Yako is holding a raffle for free art here
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43794197/

Here's the gist; the reason it's been so long since a new version has been released is because I switched languages. I just couldn't couldn't get the RAM usage as low as I wanted in Java so I'm doing in on C++ now which means rewriting all the instructions for connecting with other sites. And for that I'm taking my time by having my own XML, HTML and JSON parsers to my liking to make work easier.

Also It will have a new name and logo that I will reveal when it's released. And I will be reworking my patreon for that and other similar sites I've discovered.

Things to expect on the next release or later ones:

→ Get notified when someone mentions you
→ Ignore users
→ Reposting submissions
→ Rich text editor for descriptions and literature submissions
→ Simple builtin browser for adding accounts, enhanced privacy and quick account switching
→ Manage multiple accounts in the same site
→ Modability features (it is already modable but it will get mod management)
→ ARM server version for use in lightweight home servers such as Raspberry PI
→ Streaming interface - both stream and announce on the same in one go
→ Upload work files directly (.psd, .kra, .ora and maybe others) and have the program convert automatically to the proper format and your size of choice for uploading
→ Cropped thumbnail creator
→ Schedule submissions
→ Filtering messages and submission feed
→ Automatically linking users' multiple accounts (reduces redundant notifications of the same artwork being posted in multiple places, and allows better linking when writing descriptions on submissions)
→ Description templates
→ Keyword autocomplete
→ Importing/synchronizing galleries
→ Editing submissions

Also I want to have some form of commission management, but I haven't figured out how it would work yet.
To have something to show for have a screenshot, showing the filter interface:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/69qc548x7.....17-48.png?dl=0

Now here's a few questions:
- Would you be interested in watching dev streams for artwatcher and other apps?
- Which site(s) do you most want to use it for? Since I'm going to have to port things the next release, it should only have 4-6 supported sites initially, so I'll take than into account.
- Are you interested in it for following artists without having to check multiple websites, for the uploading features, or both?

Also I'm going to have something else interesting I'm finishing out, I'll talk about it when I later.

Since the Patreon campaign was unsuccessful I am moving ArtWatcher to Itch.io - http://jack-mcslay.itch.io/artwatcher/ where you can now get the current and future versions of the application as well as support me on the development.

This also follows the release of a new alpha, the 1.0a001 deviantart preview. With the large change on design It will take some time till I restore functionality of other sites as well as upload functionality. This brings the advantage that the app is now a proper browser rather than just a service running on the background that you access through existing browsers. This will make it simpler to implement more sites and run using fewer resources.

So I'm making this update to give the status of the development of Artwatcher.

Development has been slow, I know, I've been busy and as such I can only spend so much time on a project that isn't giving me real returns. The good news is: next release will be 1.0, because it should be robust and lightweight enough to be considered stable. The solution is: next release will be a standalone browser rather than a local webservice.

That means it will be easier to implement further support (TECHNICAL: because I don't have to emulate a browser but rather just let the user login on the site himself and use the response cookies to authenticate) in addition that the following features will also be possible in the future:

- Switching between multiple accounts on a site
- Unobstrusive browsing, without annoying popups by fine-tuning to browsing art sites
- API to allow sites to interact with the browser - enables your own site to connect to it, for instance
- Lightweight execution, loading only the modules when necessary

In addition I will make sure that the next release will have proper installers for Windows and Debian-based Linux in addition to an universal Jar file so people running other linux or MacOS should still be able to run it via command line through their JVM.

If you wish to support development of this, you can support me on https://www.patreon.com/binarte
You can also follow the development on https://www.facebook.com/binarte and https://www.facebook.com/binarte

Here's something I wanted to vent off for a while. I've grown a huge dislike toward the average, self-entitled hardcore PC gamer shouting "PC master race" every single gaming discussion out there.

Why? Because these are the kind of stupid you can expect from these individuals:
- "Console gamers are dumb for paying $60 every game"
- "PC games are dumbed down because of consoles"
- "I saved money because I bought 1000 games from steam sales"

But now let's start with some basic economics:

If you look up the estimated costs of developing Doom - a top tier game back in 1993 - you will find something in the ballpark of U$200.000, with given the price tag of about $40 for a boxed game back then you could expect $20+ net profit per sale meaning the costs can be recovered with less than 10.000 copies. But today the cost of developing a top-tier game are in the ballpark of $50,000,000-100,000,000 meaning a similarly priced game would require 2,500,000-5,000,000 copies to break even!

One might argue that the market is now larger. Ok, let's try to make as estimate:
It's hard to estimate how many PC gamers are out there at any point in time (for the obvious fact most PCs are not bought to play games), but we can roughly estimate how much the market has grown looking at console sales:
SNES: 49mi Mega Drive: 40mi Turbografx:10mi - That gives a total of 99mi 20 years ago
now let's compare to the last generation:
Wii:101mi X360: 83mi PS3: 80mi - That gives a total of 262mi consoles sold on the last generation

That means development costs of top-tier games have risen by over 25000% while the market has increased only about 160%.

And in this scenario, is it really surprising that developers are increasingly turning away from PC gamers - gamers who are constantly demanding lower prices and more content for the exact same game on consoles and yet demand support if they can't run the game on their broken PC - in favor of console gamers - people who are fully willing to buy physical copies at launch for $60 as is, without concern of having them bugging you because it didn't work (unless you really fucked up delivering a broken game)?

So if PC gamers truly want to have more content and more complex games than the ones you get on consoles, logically they'd be happily willing to pay something in the range of $80-$120 for it.

The thing is, PC games are not dumbed down because console gamers, they are dumbed down because YOU PC gamers have demonstrably had far lower standards choosing quantity rather than quality, by waiting for steam sales, buying tons of games the don't intend on fully play and so forth.

I personally did enjoy PC games at one point - in the 90s, with games like Doom, Rise of the Triads, Command & Conquer, Warcraft 2, Full Throttle, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3d. And I believe most PC gamers back then had the same mentality - they enjoyed PC games because they enjoyed PC games, not because they believed they were getting (or were supposed to get) more content for less money compared to the same game on consoles. But today there are no remaining developers with PC as their main target platform I care about. It seems every major PC game looks the same as 20 other games out there, along with tons of games that seem to belong on consoles and not on PC.

Respect your developer. They are not grubby bastards trying to con you for your money. They are hard-working individuals working day and night out of passion trying to make their dreams come true.

Snagged from  JayelleAnderson

Basics
Nickname: Dudu
Location: Itajubá, Brazil
Age:31
Height: 175cm
Zodiac sign: Cancer
Pets: 2 dogs
Favorite thing about yourself: Ease with logical problems
Worst habit: Demanding too much of myself
Fun fact: I love DIY

Identity, Sexuality & Personality
Gender identity: Male
Sexual preference: Straight
Romantic preference: None
"Kinsey Scale" score: Don't want to be bothered with
Relationship status: Lonely T.T
Myers/Briggs type: INTJ
Hogwarts house: Muddle (I hate Harry Potter)

Routine
"Early Bird" or "Night Owl":Both! I don't sleep a lot
First thought in the morning: What am I going to start my day with
Last thought before falling asleep at night: What am I going to watch before sleeping?

School/Work
Do you work or are you a student: I'm always finding stuff to study or work with
What do you do well: Figuring out problems people don't even realize are problems
Where do you see yourself in 5 years: Having awesome games done by myself

Habits (Do you…?)
Drink: Nope
Smoke: Nope
Do drugs: Nope.
Exercise: Walking both my dogs at the same time
Have a go-to comfort food: Either Japanese or my state's (Minas Gerais) cuisine
Have a nervous habit: Plucking my beard

What is your favorite…?
Physical quality (in yourself): Looking younger than I am
In Others: I like beefy ladies
Mental/emotional quality (in yourself): Resilience
Drink: Natural grape juice
Animal: Dogs, preferably big ones that can hug you
Colors: Black, blue, green
Artist/Band/Group: JAM Project, Manowar, Hironobu Kageyama, Nobuo Uematsu
Author: Don't really have one
TV Show: Bones
Video game: Quake, Super Mario Bros. 3, Tetris
Actor/Actress: Chris Pratt
Blogger: Can't be bothered with

So I put up a preview of artwatcher 0.90 here - https://www.patreon.com/posts/2746012
Being a preview feature means it lacks features from previous versions - namely uploading and stream notifications. I decided to put it since it's been quite a while since the last one, so you can see how it's developing. Users of previous versions will not be asked to update to this one.

Also, 18 this month is my 31st birthday. Over the past years I really didn't feel like announcing my birthday since I didn't feel like I had achieved much through the course of the year but I feel like I should try to get my spirit up this time around.

Since FA managed yet again to piss off the userbase I figured it might be a good time to do so.

Thi next update is taking this long because I've had to do major code changes to keep it going, so I could implement the next features I wanted. Just new I've posted an image of the new screen, which you can see in either my patreon or development facebook page:
https://www.patreon.com/binarte
https://www.facebook.com/binarte/

If you are in the blank, the rundown is that artwatcher Is a desktop application that allows you to connect to multiple sites to check out the art from your followings from several places on the same window as well as submitting to them using a single interface. This means you'll have less hassle mantaining galleries in several sites at once. You can read more on the website - http://artwatcher.binarte.com/

If you wish to help keeping me motivated please consider looking at my petreon (link above)

I should have wrote this sooner but wasn't quite in the mood till now.

Duquesa, my 11-year old great dane died this saturday morning. Early morning she was crying a lot and we checked up on her took some care, and the next we went there she had passed away. It wasn't expecting her to last much longer because she was unable to get up since thursday and seemed very weak overall, although she didn't show any clear sign of sickness beforehand.

It seems to be a pattern, actually, that my dogs die quickly of old age showing clear signs only a few days before dying, if any. Dunno if I'm lucky or if they're just so happy and healthy that they last longer but that's how they went. But given she lived almost 12 years, which would be 3 years above the life expectancy for the breed, I'd say she lived a happy long life.

Now she used to come inside whenever a thunderstorm or fireworks hit since the was really afraid of explosion noises apparently, and sneaking into whoever she could find home. So I guess for better or for worse I'll remember her every thunderstorm.

So I decided I'm going to give this a try and applied for two panels:

Sunday 16:00 EST: Machinery - I'll going to show machinery drawing of various types - guns, cars, robots cybernetic implants, the works.
Sunday 18:00 EST: Multifurry - What it says: I'm going to be drawing furs with extra body parts and possibly other types of oddities such as misplaced body parts.

Both streams will be sketch streams, for learning purposes mostly, although I may do in-stream requests that are in the theme of the panel.

So, this sunday, tune in here: http://jackmcslay.tigerdile.com

In other news, I'm going to try to owe up to some of my promised artwork until then, and for those of you who are wondering about ArtWatcher, something big should come soon too. The previous code was a stop gap that I would have difficulty implementing new features so I reworked the code and the next release should see a lot of improvements.

Tumblr post: http://jackmcslaycritic.tumblr.com/.....d-you-nintendo

https://r.ncp.nintendo.net/

You know how people usually looks at big companies going after the small guy and you try to look at how evil the company is. This is one such case I think these people are wrong.

Here’s the breakdown, to those who don’t know: For the longest time Nintendo has been flagging content that contains footage from their games, and now they launched the Nintendo Creators Program (link above) to share the advertisement revenue with people making videos with Nintendo content on them.

Now of course this upset several let’s players who won’t be able to make as much money from their let’s play videos. And the usual justification is something in the lines of “we’re giving them free advertisement”. Ok now where did I see that before?… Oh yes that’s the exact same excuse artists advise other artists not to accept when someone wants to make money off their work and not give them a share. I doubt these people would agree with a company taking an artist’s works and selling t-shirts without compensation nor permission, so why should it be acceptable to make money off let’s play videos and not give anything to the creators of the content the video is based on without their consent?

“Oh, but it takes effort to make let’s plays”

Yes, and it also takes effort to set up and operate the manufacturing machinery, promotion and logistics to mass produce and sell t-shirts based on stolen art.

That’s not to say there aren’t good let’s players. For instance, Scott Manley does great videos, and that’s because he puts real production values in form of intelligent commentary and looking for unusual yet interesting games to play. And seeing he’s an astrophysicist who focus in space games, you can tell he has a lot of baggage to offer, unlike several popular let’s players who record themselves playing a game while screaming and cracking penis jokes for an hour and call it a video.

Justifications often cite how games such as Minecraft became successful thanks to let’s plays, but here’s the difference: Mojang was a bunch of nobodys, they were put on the map by the let’s plays. Nintendo on the other hand has had some of the most recognizable gaming franchises for over 20 years. Say that some random person make a video of a let’s play of Mario Kart 8. How many people are really going to watch it because it’s made by some random person rather than being about Mario Kart 8?

Mojang may not have opposed people monetizing videos with their content without conset but Nintendo did, so people should respect their decision not to allow people to make money off their work without permission. Some people fear other large companies following suit, and I honestly hope they do, since for the most part it’s their content making let’s players popular, not the other way around. Hopefully this will decrease interest in people trying to cash in the popularity of games and allow actually good let’s players to shine, as well as giving obscure gems the limelight.

Popular let’s players are making a ton of money already, several of them make way more than they deserve in my opinion. Let the revenue flow to people working hard to make original content, such as animators and people doing ultra-low budget films who are starving in their unfulfilled dreams and more often than not cannot live with their hard/work in content creation.

So, to all those annoying idiots doing let’s plays: I look forward to the day your audience grows up and your popularity dies in a fire.

I was playing around with date mining in fa and wanted to see whatt I could gather about myself:

Thus I calculated the score as in the sum of 1000/w in which w is each of my watchers' watch count, and the result is 1002.
Pretty low, I really should get crackin'

In addition:
I have 331 watchers that have not disabled their userpages with an average of 1828.44 watchers fer user


If you want to discover your own, comment here and I'll tell you!

So I've seen a bunch of artists doing so I figured I'd try too. Here is the journal with information:
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/7191.....e-bandwagon-ho

I have this neat project I think I should be louder about called ArtWatcher.
http://artwatcher.binarte.com

What it does is provide an unified place where you can view art from multiple sites as well as post it using one single interface. It also gives you audio notifications whenever you get a new journal/artwork submission, stream and commission opening announcements (buggy still) and comments.
It also makes managing multiple accounts a breeze, you can add as many accounts per site as you want.

Sites currently supported are:

deviantART
DrawCrowd
Facebook
Flickr
Fur Affinity
Inkbunny
pixiv
Sofurry
tumblr
Twitter
Weasyl

To those who need to do commissions to pay their bills, I'm going to have a neat thing to help on that soon as well.

 sonitweek

She was a big inspiration for me when I was really getting into furry art and now doesn't have a stable job now due to circunstances. So please take a look, she does great romantic scenes!

...Helicoprion.

I dare anyone to make it

 rashinbahttp://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6092097/

Is in deep shit basically, risking to be homeless if he can't come up with enough money in a little more than a week. Go there and take a look, it would be a shame to see a good artist in a situation like this.

No, I'm not making a journal to ask for one (it makes no difference anyway since I'm always open and would look at a per-case basis if I want to trade with said person) but I was wondering... Does anyone make them anymore? They used to be fairly common but nowadays barely anyone does them anymore, only once in a blue moon I get stuff labeled as art trades in my submission inbox, and a ton of people straight out announce on their front pages they don't make them or they make them only with friends.

I feel I need to have more people to talk to, so here it is:

jackmcslay

if you add me please tell me who you are in here, specially if your handle is completely different

I'm supposed to be weeping but this is just too funny.

http://www.patreon.com/jackmcslay

Finally finished setting up my patreon. I still need to make up a good picture for my profile and fix things on the website but it's there, and you can get a public release of ArtWatcher now:
http://www.patreon.com/file?s=75622.....62&i=13718

I had setup separate raffles but then since I have many sites I figured I might simplify things by making one raffle for all of them by taking into account the sum of all followers on the following accounts:

jackmcslay@deviantART
/bin/arte@Facebook
JackMcSlay@Fur Affinity
JackMcslay@Inkbunny
Jack Mcslay@Sofurry
jack-mcslay@tumblr
JackMcslay@Twitter
Jack Mcslay@Weasyl
jackmcslay@Wysp

Target is 512 watchers/followers and I'm currently at 452. I will make posts announcing the raffle on all those sites and I will not check for users with multiple accounts (meaning you boost your chances if you follow me in mulitple places)

Since I have a reasonable ammount of watchers, I decided to gather some statistics from my watchers:

My average ammount of watches for my watchers is 1601.4667 and my median is 611.
My watcher score is 1150.8635 (calculated by the sum of 1000/C of all my watchers where C is each watcher's ammount of watches)

The top 100 users with the most watchers in common with me are:
1. ampdragoness 188
2. cynn. 186
3. muramuri 185
4. fefairy 184
5. kolae 182
6. kenshiki666 181
7. little-noko 181
8. seaer 181
9. iluvcookiess 180
10. nitsukiaoi 179
11. stickyneko 179
12. ceruleanruby 178
13. killer-pinecone 178
14. kittenfox 178
15. ryukoyuzuki 178
16. alkalie 178
17. ebonymalice 177
18. elbino56 177
19. homicidal-hobbit 176
20. bluetaffy 176
21. rainb0wkitten 176
22. steppenwolf1996 176
23. flurra 176
24. ghostroyalty 176
25. ralphfoxy 175
26. distracted-- 175
27. luciadagmar 175
28. halally 175
29. selnique 175
30. kirshifur 175
31. kuronijikoneko 174
32. lovelessxlawliet 174
33. galaxy-kat 174
34. reymoncomander 174
35. sylviajean 174
36. xemoemox 174
37. xbatsy 173
38. xxsceneymexx 173
39. kaioku 173
40. chibifennec96 173
41. bellemoon 173
42. sadakat 173
43. angelcolette 172
44. uluri 172
45. pozi 171
46. dragonflyte 171
47. dragonkingsaix 171
48. terramoon~ 171
49. hellishballoffur 171
50. jbcblank 170
51. rainyspanielpaws 170
52. darkdemondog 169
53. wolfy-nail 169
54. supernerdo13 169
55. imahyperfurry1 167
56. llittlefox 167
57. lucasthelolf 167
58. ~kiki~ 166
59. xbamberz 165
60. fumafurafume 165
61. kittyway 164
62. nazznikonanuke 163
63. maddog12334 161
64. faharathevoo 160
65. falvie 160
66. jailbird 153
67. ifus 134
68. strype 129
69. kacey 129
70. fisk 126
71. blotch 126
72. tanidareal 124
73. demicoeur 121
74. aimi 119
75. zen 116
76. jasonafex 114
77. zaush 113
78. meesh 113
79. keihound 111
80. kyma 108
81. twinkle-sez 108
82. inuki 106
83. silverfox5213 106
84. tsampikos 104
85. tktktk 104
86. tartii 103
87. muzz 103
88. narse 102
89. rudragon 102
90. peritian 102
91. purplepardus 102
92. waitress 102
93. rarakie 101
94. neko-maya 101
95. geekidog 101
96. faint 100
97. fluff-kevlar 100
98. miri 100
99. etuix 100
100. h0rs3 100

If you wish to know your stats, comment here