Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen and Touch CTH-470/S

Intro
I've been looking for a decent pen and tablet for a long time but kept putting it off as injustifiable. Well I've been doing some graphics in GIMP and decided that a pressure sensitive input device would be a good idea.

Following the review here in The Register I found the item on Amazon. I bought the tablet and wireless kit as a bundle but from different suppliers.


The pad works very differently in windows and Ubuntu as some of the features are only available in the installed software so I'll separate them out.

Features

The tablet works in two modes, Pen and Touch. When the pen is within about 5mm of the surface of the tablet touch mode is turned off. So when using the pen you need to get it in range before you hand hits the tablet.

Pen Input

In pen mode the positioning is absolute. That is the tablet is mapped to the screen and when the pen is detected the cursor moves to the corresponding place. Touching the point to the pad is a click so it takes a little while to learn to hover the pen just high enough to be detected but not accidentally drag it which will select everything you wander over. Lift it too high and you will be in touch mode and all sorts of things happen, mostly unexpected zooming.

The pen is  a bit chunky for me but I find myself using it more than the touch input.

There is a single rocker button that emulates the left and right mouse buttons. For me it is a little high and a little too sensitive. The right-click is far too high and if you are, for instance cutting and pasting using context menus you need to arrange your hand higher up the pen with your forefinger or thumb over the top of the rocker before you do the select. Adjusting your grip when you have got a selection marked usually means your pen goes out of range and you revert to touch mode. I'd prefer a finger and thumb button with a very positive action. I'd also like some contours in the pen so it located your fingers repeatably

When I am a bit braver I'll have a look at the config options and perhaps swap the button functions. The left click is in the correct place but superfluous.

Touch Input

In touch input the cursor reacts like it would with a mouse. Moving one finger on the tablet moves the mouse in that direction. Removing your finger and replacing it does not move the cursor back to the corresponding position but continues from where it left off. A tap is a mouse click and a double tap is a double click, nobody dies.

Multi-touch is the clever bit. Touching with a second finger is a right click. Pinching is zoom in and un-pinching is zoom out. Dragging two fingers up/down or left/right is scroll. Just as you'd expect on a touch screen phone or tablet.

Buttons

To the left of the tablet there are 4 buttons which can be configured. By default two are the left and right mouse button. I haven't found a use for them yet because the functions are available with both the pen and the touch interfaces. Although the buttons are quite big (2cm x 2cm approx) using them, for me, would mean looking away from the screen.

Wireless
I went for the wireless adaptor because I thought it would be good for remote controlling the laptop when it is being the media player attached to the TV. I haven't tried it yet but I can't see why it can't work and it is a bit handier than balancing a keyboard and mouse on your lap in the armchair. The wireless kit comprises a rechargeable battery, a wireless plug-in for the tablet and a miniscule usb adaptor for the pc. Unless I keep it plugged in it will be very easy to lose. Charging is via the USB connection which overrides the wireless when it is connected.

Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)
On Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) it took a little research and, unusually, a system restart. For Ubuntu techies here are the commands to set up the repository and get the drivers:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:doctormo/wacom-plus
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wacom-dkms


When you have done that and restarted the tablet should just plug 'n' play.

The package installs a configuration application that allows properties to be set. I've only used it to set the pressure sensitivity.

For drawing in GIMP (my justification) it works fine. Putting a picture on the pad allows you to trace.

Some of the multi-touch is only just OK. Scrolling often unexpectedly zooms. To zoom you need to wiggle you fingers a bit to get the driver to recognise you are zooming and then finely adjust when it catches up.

I haven't tried the wireless adaptor on the Ubuntu box yet. The driver is supposed to support it.

Windows
Getting the tablet working on Windows Vista Ultimate on the laptop took a few minutes. The accompanying disk loaded up and the plug and play worked first time. Likewise the wireless adaptor.

The install disks adds a few applications as well as drivers.

Bamboo doc is an apps management widget that contains the tutorial and a couple of games and a portal to download more stuff. Sumo Image manipulation is pretty well what you'd expect with the usual tools and filters. There's also a handwriting recognition widget and onscreen keyboard which works pretty well. The other apps are pretty trivial, I've never felt the need to deface the Mona Lisa.

Verdict
It does what I wanted it to. I'm persevering with it as a complete replacement for the mouse. I'm still doing accidental gestures and selecting and moving text when I don't want to but I think I'm improving. The sensitivity

A few words about Mind Maps

Is it just me, or is there a lot of muddy and unconnected thinking going on? I'd like to advocate a technique that IMHO should be taught in all schools. I came across it way back (whichever year it was the Open University used K as the prefix for its intake and Use Your Head was on the telly.)

They are called Mind Maps and are a graphical way of organising your thoughts. And thoughts might be notes for a speech, outlines for a piece of writing or just getting some clarity about something that is complex or confusing. They are great for taking minutes of meetings because when you come back to them you can pick out the important bits from the other fluff and dross that you get from he-said-she-said minute style. For the more formal stuff they can be structured to form a RAID* log.

The big idea is that thoughts are organised as a number of linked one-liners. Breaking down problems to manageable chunks is one of five* key problem solving skills. The map should use colours, fancy text decoration, pictures, highlights. This brings out the key points (pros in green, cons in red for instance) and allows you to get a bit artistic.

It works because our creative thinking isn't organised into straight line lists. Ideas pop into our heads sponaneously and unexpectedly. The Mind Map allows these apparently random ideas to be recorded, organised, linked and expanded on.

Sounds great. But there are some disadvantages. They are quite difficult to share. I have written a complete spec for a document management system as a map but when I shared it with the customers it became clear that they would much prefer a linear document of 10 pages with all the noise words to a one side of A4 containing the same information.

There is also intentionally no temporal dimension. This is a bad and a good thing. Sometimes things must come in a given order. The good news is you can use numbering schemes, colours or text size to impose an order.

There is no right way to create a Mind Map but here are a few starters to get you going. A map always starts with a central topic which should be in the centre of your piece of paper. It's a good idea to start in landscape mode as maps tend to 'expand widthways.' From the main topic you can start mapping out the high level ideas. Sometimes you will feel that an idea may need to be a 'hub' with it's own spokes. If it does make sure it is less prominent than the main topic. Keep coming back to the main topic and working down the branches of the ideas and let new idea form themselves. Add them to the map. Repeat until done.

I think the best maps are done on paper but attending a meeting with my pencil case of crayons got some very funny looks. And maps created electronically are easier to rearrange and update. There are a few good bits of free software out there that allow the basic notetaking. My current favourite is FreeMind:

• http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

There are some omissions the most notable is the ability to do freehand drawings on the map. On the plus side it has a great html export facility which can create javascript webpages as bullet lists to allow branches to be expanded and collapsed.

There's a big list here:

• Wikipedia List

Here are some books that I find useful. A good start is Use Your Head which accompanied the BBC TV program in the 80's. There are some second hand ones for as little as 1p + p&p. It covers lots of other stuff too, like remembering lists and how important revision is.

Use Your Head on Amazon
Mind Maps for Kids
The Mind Map Book on Amazon

So next time you need to organise your thoughts either for yourself or to communicate with others you could give it a try. When I have converted enough people I might be able to get some fun out of writing my specification and proposal documents ;)

BTW the map in the diagram above my first 15 minutes of thoughts for a workshop I am doing with a some local authorities who want a 'Portal'* but have no idea what it is. Personally I dislike the use of the word Portal but I suppose it has the benefit of being a bit shorter than transactional website....

Big hat-tip to Tony Buzan.

*I might get round to writing these up one day.

Emergent Design

I'm just reading Scott L. Bain's book again. For the fourth or so time. Well worth a read for anyone in the software business, even if you don't work at the codeface.

I'll try an paraphrase it a bit:

• Making software should be a profession no less than law or medicine. It's just that the profession has only a 40 year history and hasn't evolved the structures it needs.
• It is also an art and a science.
• Things change, be prepared to change with them. Code with change in mind.
• Stand on the shoulders of giants. Use patterns that have been used before.
• Develop instincts that tell you something smells funny (he actually uses this analogy)
• Constantly refactor. If you have coded for change then it's not a big issue to move things around to make things self contained.
• Think about how you are going to test the stuff you write and unit test it often.

The book uses Java for the examples but c# and vb programmers (and probably any other OO developers will be able to follow.

And while we are on books I've found PDFs of Polya's how to solve it book on heuristics in a few different PDF versions. Although the book applies to mathematical problems it's great for finding all sorts of solutions. Having the following checklist in mind is very useful:

• Do I understand the problem?
• Have I got enough info to solve it? If not can I safely make assumptions? Can I get more information?
• Can I draw the problem as a diagram?
• Can I restate the problem in my own words?
• Is it somehow like something I've seen before?
• Can I guess the range of the answer?
• Can I reduce it so more soluble chunks?

Having a framework like this really helps you get some clarity.

Getting bored now.

Admittedly I've only given it a day and a half but Microsoft WPF is starting to bore me. OK it is probably very nice for making pretty pictures but as a basis for making thing that work it is a backward step. Or at least sideways.

The Windows.Forms namespace goes back to the beginning of the framework. There are gazillions of coders out there who know the object model backwards and it works most of the time. Wouldn't it have been a great idea to build the presentation host stuff on it? You'd have thought so wouldn't you. But the chaps and chappesses at Microsoft didn't. I accept that doing media rich stuff that will run in either the presentation host or a browser needs a new paradigm but it would have been nice if it used an existing and well known model. They have broken at least two of the tenets of Object Orientation to bring use something that might work if you are willing to fiddle with it for long enough.

I started to  list the things that were wrong with it but I've decided to pick on one. The nice thing about strongly typed code is that "if it compiles, it runs." I know that there has been a move back towards mutable types (you can replicate this already in the framework, just declare everything as object.) But WPF doesn't have mutable types. It's just pretends to...

Unfortunately Silverlight has tipped over to over 50% market share so I think I might have to persevere...

Kickoff

So here we are. I have decided to start blogging again. I might keep it up for a while and I may not. Let's see.

What prompted me to start again is that I have started coding again and it I can share my thoughts and have somewhere to park my discoveries and also vent my spleen on the idiocies of the stuff I have to work with.

I have just completed a nice little month long project to create a framework for a touchscreen wayfinding system in shopping malls. One in Saudi and one in Jeddah. At the customers request I did in in Visual Basic. It all went not to badly and I managed to hand over the code and a usable (if not polished) manual in the calendar month I originally quoted. Nice when that happens.

It was quite pleasing to find I hadn't lost the knack after some years of designing solutions rather than doing the work (although I secretly snuck in a bit of coding here and there.) It was also nice to to find I still got satisfaction from making something that is going to be used by real people to do real stuff.

So onward and upward. I have no more work on the horizon so I am exploring. I'm creating a shop in PHP on the XAMP stack and I have a bit of stuff to do on a database solution. I started them both before this job came up and I can pick them up again.

Oh, and blog a little about what I am doing...