I can't seem to figure out a good topic. I think I've been doing too many computer/program articles lately, so you guys need to SUBMIT A TOPIC SUGGESTION.

Three: Blog Archive
It exists. Go check it out.

kthxbai.

About BitTorrent

So my dad was asking me about BitTorrent the other day. I told him that it was this thingy on the internet that let you download other thingies from other places and that there were magical fairies in charge. 

But that didn't work. Why people don't accept the fact that things just mayyyybe might run on magic is beyond me.

So let's go over the fundamentals of BitTorrent, for those happy download addicts.

First things first, unlike Limewire or Kazaa, you have to find the files you want to download on your own. This isn't too hard, since there are plenty of good torrent sites out there for you to browse. By browsing for these files, you'll often find that they come in larger packages. Instead of finding one song, you'll find the whole albbum, or even the discography! Videos and games and other files also come in torrents.

So you find the torrent file and save it to your computer (or simply run it) and BitTorrent will ask you which files you want to download out of the torrent. For example, say you just want one song but all you can find is the album. No problem, BitTorrent asks you to check or uncheck the items in the torrent file so you only download what you want! (This works only if people didn't bundle it all up in a .zip or .rar file.)

After this it works a lot like Limewire. It basically downloads off other people's computers and the process, while not necessarily complicated, is a little boring to explain. This is just summing up how BitTorrent works.

I prefer BitTorrent because I'm a huge collector. I enjoy whole discographies instead of just one or two songs from an artist. 

Where can you find BitTorrent? Well, I guess for those who are too lazy to just Google it (when did Google become a verb, anyway?) I have made this wonderful link to the website.

And I'm great enough to include a good starter website for your downloading needs! Here you go!

Happy hunting, and be wary of the feds! Heh.

Free Programs! (Does it get any better?)

Everybody loves free stuff. I know I do. So why pay so much for fancy smancy tools when there are so many good freebies lying around the web?

Web Browsers:
Mozilla Firefox - Practically the standard these days.
Opera - Fast, customizable browser with a buttload of widgets.
(Check out my article on these web browsers here.)

Media Players:
foobar2000 - Best for those who know a bit of programming.
VLC Player - Plays pretty much everything (.avi, .mkv, .ogg....)
QT Alternative - Quicktime alternative (gosh I hate Quicktime)
WinAmp - A good free player that you can customize pretty easy.

Email
Thunderbird - Mozilla's e-mail client.

Instant Messengers
Windows Live - Lots of things to customize. Good for video calls.
AOL Instant Messenger - Fun and dandy and popular.
Yahoo Instant Messenger - Not the most popular, but it's up there.
ICQ - I don't use it, but hey it's out there.
Trillian - Use your AIM, Yahoo, etc. accounts at one time!

Illustration
GIMP - a great freebie to use instead of Photoshop
Paint.NET - a little weird, but good for digital art
openCanvas - I'll be hosting this as soon as I find a site that will

Anti-Virus
AVG Anti-Virus - I use this. Good stuff.

Anti-Spyware
Spybot Search & Destroy - My favorite.
Ad-Aware - Very good freeware.

Web Design
EditPad Lite - Notepad's older sibling. Easy to use.
NVu - Not my favorite, but still a good program. Replacement for Dreamweaver.

FTP Clients
FreeFTP - Great stuff, but not compatible with Vista.
CoreFTP - I have yet to try this one out.
Filezilla - Yeah, haven't used this one. Heard good things.

Other Good Stuff
IfranView - Enables the viewing of all sorts of files, from GIF to JPEG to PDF.
WinRAR - Good archiving/.zip file program
OpenOffice - Great alternative to Microsoft Word.

Picking a Web Browser

Now that there are so many web browsers out these days, it's hard to figure out which one would suit your needs best. The top three are Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera. Let's take a look at each.

Mozilla Firefox
Pros: You can choose from hundreds of themes and add-ons to make this the perfect browser. It includes tabbed browsing, bookmark toolbar, and can easily be linked with other programs offered by Mozilla, like Thunderbird, the e-mail client. Supports pretty much every website.

Cons:
Firefox can be a bit of a memory hog. It's not good to use if you're running a large program (e.g. Adobe Photoshop) along side from time to time.

Good For:
Lots of tabs. Customizing the look and feel. Toolbars.

Find it at Mozilla.com.

Internet Explorer
Pros: Nice, clean layout. Tabbed browsing. Supports almost every website. Doesn't take up much space.

Cons: Thougha nice, simple browser, Internet Explorer doesn't have as many new features as one would like. Also, scrolling can be a bit funny. Like Vista, it may look pretty but could have been built much better.

Good For:
Browsing the internet in a simple way. Not everyone needs a bunch of bookmarks, toolbars, and tabs.

Find it at Microsoft.com

Opera
Pros: Tons of stuff to customize. Widgets are coming out at an amazing rate. Tabbed browsing. Bookmark toolbar. Opera also has this great feature called "Speed Dial" that allows you to pick your top favorite 9 sites when you open a blank tab or page. You preview these sites (see here) and have it automatically reload the preview at a customized rate (you can also do this with normal web pages). Having this in addition to your bookmarks toolbar is great. Opera also saves your place when you close it, no matter how many tabs you have open. So the next time you open Opera, you're right where you left off in all your tabs! 

Cons:
A little strange at first, takes a bit to get used to. Doesn't support every website. Slows your downloads. Automatic torrent loader is reallllly slow.

Good For:
Widgets, bookmarks, and tabs. Running alongside other programs. Automatic reload is good for lurking on Facebook/MySpace/deviantART/Sheezy Art/any social site. 

Find it at Opera.com.

My Choice?
Opera!
I love this web browser. I don't have to worry about saving every tab I'm at every time I close it (as with Firefox) and it doesn't take up all my computer's poor memory and CPU (as Firefox does). The Speed Dial option makes it very easy to keep an eye over my favorite sites.  This web browser is just AWESOME.

Besides, I lurk a lot. 

Be Awesome, Fable Style

So yeah, I bought the computer version of Fable: The Lost Chapters recently and have been hooked. Here are some good tips and tricks for various parts of Fable.

Getting Famous:
> Get married. You can get married in each town at least once, and you get +1000 renown points each time!
> Make people see. Sure, you get some points for beating up little hobbe shits on your own, but you get more for beating them in front of others! Make a show of it!
> Trophies are sexy. Run around, show 'em off. They're there to be used, not just take up space in your inventory. The best places to do this are in any available taverns, but the best tavern is probably the one in Knothole Glade. 
> Sidequests need love too. Accept every quest you can. Fun stuff.
> Arrogance Gets You Places. Boast whenever you can when you accept a quest.

The Goody-Two Shoes Hero:
> Tofu: Food of Champions. You get +5 good points for each one you eat.
> Donations. Basic stuff. Donate to the Temple of Avo in Witchwood, get bonuses.
> "Justly" Slaughter Creatures. They offer a bit of good points for each kill. Kill, kill, kill, because THIS type of killing is a-OK. 
> Forget Lady Grey. Seriously, she ain't worth all the hassle. I could probably rant on about the sidequest in The Lost Chapters concerning her stupid ass, but that's boring. Don't bother trying to marry her. You'll keep your good points that way.
> Be a merciful god. As tempting as it is to lop off Twinblade's head after whooping his giant butt, don't. Don't kill Whisper, even though she's annoying as hell. And don't kill your sister. That pretty much screws you over.
> Specific area spells. Use surrounding spells like "Enflame" or "Divine Fury" when facing multiple foes. These spells do not harm any innocents yet obliterate any evil guys. Good stuff.


Evil Badass? YAY!
> The Worst of Sins. Eating "crunchy chicks." They are the tofu for bad people. +5 bad points each time!
> RAMPAGE. You can buy out a whole town if you just kill everyone. Murder away! 
> Steal. If you get caught, oh well. Kill the villager/shopkeeper and the guards that come later.
> Temple of Skorm. Located in the depths of Darkwood (next to the Camp) is the evil temple of Skorm. Get people to follow you there and then BAM sacrafice. (A good way to get people to follow you is to hire those bodyguards that you see in towns and slaughter them to appease good ol' Skorm.)
> Jedi Skillz. Use the Force Push. It hurts innocents and enemies, makes a cool noise, and you look awesome. 
> Marry Lady Grey. That woman just reeks of evil. You can get evil points while you try to marry her, and after when her whole background story pops up.

That's all for now. Feel free to post questions or add-ons. 
I'll update this when I get more info. (And I will, because Fable friggin' rocks.)

The Answers

Q: Can I suggest a topic for a new post on tips and tricks?
A: Sure. There are two ways I'm going to use:
1) Create a post for suggestions at the end/beginning of each month.
2) You can e-mail me at "theamazingjill@gmailDOTcom" (yeah, just change "DOT" to ".")

Q: How often will you update?
A: Depends. I don't lead that busy of  life, so hopefully a couple times a week.

Q: Why do you do this?
A: Boredom, mostly.

Any other questions? Post away!

First Things First

This is a blog that's not about how my daily life goes. (I'm much too boring for that.) I can't promise that I won't slide in a few personal references here and there, but the general gist of this blog is not my life story.

This is a blog for random tips and tricks, just as the title says. There's so much information on the internet and in the world that sometimes we just want a little bit at a time. 

Now you can get a little bit of random things at a time.