9 years ago a Woman Walked into a Party......

WARNING: sloppy lovey dovey shit ahead!

9 years ago I was sitting at a party in Stevenage that was one of the only times I partied surrounded by people didn't know in a strange location. When a woman walked into a party it was love at 1st sight and I swore that was the woman I'd spend the rest of my life with. We're still together and now we have 2 kids.

Like any relationship it hasn't been easy especially in the early days when I would commute by train from Durham train station to Dover just to spend time with her. Anyone who knows me it takes a very special person to make me do that. Everyone we both knew repeatedly said it wouldn't last and that we were wrong for each other...everyone except a small handful of people. The majority were wrong and we're still together 9 years later.

Like any relationship at times its been far from easy but like anything that's worth doing, it's worth it. Kat hates her photo taken and hates being on video even tonight when filming a timelapse of putting the xmas tree up she refused point blank to be anywhere near where the camera was. So most of you reading this won't know how beautiful my wife is. But of a shame really. But in a rare moment of sloppy lovey dovey shit... so all my love to the one woman able to put up with me for any length of time apart from my mother. For that reason alone she deserves a medal as big as a bin lid.

Death of a Wacom Tablet

Today is a sad day for me. This morning at 3am my old Wacom Intous 3 died. 'But Wayne its only a bloody tablet, get over it' you're probably thinking. So why does it need a dedicated blog post? Well that was my 1st 'proper' graphics tablet years back that I bought for my 1st ever DVD (which also happened to be the 1st one released by anyone on Mudbox by the way). Me and that thing have been through a lot.

It's in many ways been a very long quality test of an Wacom Intous! It's been abused in many very horrible ways including:

• · having a total of probably in excess of 1000 cups of coffee split on it.
• · Repeatedly dropped when going through customs by customs guys who seem unable to hold it without dropping it.
• · Stabbed by my then very young son with a pencil, a pen and even a metal rod he found leaving the centre portion dead. This is why old time lapses you see me sculpting things to one side and not centre of the screen lol.
• · Nearly set fire to when I was putting some deodorant on one day and some had landed on it when my cigarette was next to it, making it burst into flames. Amazingly that left it unscathed.

So it's been through a lot and until this early hours it still worked. It helped me produce literally thousands and thousands of models in its lifetime. Although it was no longer my 'number 1' since I got the Cintiq a couple of years back, I still used it on my laptop when downstairs working in the early hours, and it went with me on most of my travels around the world. So its fair to say those Intous tablets are built like tanks. If it can take everything I (and my young son) threw at it, then normal careful use should give it no problem. This is why I recommend it to people when asked.

So RIP Intous 3, I think it is fair to give it a nice rest on my shelf for the rest of its days (or until it gets in my way lol).