And another one just arrived at my door today. Gold plated hilt and blade, as curved as a scimitar, beautiful example!
If it was from an RPG it'd be a super rare legendary blade.

I don't wish to worry you unduly, but I just woke up from a really long and convoluted dream in which you and your sword played a leading role.

—

My Wacom tablet(Intuos 3) is getting really worn on the surface. Has anyone tried pulling theirs off and flipping it over? I'd like to try this, but if I mess up I can't afford to replace it.

Ironscarf wrote:
I don't wish to worry you unduly, but I just woke up from a really long and convoluted dream in which you and your sword played a leading role.

Hahaha, sounds great! Do tell :D

My Wacom tablet(Intuos 3) is getting really worn on the surface. Has anyone tried pulling theirs off and flipping it over? I'd like to try this, but if I mess up I can't afford to replace it.

I did that with my intous 1 and it worked great.

Ironscarf wrote:
My Wacom tablet(Intuos 3) is getting really worn on the surface. Has anyone tried pulling theirs off and flipping it over? I'd like to try this, but if I mess up I can't afford to replace it.

I wouldn't. I tried with mine and found out the hard way that the surface is glued down really well. I ended up accidentally pulling on the board underneath, and now it will occasionally stop reading the pen at random moments causing obnoxious scribbles all over my work. Intuos used to have a program where you could send it in and they'd refurbish it for you for cheap. Dunno if they still have it or if it covers the 3's if they still do, but that's probably a better option.

Alternatively, you could get yourself a sheet of re-adherable 3mm sign plastic and just stick it over the tablet surface for a removable smooth surface that you can replace as it gets worn.

Im surprised, on the Intuous 1 it was just attached to the surface…
You wouldn't have to pull it off, you could cut it off instead and turn it over.

But if you want to go the non damaging route, get a Cintiq xscreen protector: https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-13-Inch-Cintiq-13HD-Tablet/dp/B00GR4YHRK
Just stick that over the top and cut it down to size.

Thanks for the tablet tips guys! Proceeding with extreme caution I discovered that the Intuos 3 drawing surface isn't glued down at all. The only thing holding it in place is a narrow strip of double sided tape along the top edge. Removing the residue of that was a bit tricky, but I now have a fresh new drawing surface which is actually better than the original - not quite so smooth and slippery. Result!

That's exactly what I did on my Intuous back in the day :)

I love tech that's hardy and you can make repairs to. The pen on my old tablet I use in the office is held together by layers and layers of tape. Looks nasty but it works and I don't need it for clever artistic stuff so, whatever…
The cover on my portable drawing tablet is stripped with so much take and stickers, it's a bit like an old guitar case in that respect.
I ripped off the anti-glare film on my cintiq and it works better than ever. :)

Ironscarf wrote:
Thanks for the tablet tips guys! Proceeding with extreme caution I discovered that the Intuos 3 drawing surface isn't glued down at all. The only thing holding it in place is a narrow strip of double sided tape along the top edge. Removing the residue of that was a bit tricky, but I now have a fresh new drawing surface which is actually better than the original - not quite so smooth and slippery. Result!

Maybe I'm just unlucky? Mine is the 6“x11” wide-screen format one that was almost a semi-custom model when they came out though ( Those came out way back in the ending days of CRT monitors as I recall.), so it could just be related to that. Like I said, I just went out and bought a roll of adhesive 3mm hard plastic when mine got too worn. After I broke it of course.

I haven't gotten to spend a lot of time on art lately. I'm awaiting the results of a retention board with the Army right now and it's got me stressed out enough that I have a hard time focusing on anything. Some jackass didn't file paperwork for my case file on time like he was supposed to, so when it came time for me to get promoted, I instead found out that I was on the chopping block for getting kicked out, based on what the General in charge of my division decides. I've been wanting to get out for a while, but I wanted to do it at the end of my tour, when I could resign my commission and be medically retired for my injuries. Instead I'm waiting to find out if I'll be kicked out, with a “general - other than honorable” discharge, which is the equivalent of the Army saying “this guy is a massive fuck-up; but not enough to give a dishonorable discharge”.

Could be worse. I saw that happen to a couple of EMs. Paperwork wasn't filed and they were wondering why it took them so long to make PFC and Specialist. Then it was like “Oh yeah…”

Then came time for their E-5 boards “Why did it take so long for you to make specialist?”

It's easier to say you were a fucked up EM than to blame the paper pusher who just might know the senior NCO on the board if he isn't on the board himself. It's a small army when you start bad mouthing folks at random.

Like say the wrong thing about a supply sergeant and suddenly all these charges for “lost” equipment appear. Equipment you were told to sign off on because it wasn't in stock but would be issued when it was.

Or do 23 good years and suddenly be told that you owe them the emergency leave they let you take 20 years ago.

Or spend hours and hours slaving away on a comic that people take delight in not reading and just watch the readership slip by 50% with every update even though the commentators tell you the pages are getting better.

I think I might be a little more accepting of it if I were just a lowly little E-3/4 waiting for his orders to the NCO academy, but instead, I'm an officer, who has more than enough time, but suddenly not the rank for a company command and enough time to start being looked at for a Battalion S job ( for those not in the know, that's a job you get when you're not big enough to be in charge of 800 people, but not small enough to only be in charge of 200. ).

I guess I'm just angry that they won't even just let me ride out the last few months with some dignity, and instead they're going to tell me to f**k myself and treat me like some screw-up, even after years of being the guy to take every shit job handed to him without complaining.

I will say this for both of us though; Better to do the job right and only satisfy the few who care enough to know it, than to make a shit-show of it and keep the world happy. You can either take satisfaction that you know you did the right thing by your own talents, and through that accept that the broader majority didn't get it, or you can try endlessly to appeal to the masses against your own strengths and manage to keep nobody happy.

lba wrote:
I will say this for both of us though; Better to do the job right and only satisfy the few who care enough to know it, than to make a shit-show of it and keep the world happy. You can either take satisfaction that you know you did the right thing by your own talents, and through that accept that the broader majority didn't get it, or you can try endlessly to appeal to the masses against your own strengths and manage to keep nobody happy.

Reminds me of
“Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"

ozoneocean wrote:

lba wrote:
I will say this for both of us though; Better to do the job right and only satisfy the few who care enough to know it, than to make a shit-show of it and keep the world happy. You can either take satisfaction that you know you did the right thing by your own talents, and through that accept that the broader majority didn't get it, or you can try endlessly to appeal to the masses against your own strengths and manage to keep nobody happy.

Reminds me of
“Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"

To thine ownself be true.

bravo1102 wrote:

ozoneocean wrote:

lba wrote:
I will say this for both of us though; Better to do the job right and only satisfy the few who care enough to know it, than to make a shit-show of it and keep the world happy. You can either take satisfaction that you know you did the right thing by your own talents, and through that accept that the broader majority didn't get it, or you can try endlessly to appeal to the masses against your own strengths and manage to keep nobody happy.

Reminds me of
“Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"

To thine ownself be true.

I dunno… Lying to myself has proven useful here and there!! ;)

KimLuster wrote:

bravo1102 wrote:

ozoneocean wrote:

lba wrote:
I will say this for both of us though; Better to do the job right and only satisfy the few who care enough to know it, than to make a shit-show of it and keep the world happy. You can either take satisfaction that you know you did the right thing by your own talents, and through that accept that the broader majority didn't get it, or you can try endlessly to appeal to the masses against your own strengths and manage to keep nobody happy.

Reminds me of
“Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"

To thine ownself be true.

I dunno… Lying to myself has proven useful here and there!! ;)

I don't lie to myself. I use “alternative facts”. :D

For sure I'm going to shave this beard after I cosplay Zaphod Beeblebrox. All the white it it is amazing! The rest of me doesn't look that old. I quite like the ageing effect of it actually, but it's like having wires sticking out of your skin.
EXACTLY like that!
Feels like copper wire. The only difference is that the ends don't stab you as painfully like they do for copper wire.

Love being able to grow facial hair but not so much the actuality of having it.

I've never grown anything more than a slightly longer sideburn. Even two days worth of stubble drives me to distraction so there's no chance of my becoming one of those Victorian lumbersexuals. Besides which, I love shaving since I switched to the old fashioned method of double edged razor and badger brush.

—

I'm really getting into the reversed drawing surface Intuos 3 now. It gets rid of the tablet wobble effect. I ordered a stash of new nibs because this will eat them up so much quicker, but it's worth it for the added drawing hand control. I think the later models came with a rougher surface as standard.

I can't not grow a beard. I shave twice a day when I'm on duty, and when I'm not and I quite shaving it grows to 1/8" long within two days. I'm actually contemplating just letting it go when I get out, in the finest traditions of military men who leave service, get chubby and grow a beard. Just so I can see how long it will get.

With my grey-silver beard wearing a hoodie, my wife's friend compared me to one of the dwarves from Lord of the Rings.

I haven't shaved since October so it is the longest I've ever had. And true to form like all my hair, it doesn't hang down but curls up. So rather than a long beard I get a fluffy one.

With all the brutal wind chills we have had this winter the beard has been a life-saver.

Ah, flat earthers…
I think the whole idea started as a joke, but the trolls have fooled too many people, there are idiots who actually believe the earth is flat now.
The thing is, you can see the curvature of the earth from wherever you are on the planet as long as you can see the horizon, you don't have to be in a tall building. The earth totally cuts off at 4.7 km to a standing man.
So easy to prove.

Even the ancients admitted that the earth was bowl shaped and not absolutely flat. And more than we usually think realized if round it was probably a ball there being so many spheres in nature. But a full sphere is hard to imagine if a civilization has never imagined the other hemisphere let alone actually crossed the equator.

But to Bodo, the prototypical peasant who rarely traveled 4.7 kilometers away from home, it looked as flat as a basketball court.

ozoneocean wrote:
Hahaha, sounds great! Do tell :D

So you me and some other guy go to this weird tv convention and it's at a big old place like Alexandra Palace. We have to share a room, but it's a huge room, like a run down old ballroom and half the ceiling at one end has caved in.
Anyway, in the main hall we're doing some kind of survey, asking teens about what makes boring information more interesting. We're trying to come up with a TV show pitch and the teens are all “we'll this guy has a cool outfit and a big sword - that's more interesting for starters” (you're in full hussar gear).
The convention is over and we've got some ideas we can go away and work on. As we're packing up our stuff in the run down ballroom the ceiling starts to fall down above our heads and a massive chandelier crashes down narrowly missing us. We go out into the main hall covered in plaster and dust and the three of us start a discussion about how ageing plaster would deteriorate, depending on the formula and stresses upon it , temperature, humidity and so on.
We decide the ceiling is a perfect metaphor for the universe and all of space time, which leads to a lively debate and soon you're waving your sabre at imaginary star clusters and a crowd starts to gather. A TV exec type bloke strides over with an open check book and says “name your price, make this show and we'll put the hussar in the trailers!”.

So that's how you me and some other guy came to make a hit TV show about a collapsing ceiling.

ozoneocean wrote:
Ah, flat earthers…
I think the whole idea started as a joke, but the trolls have fooled too many people, there are idiots who actually believe the earth is flat now.
The thing is, you can see the curvature of the earth from wherever you are on the planet as long as you can see the horizon, you don't have to be in a tall building. The earth totally cuts off at 4.7 km to a standing man.
So easy to prove.

I've met people who not only believed the earth was flat, but the Sun was maybe a few feet in diameter and only a couple miles up in the sky… And they were NOT joking! It. Is. Mind-boggling!!

Ironscarf wrote:
So that's how you me and some other guy came to make a hit TV show about a collapsing ceiling.

THAT is brilliant! I could imagine that would actually be a damn good show. In the style of stuff by Lucy Worsley I'd think… But a lot more fun. ^_^

bravo1102 wrote:
Even the ancients admitted that the earth was bowl shaped and not absolutely flat.

It's been recognised for a while now that no ancient civilisation ever really seriously thought the earth was flat, it's one of those modern myths. Even back in ancient Greece I believe they managed to calculate the exact size of the globe and its volume; They could easily see it was round just by simple observation and calculating the size was just a matter of triangulating distances and extrapolating what they new from smaller scale objects.

KimLuster wrote:
I've met people who not only believed the earth was flat, but the Sun was maybe a few feet in diameter and only a couple miles up in the sky… And they were NOT joking! It. Is. Mind-boggling!!

I think in some ways the internet is at fault and it's made some people stupider: the word of scientific “authority” doesn't mean as much anymore now, anyone can be an authority, and on the net all stupid ideas are supported by one crazy group or another somewhere… in the past they just would have had their family and friends to talk to about that shit, someone would look it up in an encyclopaedia and tell they they were a dumbarse and they'd give it up.

For a couple of weeks after my surgery I couldn't move my head and had to rest on one side. So I had lots of time to troll YouTube videos. Any idiot who can do a slide presentation will make all kinds of videos stringing all kinds of non-truths and pseudoscience together to prove all kinds of crackpot theories skeptics thought were long dead. (You have got to read Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science and then realize it was written over 50 years ago and these same idiocies keep coming back with new believers!)

One favorite was a Russian video of a bunch of machine tool operators insisting that ancient stone working showed signs of machine working while really just showing their complete ignorance of ancient stone working techniques! There's a lot of really good documentaries there too like the Ancient Engineering series a great video dedicated to debunking the show Ancient Aliens. In two hours the guy deconstructs the whole first season and proves EVERYTHING wrong and just woefully ignorant the people are about the state of modern archaeology. I love when they go on about “No one ever studied this…” and the guy shows there are whole academic journals devoted to it!

Most of these pseudo-scientists are totally ignorant of any research done since the 1970s and are just repeating stuff written about in Erich Van Daaniken or shown on In Search of….

It's a whole alternate paradigm. There were some good articles in various skeptic publications about it. It's a whole part of human behavior. But flat-earthers aren't as bad as those pushing various medical quackery like colon cleansing or getting rid of eye glasses by doing eye exercises and especially homeopathy and chiropractic.

I think in some ways the internet is at fault and it's made some people stupider: the word of scientific “authority” doesn't mean as much anymore now, anyone can be an authority, and on the net all stupid ideas are supported by one crazy group or another somewhere… in the past they just would have had their family and friends to talk to about that shit, someone would look it up in an encyclopaedia and tell they they were a dumbarse and they'd give it up.

Well… some of these people said these things pre-internet days. I convinced they were wrong quickly… I was just astounded that people who drove cars, had phones and televisions, and BOOKS!, believed any of that!!

@Kim- You're right, they've always been around. Now I think they're spreading though.

bravo1102 wrote:
It's a whole alternate paradigm. There were some good articles in various skeptic publications about it. It's a whole part of human behavior. But flat-earthers aren't as bad as those pushing various medical quackery like colon cleansing or getting rid of eye glasses by doing eye exercises and especially homeopathy and chiropractic.

True! The medical Quackery is pretty evil.
Funny, I remember that the exposure of fake medicine and fake doctors used to be a big theme in American movies and TV shows… there was Groucho Marx etc and lots of Westerns about exposing snake oil salesmen, people being arrested for “practising medicine without a license” and so on.

WTF happened? Fake medicine is the new normal. These con-artists make hundreds of millions from fake cancer cures… David Wolfe, dickheads like that. They really need to start jailing these people, for life.

And now I'm watching a documentary featuring a guy who's amazed that ancient statues show perfect bilateral symmetry. He uses grids and circles to demonstrate the symmetry. No sculptor has ever done that! Must have been aliens and lasers! The Egyptians had complex geometry, t-squares and plumb lines and created this precise symmetry with grids and circles exactly like this guy shows.

You know one skeptic blew apart all the ancient aliens garbage by using their logic on a Medieval Cathedral. And it turns out that the immense Baalbek retaining wall with its quadzillion ton “impossible to move” blocks was done by the Romans with block and tackle and there are manuscripts describing how. This stuff is so entertaining. :D

bravo1102 wrote:
And now I'm watching a documentary featuring a guy who's amazed that ancient statues show perfect bilateral symmetry. He uses grids and circles to demonstrate the symmetry. No sculptor has ever done that! Must have been aliens and lasers! The Egyptians had complex geometry, t-squares and plumb lines and crea

Hey Bravo, where is documentary? Netflix? Would like see this. Thx

This is one. Fortunately it's very short. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6H13Mi6Kds

I always find it so sad and disappointing when people can't understand that the ancients could build things like a pyramids without the help of modern tech.

The other thing that shits me is the myth of the “Golden Mean”- all these idiots drawing lines and diagrams to prove that all these old paintings and ancient architecture was constructed using it.
No.

Number 1: that's almost always pareidolia, or false pattern recognition: seeing patterns where none exist.

Number 2: The “Golden Mean” doesn't make shapes more pleasing, in fact the opposite is true- it's actually one of the more awkward looking rectangle proportions and looks a bit unbalanced.

Number 3: It's not found in nature very often, only in very specific instances, like the Fibonacci sequence- they're useful proportions for creating certain types of spiral pattern so that angles and lines don't intersect or overlap, that's all. Everything else is myth.

If an architect or artist actually uses it, it's very rare and doesn't help to create a good composition or shape- unless they need it for the curve or spiral thing.