furry food for thought

GreenReaper's stories

'Kaze, Ghost Warrior' released for free; new series to be introduced at Anthrocon 2014

Wed 2 Jul 2014 - 03:23

The full verison of Kaze, Ghost Warrior (2004; Flayrah review) has been released to YouTube, in advance of a panel at Anthrocon 2014 covering a planned successor series.

E. Amadhia Albee: On Friday, July 4th at Anthrocon from 3-4pm in room DLCC 319-321, after a short retrospective about where the search for Hollywood funding succeeded and where it failed, we will be introducing the production team behind Kaze: Winds of Change, the new series that chronicles the love between Kaze and 'Bay, and the fall of the Kenmai dynasty.

We will be announcing an open casting call for the remaining parts in episodes 1 & 2 (scheduled for release at FurWAG in early October of this year), and we will be sharing a teaser recording of some of our principal cast doing a read-through of one of the scenes from the upcoming episodes. Close to 4p, we will be sharing a major bit of news that will likely have great appeal to Kaze fans.

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VCL seeks "stability, if not relevance" with updates

Sun 29 Jun 2014 - 05:58

Could the VCL, once a key furry art site, reverse its trend towards irrelevance?

On newly-reinstalled forums, site admin Ch'marr declared that he had:

[…] enough motivation collected to bring VCL back to stability, and perhaps some level of functionality to keep it a useful and enjoyable place to play around with. Certainly not to it's former "splendour", but that's not the goal.

While the VCL's main page still sports several broken links, it now includes a Twitter feed:

Signaling a slow crawl back to stability, if not relevance :) More information to follow soon.

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FurryCon mark registration proceeds after initial denial

Wed 18 Jun 2014 - 19:34

FurryCon mark Soron's application to register the FurryCon logo as a service mark is proceeding, but only after the addition of a disclaimer of exclusive use of the term "furry con".

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declined to register the New York state furry convention's name as a mark in August 2013, after identifying the terms 'furry' and 'con' as "merely descriptive":

“Furry” refers to “fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics.” - “Con” is a “common abbreviation for convention”.

At that time, a "furry" was also cited by the examiner as:

someone who is part of a subculture interested in fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics

Various Wikipedia and WikiFur articles were used as references, as well as George Gurley's "Pleasures of the Fur" in Vanity Fair, the Anthrocon, Furry 4 Life, Furry Fandom Infocenter, Furry Connection North and Georgia Furs websites, and a con report on SoFurry.

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Conker to return in Microsoft's Project Spark

Tue 10 Jun 2014 - 05:53

It's been almost a decade since we've seen Conker the Squirrel. Rather than make a new game with the foul-mouthed, hard-drinking rodent, Microsoft (which bought dev studio Rare in 2004) are adding the character to their Project Spark game-creation tool. [Dalon]

Some fans appear keen to create their own work featuring Conker, but many criticised Microsoft's unwillingness to make a standalone game, and also Project Spark's requirements of Windows 8/8.1 or an Xbox One (it's expected to release on the Xbox 360 late this year).

It's not the first time that Rare's characters and settings have been considered as a means to promote Microsoft technologies, with Conker, Banjo-Kazooie and the Viva Piñata characters (unknown to Rare's new employees) once slated for games featuring the ill-fated Kinect.

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2013 Ursa Major Award winners announced at Califur 10

Mon 2 Jun 2014 - 05:26

The winners of the 2013 Ursa Major Awards for the best anthropomorphic literature, artwork and websites published in 2013 were announced May 31 at a ceremony during Califur 10.

Many categories had undisputed leaders; others were very competitive. Slightly Damned edged out Twokinds by just ten points in Best Graphic Story (which it won by more than 500 points last year), and Best Published Illustration was decided by eleven points.

While attendance at the ceremony (~35) was similar to prior years, the number of ballots cast declined again, from 1,782 two years ago to 1,113 in 2013 and just 856 this year.

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Fur Affinity cracks down on 'watchbot' accounts

Tue 27 May 2014 - 11:40

Furry art community Fur Affinity has announced restrictions on the use of automated watching scripts, which they termed "watchbots".

While staff had been "addressing botters on a one-on-one basis for several weeks", to the tune of "roughly two dozen" accounts, they faced a growing number of users who were unaware of their position. Some also became concerned upon being watched by "TheNSA".

The trend appears to have been started by Mishka Burr, who claims to have watched over 160,000 users using a script on a Raspberry Pi. Several other accounts running a published watch script inspired by Mishka's work had over 40,000 on their watchlists prior to clearing.

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Flayrah's story ratings now reflected in Google search results

Sun 25 May 2014 - 19:17

It's a hard life for search engines, and sites like Flayrah with varying page layout don't help. But thanks to a few hours with Google's data highlighter, it'll be easier for one of them to identify who wrote what, what a story is about, and how well it was received.

What does this mean? Well, more comprehensive search results, hopefully – but perhaps the most noticeable change will be the visibility of ratings when those results are displayed:

The rating displayed for users depends on the ratings received on their story submissions. This change will roll out incrementally as Google reindexes the site.

Also, Califur 2014 is hosting the Ursa Major Awards presentation next Saturday at 5PM. Flayrah's up for Best Magazine again for the stories we published in 2013 – join me there to celebrate if we win… and to commiserate if the ponies win Best Website again.

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Bad Karma shutters Ychan, Yiffy International, 420furs.org

Wed 14 May 2014 - 10:32

In a sudden move, Bad Karma Networks has closed the Ychan image board, furry art community and forum Yiffy International, and stoner fur community site 420furs.org.

When we're young the day stands still, but as we age time begins to speed us by until it seems there is never enough. We're proud of how far the community has come in the 11 years since we opened our doors, but sadly we no longer have the time to make this the site that you deserve. We'll miss you and the fun we've had together deeply - but remember that in every ending is a new beginning. We wish you the best in all your new beginnings to come!

Parts of Yiffy International - formed by a three-way merger in August 2008 - had been up since 2002, while Ychan launched March 2008. 420furs.org opened in 2007 as Bakedfurs.org.

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For your consideration: Flayrah's top stories in 2013

Fri 24 Jan 2014 - 05:50

So how did Flayrah do compared to 2012? At first glance, activity fell, with 536 stories from 33 contributors. But the year's 914 Newsbytes replaced many short stories, especially after auto-posting to Twitter and Facebook began.

High ratings accrued to a profile of horse-worshipping Turkmenistan, news of the proposed feline mayor of Xalapa, survey results suggesting that furries 'think differently', a review of Blue Sky's Epic, surrogate monkey mothers, and Mike Rugnetta's comments on fan communities.

News of the death of Lemonade Coyote attracted almost 10,000 unique visitors, while an exposé of FurFling and FurryMate remains active, with over 1000 views this past month. Many also followed the search for a missing fur.

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Michigan furs roam social networks after Midwest Furries closes its doors

Thu 23 Jan 2014 - 02:46

Midwest Furries logo Michigan furs have lost a central online community with the closure of the Midwest Furries forum (previously known as Michigan Furs).

Webmaster Gir Tygrin decided to close the forum after evaluating competition from more general social websites and consulting with members. A server failure halving site capacity triggered the decision:

Thanks to a failure of the server's motherboard I've determined it to be a total loss. At the current time (thanks to having to buy a new car in October) I cannot afford to replace the system. […] In the past I would have fought tooth and nail to keep the site going but with the prevalence of other websites that support the furry community I feel that this forum may be getting to the end if it's usefulness anyway. […] I'm frankly stunned that the servers lasted this long. We've been running the same hardware since the Forum's 2nd year. When I bought them I invested just over $3,000 on the hardware. I'd say it was a pretty good return. […] Based on the feedback that I've received so far it seems like people are pretty content to use Facebook, FA, and other resources.

Activity has coalesced around Michigan Furs, Michigan Furries, Michican Fur meets and Furry Michigan on Facebook, and West Michigan, Lansing and Yoopers groups on Fur Affinity.

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