Yes, I know: it's been ages since I've updated. Consider me admonished.

This will only be a fairly quick one (hurr hurr) because it's quite late and Mum's dragging me out shopping tomorrow morning. I'm writing this in between seemingly endless test renders of G2 James's nipples. This is a path I've trodden before, and I probably couldn't be blamed for giving up and leaving it at my lo-res freebie, but I decided that since I have this time off work I should bloody well get some stuff done, because once I'm working again I certainly won't have time.

Trust me when I say that playing with man-nipples for several hours isn't as much fun as it sounds, when they're digital.

Anyway, things are going along fine here. I had Simon for a week over the Easter holidays, while Mum went to stay in Filey for a week, since she didn't think she could cope with the noise and disruption. Probably a good choice ;-)

We were blessed with great weather while Simon was here, and we took full advantage of it by going to Alton Towers mid-week. We took Simon's friend Daniel, which was a great choice as he was actually wanting to go on the rides unlike when we took James last year. We went on nearly every ride in the park but unfortunately ran out of time before we could get on the new Battle Galleons ride. Probably not a bad thing as my back was quite painful by then as I had got an unexpected jolt on the Log Flume ride.

I always wish I could take a camera with me to Alton, but there's no way mine will fit in my pocket, and I don't like to take a bag in with me. They sell that "Your Day" thing, but it's an extra £20 each...

Actually... I've been thinking of treating myself to a day at Alton on my own. If I went mid-week, when the kids are at school, I bet I could get on every ride, especially as a single rider (because you get priority queuing on most of the big rides.) Buuu-uuut... a) it's £25 and b) about half the fun of rollercoaster rides is getting off the other end and going "Fucking hell, that was amazing, man! Let's go again!" to your friend/partner/whatever...

Oyyy... I need to decide what to do with this texture set. The model whose photos I used for the texture has got some really nasty dry skin/eczema on his thighs, and whilst it looks very realistic, it's not very attractive... I'm also debating whether to enlarge the texture map for the body to 6144x5200, because at the current res, the inefficiency of the body texture map make the lack of detailing a real problem. It's incredibly hard to match the head to neck, for example, because the head texture is, pixel for pixel, about 10 times the size of the body.

Wow... I've just realised his knees need major work as well. They look really dry and cracked. I want to rub some E45 cream on them, LOL.

OK gonna finish up and go to bed, I need to work on this tomorrow, preferably with coffee on hand. Let's hope Mum can be persuaded that shopping should only take 30 minutes MAXIMUM, and if you haven't found anything to wear within that time, you should go home...

[Warning: this post will make no sense at all to anyone who doesn't use Poser.]

G2 James's seams are an absolute pain in the arse, and the difference in the scale of the head and body texture maps is laughable. To get a decent body texture, I'd have to increase the body map size to about 8000 pixels high, which Poser wouldn't be able to handle (in most cases) anyway.

His body seems totally out of proportion - his torso is very long compared to the width of it, whereas his arms are really short. His back musculature looks as if it was created out of plasticine by a motor-impaired child. His eyes are really deepset, which makes it very hard to morph the area without causing serious issues to the eyeballs and eyelashes.

And don't even get me STARTED on the penis...

GRRRRR.

So I redid my layout again...

Well, to be honest, I didn't redo it myself. I just picked another theme. I don't really have time to piss about with it right now.

I found that reading the white text on dark green was making my eyes hurt. (Although that could be due to the half-bottle of Sauvignon Blanc I put away last night, hehe.)

Woo-hoo, I'm 33 ;o)

My team had a whip-round and bought me a George Foreman grill! a big jumbo sized one so I can get plenty on it. They gave me this on Friday as half of them aren't in today. So since then I've cooked steak, burgers and bacon on it. I was going to cook the rest of the steak yesterday, but there was an unfortunate fridge-door related incident which meant the steak went in the bin along with half a dozen eggs and the remains of an apple pie :-\

Haven't opened any other cards or pressies yet, although currently the only package I have is from Moggy as Mum's hasn't arrived yet, oh well. Not sure if Patrick has taken Simon out to get me anything, either. I have the feeling he was planning to do that today, and is probably now too ill.

I had to take him to the hospital yesterday evening as he had a high temperature and his face was all swollen out. Luckily the walk-in centre was open at the Hallamshire and he managed to get seen in about 2 hours. He has a really nasty abscess at the back of his mouth, so they've given him some amoxycillin and told him to make a dentist appointment tomorrow, which he probably won't.

( Something disgusting. )

So that's about it, I shall be finishing work in an hour or so and deciding where to spend the birthday money that Mum sent me, which is a saga in itself, but not one that's entertaining enough to be worth explaining.

Face Transformer

This is an online tool which allows you to upload a portrait which it will then morph into another age, sex or race, or draw you in a few different styles.
Check these out.

My original photo (this works best with a black background by the way):


Transformed as male!
I look amazingly like my uncle Michael:


Granny Kaz!


Mucha-style:


Go play!

You Have A Type A Personality

A You are hyper, energetic, and always on the mood You tend to succeed at everything you attempt And if you don't succeed at first, you quickly climb your way to the top! You could be called a workaholic, but you also make time for fun As long as it's high energy and competitive, you're interested You have the perfect personality for business and athletic success

Very true, except for the athletic bit...

Not much has really happened over the last week or so, yet I seem to have had less time than ever to get stuff done! Since becoming a moderator at Renderosity my online time seems to be full of fiddly little bits... Also I am putting Simon in bed later now (9pm) and he never goes straight to sleep, so I tend to only get about 2 hours to myself anyway. I haven't played Sims 2 in well over a fortnight *gasp!*

I did get a bit of work done on Forgotten Worlds last night, putting up the latest calendars... I need to get the other galleries up, then work on a couple of freebies, then I also have a product in the works... I have too much to do! Proves the point on this Type A stuff...

Had a good day off yesterday anyway, but didn't get a very good night's sleep last night as the wind has been battering the house all night and kept waking me :-p Oh well, off to work now

I'll do an update now since Poser is rendering a rather large file...

( Read more... )

Time for a bit of an update since I haven't posted in at least a week.

It's been a bit of a funny old week at work - very under-staffed team leader-wise, so I've been up to my tits in escalations. Also since it's the first week of the period, plus knowing I was off this week, I've been stuffing one-to-ones and PDRs (appraisals) into my diary. Been involved in 4 disciplinaries as well.

I was thinking of going in today for a little overtime, but when the clock went off this morning to alert me to take my temp, I took it and then thought "Fuck it" and went back to sleep... which I knew in reality I would do anyway, hence I hadn't even mentioned it to Pat :-) Well, nothing wrong with lazy days when you've got a whole week off!

Haven't done much this weekend and don't have much planned for this week in all honesty. Simon is on half-term so I'm sure they'll be plenty of interruptions and demands on my time :-S Have a couple of pictures in mind I want to try for and also my long-awaited "Player" pic to finish, if I can manage it. Working on a quick little thing now but that's just an exercise really to try out a new figure... just rendering it now, it's a lovely texture, Aspen for V3 by Daz. Also want to work on something for the October Poser Forum Challenge, Full Moon Rising, but I've left it a bit late and there's only 1 day left to enter!

Oh well off to watch Silent Witness now, glad that's back on again!

I'm in one of those moods where I can't settle to doing anything. This kind of "I can't decide what to do, oh let's do this for a while... oh now I'm bored" phase usually heralds the slack before the next "I must learn this - NOW!" storm.

I think part of it is that I really want to start making some stuff and selling it through Renderosity, but I'm stumped as to what sort of things to make and whether they'll be accomplished enough to be worth the time and effort. Although looking on there you've got to be pretty fucking useless to not have any sales - even the cruddiest products usually have some suckers forking over for them.

Another part of my dilemma is that the products which sell the most are the "tits and ass" type stuff, but my interest lies in other areas. I'm torn between my artistic influences and the desire to make a few quick quids! Maybe I should continue watching the marketplace for now to see what sells and in the meantime keep chucking stuff in the Free Sections...