Guess where I am right now! :D

With me I brought some severe back pain and I'm currently on Ibuprophene and it sucks hard. Especially when you normally run around taking photos you need MOBILITY and need to get ON YOUR KNEES and that just blows hard! Also I have to do tons of stuff for uni during the con and well… I still enjoy it here, the hotel so far is nice - WiFi sucks though (they disabled Google SSL Search. WTF seriously?).

So yeah! If you see me around please say HI! I love chatting and stuff and I'm glad if I get a break from all the work I gotta do.

Busy cat I am, yup :D

I haven't edited any Eurofurence photos so far because I had shit to do in the weeks after EF. Right now I'm at Fantasy Film Fest which AWESOME! It'll end this thursday. Expect some nice images after that :)
To reduce time needed for editing those convention photos, I'll this time use a) my trusty graphics tablet and b) some fresh new plugins (for masking and color correction and stuff)! This includes the NIK collection (because it's both awesome and cheap) and probably onOne Software Perfect Photo Suite because they complement NIK really good.
I will especially use Perfect Mask from OnOne, but might be tempted to try ReMask from Topaz, because it's easier to use. On the other hand, Perfect Mask works with Lightroom, so I wouldn't have to break my workflow there. Huge advantage.

Since last Confuzzled, I always edit all uploaded fursuiter photos. I remove badges and other people in the photo. In the past that once meant to spend over 3 hours working on a single photo. Totally worth it, but the process was tedious and I did that using the touchpad of my Macbook as I couldn't find my graphics tablet back then :p Removing blurred fur from other suiters and replacing it with something else isn't fun.

So those things will change. I'm definitely looking forward as those plugins will make the entire process much more enjoyable and quicker!

'ello!

It's time for bad news! At least that's what my laptop decided. The SSD died a slow horrible death and it seems that now that it's entirely gone, the rest of the laptop also decided that enough were enough. It can no longer boot a Linux live disk which makes me wondering whether the hard drive is even dead. Might as well just be that some part of the motherboard stopped functioning.

The bad thing about this: This computer was really important to me. And although constantly telling everybody (including myself) that backups are so damn important I didn't have any recent backups of my work. That means:

-all past emails (past 5 years)
- some of my recent photos (including Confuzzled 2013)
- programming work
- stuff for university which will be graded
- Talks by me
- other art made by me (3D modelling, ...)
- All settings
- save games
- ...

Seemed to be lost. In addition to that a professional data rescue seemed very difficult as that particular SSD was using some magic internally which would have made it very challenging to impossible to get anything back of it by a professional. And very expensive (up to 2000€).

Fortunately I found a way to recover most of it, though! It took me some days as it was a very tedious and non automated process, but it was definitely worth it. The bad thing though is that I am right in the middle of my finals so I really didn't have the time to do it. Sometimes I just hate coincide.

Yeah. So if there is one thing you take with you from reading this: MAKE BACKUPS NOW! ;)

Cheers

Hello world!

Once again I've attended Confuzzled and it seems that my last year's impressions were right: People in the UK are among the friendliest I've ever met. I've so far failed to meet anyone not helpful or friendly and this was especially true at the convention itself: I've met so many new furs, had nice chats with old and new friends and overall had a very great time there.
Speaking of great: My new gear allowed me to take a couple of nice photos which wouldn't have been possible with my old one. I'm now much less restricted by all the technical shortcomings and I hope it shows to some degree in the pictures taken. I'll upload them in the next days with the first of them being a picture of a cute hyena I've met there.

I got persuaded to attend ScotiaCon and might even go there, maybe. Another convention with a big maybe is Golden Leaves Con. I'll definitely be at Eurofurence and at NordicFuzzCon. Hope to meet you there!

Cheers,
~ Fearis

What the hell...

confuzzled 2012 may actually have been the most awesome furry convention I've ever been to. Everything was insanely perfect. UK is such a nice country, the people are awesome, so helpful and kind. Even the weather was great all the six days I've been there. Oh and the left-hand traffic is sooo fun to look at :p

I've met so many people at Confuzzled, got soooo many new impressions and it all was within that beautiful hotel. Even the venue's staff was great and very happy to have us there. I'll be there next year again. Hopefully seeing some of you guys there again :)

Back in Germany, I now found time to upload the pictures. I'm still not done, but am already amazed again seeing how quick you guys are at commenting my images. You are all awesome!

I'd like to write much much more, but I lack the words for saying how incredibly pawesome Confuzzled was :)

Cheers
~ Fearis

You have been awesome this year! So lovely, so entertaining, so cheerful, so absolutely pawsome! I met so many people and they all left there marks. I'm deeply impressed with what everyone brought to EF 17 - emotions, thoughts, wishes, desires and most important: Cheerfulness! It was so great to have met all of you - I learned some great and valuable lessons, had sooooooo much fun, had so many nice chats with everybody and even became fond of someone, yay!
Speaking of all those great chats I had: I even talked to grandpa and grandma Kage, which was quite a fun experience ^.~

Of course there was never enough time to do everything I wanted to do, but hey! Next year's EF will be even more awesome, because by then I'll have made my own fursuit. So I'm no longer just a 'passive' attendee enjoying the company of great, likeminded people but will be actively acting and taking part more than ever before. I'm so looking forward to that!

Thanks to you guys here at FA, EF didn't stop that abruptly. I had never expected to get such an immense amount of feedback to the photos I posted and I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of reactions. Thank you all for taking your time and commenting. I'm glad for every comment made, every fav and every watch. It's so great to get feedback!

Until then...
~ Fearis