Hehe, cheers Jay and Steve
I'm in the land of work (python programming) and expecting our first little one, hence not being around for quite a bit
Hope you guys are doing well.

yeah the polar bear head was with a demo of shave and a haircut using the 15 day demo (got about 7 to 9 days out of it at about 2 to 3 hours usage a day (including rendering time). I really upped the hair quantity (to cover the dark brown bear skin) and didnt learn in time how to thin the ends of each strand to get a realistic finish but it was all good fun

Whats the nparticles system like? I did a traffic simulation plugin for Maya 2008 at the end of last year/beginning of this year but found the old particle system to be quite limited in its capabilities. If its any good and if I can get a student licence of 2009 then it would be tempting to rewrite it using nparticles, compile it and make it available- time depending of course.

Si