Piper Pillows?! (LaserGnomes are on Society6)

I've finally gotten around to putting my photography and art up on Society6. While I could technically take care of getting prints made, it's a lot easier to outsource it. I don't have to worry about making/obtaining the print, shipping, etc and Society6 can offer products that I can't such as iPhone cases, tote bags, throw pillows and the like.

I mean seriously can you resist a Piper Pillow?
I want to order one for Piper!

I haven't been to the Gnomery in 3 days! It's a bit weird, but I am working "out of the home" on some illustrations for an upcoming project.

I used the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 yesterday to work on one of my pieces and it was AWESOME. It was like a mini Cintiq! We have the 256G model with 8GB of RAM. Um seriously, I was so jealous. It's a tablet that is better than both my lappy (6GB of RAM) or my desky (only a piddly 2GB of RAM)! The ElderGnome managed to get his hands on one and they have been out of stock FOREVER!

We got it to use with the Sense 3D scanner (the Surface Pro 2 has USB onboard) but it's also AMAZING for PhotoShop and Illustrator. There's a bit of adjusting (I'm used to full keyboard and the Wacom Intuos 4) but I really loved the performance. The only problem I ran into was serious arm pain today. The screen isn't as large as my Intuos surface (or any of my sketchbooks), so I was using a lot more fine motor control, which causes my arm and hand pain to flare up.

On the 3D printing front, Justin was insanely excited by the beta release of MatterControl, a new printer controller. I haven't had a chance to see it in action but Justin was super excited when he called me from the shop about it. In reviewing the features, I can see why he's excited.

• It's "plug & print", which he probably isn't super thrilled about but new users will be. 
• SMS and Email notification - That's a pretty big deal. Knowing a print is complete (or not), helps us plan our day a bit more accordingly. Say we go home for the night, it will be great to know if the print is actually done instead of going in and hanging out until it finishes (also great if you need to go out to lunch or run errands). 
• Drag and Drop queuing - Drag and drop always makes things flow a bit better. 
• Design Library - This is pretty sweet. It allows you to organize and store your print files. 
• Advanced Plating - This is pretty exciting. Automatically detect multiple parts within a single design file and then individually manipulate, scale, rotate, and mirror those parts.

Like I said, I haven't seen it in action yet, but it sounds pretty awesome. I think the feature that was most exciting (to Justin, Elijah and possibly Levi) was that you can name your printer(s). That might not seem like much, but when you have 5 printers running, names help instead of COM PORT numbers.

In fact, we're having a naming contest. Suggestions can be made on the LaserGnomes Facebook page.