{"id":69,"date":"2015-02-24T22:37:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T03:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/?p=69"},"modified":"2015-02-25T13:46:15","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T18:46:15","slug":"hamster-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/ds106-2\/hamster-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamster Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"morpheus-106\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I bought myself an Intuos tablet<\/a> some time ago at work, on the grounds that I would use it for Big Serious Stuff like annotating screenshots or making screencapture videos. In theory, drawing with a mouse is hard and a pen interface should be easier. In practice, a tablet input is neither like a mouse or a pen (or a touchscreen) and it can be frustrating to get started.<\/p>\n

And there it sat, gathering dust, taunting me to read the manual, pick software, practice, prove myself worthy.<\/p>\n

Now might be a good time to point out that I describe my drawing talents as “maxed out at stick men.” So when it said I wasn’t worthy, I assumed it was right.<\/p>\n

I brought it home a while back, thinking big thoughts about how I’d use it to think about the shape of stories<\/a>, especially as they relate to the stories we tell when we do technology trainings. Sitting on the dining room table, it caught my son’s eye.<\/p>\n

“Daddy, what’s that?”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Oh, it’s for drawing on the computer.”<\/p>\n

“Can I try?”<\/em><\/p>\n

“I guess so… but I have to plug it in and find the software and all that.”<\/p>\n

“OK. Well, can we do that?”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Um… yeah. Yeah OK. Let me see.”<\/p>\n

It’s hard to enter the Kingdom of Technology like a little child, after I’ve debugged and disinfected and documented professionally for so long. It’s a challenge to ask “why not?” But I got the drivers installed, and after dorking around looking for the “right” software,\u00a0 I figured out that Microsoft Paint would work as well as anything for letting my kid play.<\/p>\n

And it wasn’t simple, his learning to match up the pen to the screen. After a bit, he got it and started exploring Paint. An arrow became a house. Green squiggles became grass. A line was the horizon; the fill tool gave him purple grass and a yellow sky.<\/p>\n

And he said it was my turn.<\/p>\n

\"Bunny<\/a><\/p>\n

How about a bunny? I think I can draw a bunny. (It’s like a dog with no neck and bunny ears, right?) Hey, maybe the spraypaint brush will make the fur look more furry. A bunny should be on grass. OK, painting that grass was kind of annoying, what if we do the sky with a fill tool?<\/p>\n

Draw your stuffed hamster? Sure, why not. I can draw Hamster.<\/p>\n

Oh, the hamster’s name is Rhino? Of course it is. I’ll draw Rhino.<\/p>\n

Objectively, I know it’s … primitive. But the fact is, I made it, and making it was fun. And I pretty much killed the excuse that learning how to use the tablet would be too hard.<\/p>\n

I’ve tried to get multiple faculty members to try out these tablets, and few of them are willing to put in the work. I wonder if the problem is that I haven’t asked them to just draw a happy little tree<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought myself an Intuos tablet some time ago at work, on the grounds that I would use it for Big Serious Stuff like annotating screenshots or making screencapture videos. In theory, drawing with a mouse is hard and a pen interface should be easier. In practice, a tablet input is neither like a mouse … Continue reading Hamster Dance<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,20,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds106-2","category-images","category-text"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p53vXx-17","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}