The Bicycle, the Fawn, and the Stylus

I felt the need to document a close encounter I had with a fawn while on my bicycle today. Normally I would just take a picture with my cellphone, but I felt that stopping to pull out my phone would have needlessly alarmed the little thing, which was standing there, two feet away from me. So, if photography is ruled out, the fallback has to be sketching with the Gimp!

The first step was a quick stop at Google images to find a picture of a fawn, and what fawn better than Bambi? I'd show you the picture, but I'm terrified of Disney's lawyers (may Michael Eisner and Roy Disney rot in hell). Hold it, I could show the picture to you if I used it for purposes of parody. Hmmm, may be a post idea there for later.

In any case, I opened my downloaded jpg in the Gimp and opened a second, transparent layer on top of it and began tracing. Of course, tracing an image on a laptop touchpad with your finger is so awkward that it's almost just not worth the effort. But I was saved by instructions I found on the web about how to build a homemade touchpad stylus.

There are a variety of instructions out there for your DIY touchpad stylus, ranging from the unexpected (superfine steel wool for the nib) to the strange (a bit of sponge for a nib, that you dip into water, as if you were going to watercolor on your touchpad). But the common element that all of these instructions have is the use of aluminum foil running along the length of your stylus to conduct electricity from your fingers to the touchpad (who knew?). When I later found how (here) that I could cover the aluminum foil on the tip with Scotch tape to protect the touchpad, then I was in business.

It took about ten minutes to take an unsharpened pencil and cut a little angle off the end with a kitchen knife, then wrap some foil over the angled end and cover the foil with tape. Voila! It's not pretty, but it did the job.

Armed with my new weapon of mass creation, it was simple to trace over Disney's Bambi. Well... simple, but not good. But I patiently followed the absolutely disastrous first round of tracing with a few minutes of correction, moving back and forth between Gimp's paintbrush and eraser tools, bit by bit, until I had something that I believe is recognizable as a small deer. And so, without further ado, I give you ...