I’m supposed to be on a break from the software development industry, but it never seems far away. When I started coding for ICI in 1988, computers were something kids played games on; disheveled men in white lab coats used them to run nuclear power plants. When did technology become so pervasive in the real world? (Wait! Hold on, I’m supposed to be a science fiction author and know that sort of thing.)
Many times over the past decade, I have raised the importance with software developers (and pointy-haired bosses) of configuration management (being in control of all the right versions that make up your software or other product). This morning I used very familiar curses with regard to my Trust graphic tablet. I bought this to do cover and banner design for my Greyhart Press business I’m launching next month. Using the pen is a much better idea than drawing with a mouse. My tablet worked brilliantly… in everything except the main graphics tool I use: Gimp.
I could select and click and move menus, tools, and windows using my pen; but draw? No. So for a few hours when I really should have been setting up my new bank account and registering with the tax authorities, I was instead battling with configuration management.
I looked to download the latest drivers for my tablet but they were older than the ones I installed from the CD, so I left that route to last and went though Googling everyone else’s posts (time which wasn’t: I did learn that you have to launch Gimp using the pen and not the mouse, and not use the mouse while Gimp is loading). As a last resort, I did download the online driver from the Trust website. Not only did the driver have older file-stamps but the installer screen reported that it was installing the same version number as the de-installer screen I’d just run.
All this was merely misdirection to see if I was really worthy of the drivers. They were obviously different: documentation was completely different; tray icon and software different. More to the point, they worked!
This is a new cover I mocked up using the pen. Well worth getting a graphics tablet, but I wish they’d listened about configuration management.
Tim
Tim C. Taylor 
Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on the first version. The cover art is meant to show someone driving where the sun doesn’t shine. I didn’t mean that in quite the way that a lot of people thought! So here is a second version.
Nice – are Greyheart moving to open submissions then?
I’d still like to employ you to code our collection, assuming you’re not too expensive!