I'm going to try and make this short because I'm tired and more than a bit aggravated. Now that I'm a college graduate with a steady job, I'll have more time to post new and relevantly irrelevant articles about all sorts of nonsense. Unfortunately, in order to post articles to a blog, you need a computer.
Herein lies the problem. I have a computer. It's alright. But as a geek and computer enthusiast, I always want the fastest and coolest. As me, however, I never get the fastest or the coolest. In all my life, I have never once had a brand new computer. Only hand-me-downs and discarded medical equipment.
Now that I've got a job and have a larger disposable income, I was hoping to remedy this. I've begun assembling a collection of pieces that would hopefully combine to form a being of fantastic computational power. Not that I need it... Just cuz I want it. I want fast and I want cool. And the pieces I've been collecting are both.
One recent addition to this pile of components that I call my room, is a brand new case that was thoughtfully donated to me by my parents. It's really nice. It came with three case fans that will assist in the cooling of my super fast Pentium D. More importantly, however, is that it's made of transparent PVC. Which is super awesome because I put in these blue neon lights and the whole thing lights up. It's super cool.
Now, I've been having trouble with the assembling of these components from the very beginning. The original fan couldn't cool the processor enough. The video card wouldn't fit in the expansion slot. The power supply was too weak to power all the awesome stuff in there. All sorts of problems. All, of which, were eventually overcome. I figured I was almost home free. I was wrong.
One of my first, and definitely one of my favorite peripherals is my Wacom Intuos 3 digital graphics tablet. It's been with me for quite some time and I love it dearly. It has come to my attention that the power of the pen is completely incompatible with the coolness of the case.
Wacom tablets use a radio frequency (RF) to communicate between the pen/mouse and the actual tablet. Computer components, such as monitors, motherboards, hard drives, and powersupplies all produce excess RF. By itself, one component would not produce enough RF to interfere with a tablet's communication. Collecting a large number of components in a single place (such as a complete computer system) will create enough RF to cause interference. Typically, the metal computer case that surrounds the computer's innards would shield the outside world (and tablets) from the RF emitted by the components inside.
But guess who's computer case is not made of metal and does not shield anything from anything. That's right. My super leet transparent plastic case with all the lights offers my tablet no protection from the machine's RF.
And since my tablet (with its mouse) is my primary input device, this is a problem. The tremendous amount of jitter caused by my super leet case makes the tablet completely unusable.
So, I have to sacrifice something. I'll tell you what I won't sacrifice: My tablet. We've been through thick and thin and I love it dearly. What this means, unfortunately, is that I need to find another case which can shield the RF and still allow enough airflow to cool the chips. Which also means that, when I find such a case, I'll have to take my computer completely apart and put it back together again from scratch.
Rebuilding a computer is easy enough, but it takes time. And anything that takes time also requires patients. I'd like to think I'm a patient guy, but at this point in time my patients has been worn thin.
My computer is my life. It's sad but true. I spend a great deal of time on my computer and I just want it to be the best it can be. But that will probably never come to pass.
I've been working on this new computer for about 2 months now. I'm really getting fed up with it. I should have known from the beginning, when I had bought the wrong kind of graphics card, that it would be a fruitless endeavor resulting in nothing but stress and aggravation.
When I had thought that I was close to completion, I dismantled my old computer so that I could hook up all my good peripherals to my new, faster computer. This was two weeks ago. I've yet to re-set-up my old machine. With each new part comes new false hope.
"Eventually", I think, "I'll get this bastard up and running. There's no point in reassembling my old computer if I'll only have to disassemble it again when I'm finished with my new one."
Because of this, my old machine is sitting on my floor, haphazardly running with an old dell keyboard, an old 3 button balled mouse, and an old 1080 x 768 display. This is what I'm writing from. To some, this may seem more than enough, but when you've got expensive, new, powerful equipment sitting feet away but turned off because you can't get it to work right... It's more than just a little distressing.
I don't want much out of life. Materialistically, anyway. One of the few things is a nice, new computer. It's the one possession that I use more than any other. All I want is for it to be as awesome as possible. Shit. Awesome is optional. I just want one that's not a hand-me-down. I just want something I can call my own.
An artist deserves a good pencil. A carpenter deserves a good hammer. A cyclist deserves a good bike. A musician deserves a good instrument. Does a webmaster not deserve a good computer?
Apparently not.
So much for making this short... Oh well. I'm done with my ranting for the time being.
For anyone who came here in search of a solution to the wacom cursor jitter problem, I'll try to sum up: The jitter is caused by RF interference. RF can come from any piece of electrical equipment. The RF that interferes with a wacom most commonly comes from a CRT that is too close to the tablet. In my case, the jitter was caused by the RF coming from my unshielded computer case. The best solution is to get a new, metal, RF shielded case.
Until next time,
~Ben
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