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...