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Hygiene - Is it possible to be too clean? There are some who suggest that the modern Western lifestyle contributes to allergies, asthma, and other diseases by limiting exposure to microorganisms. And others say the notion is preposterous.
Is it possible to be too clean? There are some who suggest that the modern Western lifestyle contributes to allergies, asthma, and other diseases by limiting exposure to microorganisms. And others say the notion is preposterous. This week we discuss the merits and drawbacks to the theory while advocating cleanliness at all times at a con.
Also, we spend a while pondering how hygiene standards may differ in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals.
Metadata and Credits WagzTail Season 3 Episode 4Runtime: 30m
Cast: Levi, Spenser, StarlightWolf, Wolfin
Editor: Levi
Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3 Copyright: © 2014 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0. If distributed with a facility that has an existing agreement in place with a Professional Rights Organisation (PRO), file a cue sheet for 30:00 to Fabien Renoult (BMI) 1.67%, Josquin des Pres (BMI) 1.67%, WagzTail.com 96.67%. Rights have been acquired to all content for national and international broadcast and web release with no royalties due.
Podcast image belongs to gabriel, used with permission.
Hygiene - Is it possible to be too clean? There are some who suggest that the modern Western lifestyle contributes to allergies, asthma, and other diseases by limiting exposure to microorganisms. And others say the notion is preposterous.
Just a little something i drew recently
Furry drawing basics by Kendel Ventonda
It is a well produced tutorial video: good video quality, clear audio, relaxing background music and the drawing itself is decent.
This time something else than a tribal tutorial. Wanted to show beneath all these existing character sketches a furry tutorial. If you want some, I could do some about head and hand design. Hope you like it. And stay tuned for other tribal tutorials! Don't forget to leave comments and wishes for other tutorials!
Designing vinyl chaos bunny figures
I actually have Joe Ledbetter’s illustrated book Creatures of Habit, so it is cool to years after find out he’s making a living selling vinyl figurines of the cute articulately shaped rabbits.
Follow artist Joe Ledbetter as he takes you through his entire toy design process with his "Chaos Minis" project.
Crowdsourcing the history of furry conventions
Fred Patten:
Many Furry conventions have been very helpful in answering questions, but some profiles are full of question marks. None have refused to participate, but some have ignored three or four e-mails. (With some, I am not sure I even have their correct address. Does anyone have an address for the discontinued FranFurences in France?). Others have replied that they are very busy, but that they will answer soon. After more than six months, I am not holding my breath.
It is understandable that the business of life and its hectic chaos can prevent organisers from getting round to replying to what would be considered low-priority requests in the grand scheme of the day, but as a firm believer in history and keeping records of our subculture for posterity I hope people in the know can help out in giving him the facts. Whether its from remembering a source of information that was posted on an FA journal to being a friend of an organiser, every little piece of information helps builds a grander picture of the fandom.
Growth spike for FurAffinity alternatives
A few weeks ago two tweets caught my attention.
A big welcome from us to the many, many talented furs who joined SoFurry recently! You are awesome, and we'll keep working hard for you!
— SoFurry (@sofurrynews) January 22, 2014Welcome, New Users! - Hello, everyone! First we’d like to express our gratitude for the recent spike in... http://t.co/KAwSQzVcUG
— Weasyl (@weasyl) January 23, 2014Coincidental timing that both furry media galleries should post tweets about a spike in membership registration. I reached out to GreenReaper – administrator of Inkbunny – to see if the same was happening to his site and was informed that they were experiencing a spike in activity whilst registrations were increasing at a normal rate.[1]
The joy of furs being willing to branch out into trying other furry art galleries is subdued by the speculated motivation relating to allegations mentioned in the linked Flayrah article. It would be nice to think people are trying the alternatives based on merit and having grown tired of FurAffinity, but the reality might be that some are moving just to make a point of principle (even if it might be on unsubstantiated grounds).
Regardless, FurAffinity is still going to be an influential force and as observed by Sonious when you look at his analysis of Alexia statistics:
While we can see that while Weasyl had gained traffic, FA has not suffered any noticeable loss. Essentially artists have their feet wading in more pools now rather than a select few. Whether this means furry artists are diversifying their portfolios in a simple wariness of Fur Affinity's decisions or is an actual beginning of a shift is yet to be seen. However, at this point it would be foolish of those in charge of the largest furry website to not take notice and weigh carefully on future decisions, lest giving rivals more ground.
[1] He attributed this to InkBunny being one of the oldest of the new wave art galleries (Inkbunny went live in 12th June 2010, whilst SoFurry 1.0 went live 26th December 2009, it was not until 23rd January 2012 that version 2.0 was launched) and so most people who could of registered accounts have done so whether as backup or curiosity.
Optimising a furry art gallery database
When I learnt about designing relational databases at university it was actually pretty simple on paper when you worked through the step-by-step methodology for determining the relationship status between tables and where the redundancies were. However in real world usage it is actually a headache for the inexperienced, because you have to be aware of how tables structure can lead to resource intensive queries, or discovering you need to change design resulting in a domino of changes you must roll out.
So I found GreenReaper’s explanation for changes being made to Inkbunny’s database an insightful read into the challenges an art gallery faces. It is easy for a bright eyed developer to want to change the fandom by making the FurAffinity-killer but articles like these reveal the kind of issues you must be wary of.
GreenReaper’s piece is technical but also accessible to anyone with some beginner knowledge of databases, a thorough recommendation for anyone who works in coding development. Here is a favourite passage:
The primary key is often set to be a steadily-increasing number which otherwise has no meaning. This helps avoid issues with relations to other tables. (Usernames are unique, and could be used as a key, but they can also change; we don't want to have to update every table relating to a user when they do.)
Numbers are also small. Think about how fast unread submissions can rack up if you're watching a lot of users. We have members with tens of thousands of them. (This brought down FA in December.)
What we've used to date is an eight-byte integer (whole number) key. Eight bytes doesn't sound like much, but it can store 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 different positive values. It's good to be optimistic, but the reality is that Inkbunny will never have 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 users, past or present.
It's a fair bet that we'll also never have 2,147,483,647 users, the maximum for a four-byte signed integer. We can therefore use a four-byte key, saving space in the user table and every table which relates to it. This same reduction can be applied to submissions (even deviantART has only used 420,000,000 submission IDs), private messages, comments, keywords, etc.
ArtCorgi the art commissioning marketplace
Anthony Ha writing about ArtCorgi for TechCrunch:
You can read Malcolm’s full account of the proposal here, but the gist of it is that he commissioned 21 pieces from 18 artists via online art community deviantART, and then posted them on Reddit. Maybe not the way you would propose, but still, pretty darn amazing. (And most importantly, she said yes.)
Apparently Malcolm (who’s also a grad student at the Stanford Business School) and Simone (formerly director of marketing at HubPages.com) were working on another startup called Gigaverse at the time, but they found that people seemed much more interested in talking about the proposal story and the commissioned art. Malcolm said that as he thought about it, he realized “just how ridiculous” the process was. In fact, he said that he had to contact more than 300 artists to get the final 21 pieces, because so many of those artists were no longer active or said they were too busy.
Sounds like a familiar problem?
Read on about how ArtCorgi aims to solve various problems when it comes to commissioning art, they have solid ideas. Now of course this is aimed more at the general DeviantArt illustration crowd, but there is no reason why furry artists (the non-pornographic ones to be precise) cannot benefit from the system (not to forget the commissioners themselves). Or at the very least this should be inspiration for anyone who wants to make a furry solution.
Joe Ledbetter
The incredibly distinctive world of Joe Ledbetter’s creations, centred on a series of rabbits and other animals and creatures. Works both in the world of art and toy figurine making.
In their wordsJoe Ledbetter (aka: J.Led) is an artist, illustrator and toy designer based in Los Angeles, CA.
His distinctive style is deeply influenced by classic animation, underground comics, skateboarding and 1980?s video games. Over the years, Ledbetter has created an incredible cast of creatures used to anthropomorphize the human condition. With crisp bold lines and a vibrant palette, he mixes irony, social criticism and mischief making his work universal and unmistakable.
This site contains little or mild offensive materials.
Additional linksMr Bunny’s Photo Lab app for iPhone
Gone Astray
A thief and a soldier go on endless adventures through a fantasy realm.
In their wordsThe concept for Gone Astray began with, and continues to be inspired by various roleplay groups that I have been involved with in the past with the occassional bad pun I can't resist.
Originally the main characters were drawn in a picture as a birthday present for a friend in the group, each of the individuals loosely based around the personalities of our own characters - that picture should be found in the gallery but isn't - I'll have to rescan it.
The characters evolved further into a series of skits and pun sketches that mainly revolving around the suicidal paladin who was a part of the RP group at the time. After collecting a large swathe of different sketches and ideas around the seven characters I decided that they deserved a strip and here is the ongoing product.
Rating
Suitable for all ages. This site has no offensive content.
DreamVision Creations
Fursuit maker as well as selling bits and parts that can be used to create your own fursuit.
Rating
Suitable for all ages. This site has no offensive content.
Additional links
Bookshelf Bear
Furry comic and book online retailer for the Canadian market.
In their wordsBookshelf Bear is an independent Canadian distributor of furry literature and graphic novels. We operate online and at Canadian anthropomorphic conventions and events, helping furs across the country read the best of furry books.
Bookshelf Bear works primarily with Sofawolf Press, bringing the works of Kyell Gold, Kevin 'Rikoshi' Frane, Tess Garman and Teagan Gavet (Blotch) and the rest of their talented catalogue. We also work with Furplanet, and other independent publishers and self-publishers, with a focus on selling Canadian furry literature.
Our goal is to promote furry authors, in particular Canadian furry writers, and offer a platform for selling their works. In time, we hope to publish or help publish the best of Canadian furry lit.
Suitable for all ages. This site has no offensive content.
Additional links
Need help finding someone who sells tails and footpaws in germany
Im living in germany and I really want a 2 coloured tail (Blue down, Black up and a fluffy one :3) and a pair of footpaws which are colored like the tail. But i cant find any german furries that make stuff, for some reason :s Pls help me u__u
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