Continued from this post...

- This is likely because I am mostly reading large, graphics-intensive PDF files (such as Scientific American), but the iRex runs a lot faster through its battery charge than my Kindle. Which is not really surprising - rescaling high-resolution graphics require a lot more processing power than merely rescaling text. Still, having to plug in the device every day is fairly annoying, especially since it takes several hours to fully recharge (and the lithium-ion rechargeable battery the iRex uses is a type which you should try to keep close to its maximum charge to prolong battery life).

- I'm also wondering why they made the design decision not to permit users replace the battery on their own (without losing warranty) - instead, you have to send the device to their service center to do it for you. Not only does this mean you can't use the device for possibly several weeks (and their customer service hasn't exactly impressed me so far), but it also puts a lot of strain on the work resources of iRex Technologies. Why couldn't they have made the battery separable so that customers could buy and replace new batteries on their own?

- Sometimes when trying to move on to the next page in a PDF document the device gets "stuck" - nothing happens even if you wait for several minutes. Clicking on the menu button and then closing the menu usually helps you unstuck it. Usually. But a few times only a reset has helped...

- On the plus side, the zoom function of the device is rather nifty. I dragged the zoom symbol from the menu to the task bar, and when I click on the symbol I can encircle a portion of the page with the stylus and the display zooms in on that portion. When I click on another symbol, the page reverts to its original size. Simple and powerful. I wonder how the Kindle DX handles zooming...

- Drawing on the device with Xournal takes some time to get used to. It's similar to drawing with a biro or a permanent marker - without adding any pencil sketches first to help you with the drawing. Sure, it is possible to undo individual strokes, but using the menu with the stylus takes so much time that I rarely bother with it. Here is a first landscape sketch I made on the iRex. Let's see if I get better in the future...

I now have the iRex DR1000S ebook reader (which shall be abbreviated as "the iRex" from now on) for one and a half days, and it's time for me to write down my first impressions.

- When I started it up, it emitted an annoying beep every time I changed the page. That was the first thing I changed in the device settings...

- The SD card slot is open at the bottom of the device. I am not sure how robust such cards are, but I would have preferred it if the card slot had some sort of cover you could close.

- Some important software and information are on the SD card which is inside the device when you buy it. This took me some time to figure out, as I immediately put a new 16 GB card into the slot upon arrival and before I started it. I wish they had mentioned that in the (four-page) manual...

- The control buttons for this device are somewhat counter-intuitive. There are left/right arrow buttons below the screen, and up/down arrow buttons to the left and right of the screen. Furthermore, between each these pairs of arrow buttons there is a further control button. You'd think that the button for selecting something (such as a document) would be the one at the bottom, but no - it's for calling up the main menu. The selection buttons are at the sides.

- The iRex supports a folder structure! This is one of the most annoying things about using my Kindle - I have enough documents on it to fill a list 20 screens in length, but it is impossible for me to divide them into any subgroups or otherwise organize them in a meaningful way. Thus, being able to put my electronic documents into neat folders is a godsend.

- PDFs are very nicely readable on this screen, although if you display PDF pages without zooming (which I do) the fonts will experience a size reduction of about 20% in my estimation. The screen size alone would indicate a 30% size reduction, but the PDF viewer seems to remove parts of the bleed - the empty parts of the page margin. I will try to upload some pictures with direct comparisons between the viewer and a printout.

- Of course, different PDFs work differently well on this device. For instance, modern Steve Jackson Games PDF layouts, such as any PDF issue of Pyramid or any GURPS 4E book refresh fairly quickly. But scanned image documents - like the GURPS Space Bestiary - refresh very slowly, and I cannot really recommend using this device for them. Presumably, this will also be true for scanned image PDFs from other publishers (alas - I had considered looking into the Tribe 8 line...), and I am somewhat dubious about the multi-layer graphical layout of many White Wolf game books.

- With the Kindle DX, you can add annotations to normal documents, but not to PDFs. With the iRex, you can make annotations only to PDFs, and not to ebooks with a free-flowing format. Hopefully, eventually both lines of devices will learn from each other and offer both options. In the meantime, my Kindle and my iRex complement each other.

- Speaking of annotations, on the iRex you do these with the stylus that comes with the device - you essentially write on top of the PDF document (and you better hope it has enough space in the margins for you to write on...). Those "Scribbles" as they are called are stored separately from the PDF, but you can use the software that comes with the device (on the SD card I mentioned earlier) to merge the Scribbles with the PDF. The result will be fairly readable (if, and only if, you have readable handwriting, of course - so if you intend to pass on the result to others in your department, you probably ought to practice good handwriting first...). However, if you zoom in then close up the lines will appear "blocky":



- If you want to avoid this and use your iRex for artistic purposes as a digital sketch block (as I plan to), you should probably avoid the in-built scribbling function and instead install an experimental port of the Linux program Xournal. Read this and this forum thread to find out how (and say "Hi!" to the folks there - especially to "Mackx", who programmed this port and who was a huge help with getting it to work). You can export your drawings as PDFs (though at present you can't annotate existing PDFs with it), and the resulting lines will be much smoother.


That's it for now. More later!

What kind of images do you associate with the words "memory" or "memorize"?

What is the coolest image of a squid you know of?

After many, many months I was finally in the mood to draw something again.


Garzweiler by *jhubert on deviantART

This is an impression of the Garzweiler Open Pit Mine which I visited last month with the North Korean delegation. I've painted this in 15 minutes - which shows.

This was done for robertprior.


Request 29 - Beihai Park by ~jhubert on deviantART

This was done for robertprior.


Request 26 - Bing Yu Guo by ~jhubert on deviantART

Today I've finished my 25th speed painting request. You can see all finished requests here.

Oh, and I'm currently out of images to paint...

I just read this article:

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

and it ties in nicely with a pet peeve I have.

I've been fairly active on DeviantArt as of late, and I've seen many people there comment on the work of others by saying things like:

"Ohhh... you are sooo talented!"

when what they should really say is:

"I admire your effort at working hard to improve your art until you have reached your current level of mastery as evident in this painting."

OK, the second sentence is a bit of a mouthful - but it would be more realistic, and actually be a genuine compliment.

If you tell someone: "You are talented", then you do so with the implicit assumption that he or she was able to produce what she did merely with inborn ability - and thus completely ignoring the actual hard work and effort that were involved. Furthermore, this implies that if you are not good at something, you can't actually become as good as a professional - because you weren't born with the "talent". Thus claiming that others merely succeed by talent means refusing to take responsibility for one's lack of effort in that field of endeavor.

Of course, it shouldn't be expected that anyone who dabbles in a certain field will eventually master it. But then one should be honest about that the reason for this is more likely a lack of time and effort than lack "of talent". Doing otherwise is insulting to those who worked hard to get where they are now.

I've discovered that the Art Tutorials Wiki has been linked to from the home pages of two authors of books on digital art: The Artist’s Guide to GIMP Effects by Michael J. Hammel and Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional by Akkana Peck.

Let's see how fast its fame will spread further...

I've added a very short Screentones tutorial to the Art Tutorials Wiki. Not much, but then again it's a simple process...

I've added a membership application form to the Art Tutorials Wiki.

More disturbingly, I've also added a module that allows members to send Email invites to the Wiki to other people...

I've added an Improvement Guide to the Art Tutorials Wiki on how others can help out with it. Hopefully, this will convince a few more people to join up - as I've pointed out in it, this task is too much for a single guy...

I've been browsing through the latest tutorials at DeviantArt for a week or so and adding links to them to the Art Tutorials Wiki - and notified the authors of the tutorials of this by placing appropriate comments on the relevant DeviantArt page.

So far, I haven't been able to attract any additional contributors to the wiki. However, I've been making a different kind of progress:

When you search for "art tutorials" on Google, the Art Tutorials Wiki comes up as #10... out of 239,000.

It's not so surprising that the PageRank of the wiki has risen drastically - after all, I've been essentially doing the same thing manually that many spambots do automatically by placing lots of links to my site on other pages. The difference is that my linkage actually is seen mostly as welcome information (after all, most people don't object being linked to), and thus isn't removed agressively as it is normally the case with spam. But I'm still surprised it has risen that far.

Now I need to see to it that the wiki rises to #1 at Google... and then maybe I can think of placing some text ads at the wiki as well. :D

The Art Tutorials Wiki has languished in obscurity since I created it a few months ago. It does get some traffic, but it hasn't attracted any new contributions.

So I have decided to be more proactive. I've been browsing through the most recent tutorials submitted to DeviantArt and linked most of them in the wiki - and then told the authors of the tutorials about it.

After all, the more people know about the wiki, the better - and the creators of tutorials will likely be the ones most motivated to link the tutorial in the wiki.

Let's see how the page statistics develop over the next few days...

I've been working on a new cover design for Urbis:



(Click on the image to see a larger version at DeviantArt.)

While I'll probably change a few things for the final cover, I rather like the general layout. I only regret that my artistic skills aren't good enough to emphasize the fantastic nature of the setting more.

Beyond elongating the ears on the guy, that is. ;)

Recently, I have been very productive when it comes to practicing digital painting. However, DeviantArt didn't seem to be the right place for putting the pieces on display - I want to reserve that for when I do something more detailed. So my brother graciously installed me some photo gallery software as an alternative.

You can see the accumulated portraits here. And if you want a portrait of yourself... well, just provide me with an appropriate reference picture. The details can be found here.