Predictions are fickle

I find myself the pleased if somewhat bemused owner of a Wacom Graphire2 graphics tablet. We saw the Wacom booth at Apple Expo Paris two weeks ago. If you'd asked me then whether I thought I'd ever own a graphics tablet in my entire life I'd have said I thought the chances were basically zero. So it was with some surprise that I found myself ordering one from Amazon a little over a week later.

I've recently been concerned to experience symptoms that I presume are the earliest signs of what could develop into an RSI/Carpal Tunnel Syndrome-type problem. There is no question what the cause will be: regular and extended use of our laptop at home, plus keyboard use at work. Without a decent desk at home I frequently use our laptop sprawled on a couch or sitting up on our bed. Wrist positioning on laptops is fairly un-ergonomic at the best of times; I think it has extended to anti-ergonomic on occasions here. I decided therefore that action had to be taken, as I see a lot of keyboarding in my future. I decided to look at buying an external keyboard and mouse for our computer to enable a wrist-friendly setup. I'd had this in the past with our older laptop to good effect. I was surfing various sites looking at options when Nick suggested the possibility of a graphics tablet. The Wacom ones come with a mouse as well and on impulse I checked them out. Well, they're not cheap. However, I discovered two things. We'd seen the new Graphire3 launched at the Apple Expo, and as a result Amazon had the older model on sale to clear inventory. Additionally, the graphics tablet came bundled with three pieces of software, one of which was Photoshop Elements 2.0. I'd already decided previously that I was going to buy this software, and fortunately hadn't ordered it a couple of weeks ago. It turned out that the bundle (graphics tablet with mouse, plus Photoshop Elements and other software) cost only £8 more than the software by itself! So, I find myself with a cool piece of hardware unexpectedly, along with part of the solution to my wrist problems hopefully. A keyboard will probably be added to the setup at some point. I'll keep you posted...

Finally, today marks a change in the way I'm producing this weblog. (There are some details of a technical nature in the Geeklog below.) The changes will mean opportunities to make babbage.tv a more interactive broadcast for viewers. You can start right now by having your say in the new comments feature: what revolutionary new technology would you like to see in babbage.tv next?