If you're in the market for an awesome fursuit, this auction is for you!

http://www.furbuy.com/auctions/1057925.html



Please bid or share!

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4797495/
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4797495/
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4797495/

Only a few more days left to get in on our free plushie giveaway! Post a link to the journal above on your FA page, and you'll be entered into a drawing for one hand-made, high-quality plushie of your choice by The Furducers!

But act fast- the entry deadline is 11:59pm SATURDAY! (11:59 PT, 2:59a ET, 6:59a GMT)

Click the link above for more details.

Good luck!

Hooray! I had tons of fun at Califur this year. It will EASILY replace FC as our "within-driving-distance" con, and AC as our "summer-time-ish" con. Not only is Califur super easy to get to (6 hours by car from Phoenix), it also has a really nice vibe and a LOT of interesting folks. Seems like a younger and more relaxed crowd overall. Very cool.

As for business, our sales were pretty solid, and we handed out a LOT of business cards. I will probably end up doing more commissions after the con than I did during it.

I'll be posting my finished products plus a lot more information once I get more time.

If you're interested in getting a commission from us, check out our order form here!
http://www.furducers.com/?page=ordering

Back to the grind- time to start preparing for the gauntlet of cons this fall: Rainfurrest, Arizona Fur Con, and Midwest Furfest!

An April Fool's Day joke nearly two years in the making! Come see who's on top now! Got an account on FA? Then you're probably on the list!

I've got the data coming in again, and I'll be adding even more features than before! Want to know who's commented the most? Who's got the most faves? Who's watching the most people? Stay tuned!

Right now I've only got "ranking by who's got the most watches", but the next thing I'll be adding is a search-by-user feature. Promise!

http://www.popufur.com/
http://www.popufur.com/
http://www.popufur.com/
http://www.popufur.com/

So we've paid our last rent payment on the apartment, and are pretty much unpacked in our new house! The problem is all those moving expenses and paying double rent for the past 4 months (not to mention rent and mortgage for the previous 9 months!) have left finances a little tight. Throw a few medical expenses in there (both Human and Dog - endoscopies, surgeries, and biopsies) and we decided - it's TIME TO OPEN UP FOR COMMISSIONS AGAIN!

Now that we have our fabulous new craft room and aren't fighting for space in a tiny apartment or driving an hour and a half into work, we're ready!

So what do The Furducers do? WE MAKE STUFF! What kind of stuff? Well here are some examples of our work...

HATS!
Fleece hats starting at $25 (ears only), up to $60 max (for really complex stuff). We can use Faux Fur features (like hair or inside of ears) but the main part of the hat has to be made of fleece. We do embroidery too!
Examples:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9799415/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9799288/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5736520/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5241718/

PLUSHIES!
Who wouldn't want a plushie of their Fursona? These are EXTRA cute if you have a matching fursuit! We offer many different styles of plushies that range from $60, up to $100 depending on complexity (spots, stripes, accessories, markings, detailed stuff). We can make them out of Fleece or Faux Fur - but Faux Fur might be more expensive since we'll have to order it.
Examples:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9338555/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9744667/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9799642/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9339146/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8857720/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7696716/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7669500/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8020653/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7286180/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8857385/

DERPS!
Toss 'em, Cuddle 'em, Squish 'em, Hug 'em - they're SOOO DERPY! These are less complex, but just as customizable plushies. They are made of fleece nice and portable :) They range from $25-$40 depending on complexity.
Examples:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9338992/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9338771/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9338813/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9051625/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9104792/

SCULPTURES!
This is the first time we've taken commissions for these! Price is totally going to depend on complexity and size you're looking for. All sculptures will be made of Sculpey and painted with acrylic paint. These could take longer than our other projects because our sculptor (me) is visually impaired and has good and bad days when it comes to being able to see things.
Examples:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9357739/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9357716/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8302488/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8044547/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/466670/

BODYSUITS!
Taren is known for making form fitting fursuit bodysuits WITHOUT THE USE OF A GROSS DUCT TAPE DUMMY! Taren is so good at math that all he needs is a few measurements from you to create the perfect bodysuit to go with your partial. This is currently they ONLY type of Fursuit-Related commission we're taking. We are NOT READY to take head, paw or feet commissions. We might consider doing tails, but please inquire first. Taren's fabulous bodysuits start at $350 and go up depending on fur/complexity.
Examples (please note, while some other parts of these suits may have been made by other fursuit makers, all the bodysuits were made by Taren):
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4665199/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5494839/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/6638812/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2287430/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3276517/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8086406/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2187167/

CANDLES!
YEP! We even make candles and they smell GOOD! Sadly, they have not yet invented SMELL-O-VISION for your computer...so you will have to take our word for it. Candles are $6 each, or $20 for 4, plus shipping.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9352271/

Interested in any of the above? Email us! We prefer not to use notes since there is two of us - and thankfully the email goes to both of us! We can be reached at furducers[at]gmail.com

Our website is currently under construction, but our goal is to have it re-released by Califur this year.

Please - if you've every gotten anything from us and even remotely liked it. Post a link to this journal in a journal of your own. If you want to post it on twitter, that's fine as well, we just need some serious pimping out!!



Thanks :D

Grabbed an account at Weasyl!
https://www.weasyl.com/profile/taren

Eventually I'll load it up with submissions and whatnot. Oh they have SUBMISSION FOLDERS, I'm so excited~

So go watch/friend me or whatever you're supposed to do on the internet, and I'll DELIVER... soon.

SOON

Are you going to Further Confusion in a few weeks, and need a place to stay? How would you like your own room?

Since I'm no longer planning to attend FC in 2 weeks, I need to dump my hotel reservation and hopefully recoup some of my room deposit. The room reservation is for 1/17 through 1/21 (check-in Thursday, check-out Monday), for a King bed in the Marriott, up to five guests.

The hotel has already charged me about $148 for the room, so I'd like to transfer the room to somebody that is willing to cover that expense or at least part of it. (Added at 22:15 MST: Beyond that, the room total will be about $450 for the three remaining nights. You can always shorten the reservation once it's yours.)

Here's how this works: if you're interested, shoot me an email at tarennauxen[at]gmail.com with your LEGAL NAME. I will call the hotel and put your name on the reservation. After that, you have to follow up with the hotel to take my name and credit card off. Since the room is already booked, you should not be responsible for any deposits- that's already been charged to me.

Hopefully somebody can take advantage of this!
Please re-post in your own journal if you know of somebody that needs a room! <3

http://factivity.popufur.com/
CLICK CLICK CLICKITY!

FActivity (pronounced fack-tiv-it-tee) is a site that provides historical usage statistics for FurAffinity. Since FA admins added usage statistics to the bottom of each page, I have been gathering it to answer questions such as "When is the site busiest?" or "When should I post my art?".

FActivity is a little project I've been tinkering with on and off for months now. Thankfully, since it took so long to get operational, I now have approximately 7 months' worth of data regarding FA user activity. I have been collecting data via a site-scraping script that runs every 15 minutes, since the statistics reflect activity over the last 15 minutes.

Along the bottom of the plot, you should see numbers from "00" to "23"- these are hours of the day. You will also notice that the background cycles between blue and yellow- this represents day and night time. The deepest blue corresponds to midnight, and the brightest yellow is noon.

Also, I have configured the graph to automatically determine your local time zone, so while the data remains the same, the data will be easier to interpret. That was a neat trick! You can also tinker with the GET parameters in the URL if you're so inclined.

I plan on adding more data plots and graphs as time permits, but for the time being, you can check out the site activity over the last 24 hours, and last 7 days.

Other graphs I intend to add include:
- Activity by hour of day
- Activity by day of week
- Activity by hour & day
- Day-over-day historical data
- Vs. average [day/hour]
- Others?

Anyway, hope you like it! Let me know what you think!

Has it already been a month since MFF? Dang.

I have been trying to clear out my commission queue, but work has been real hectic the last few weeks. Combine that with finally selling our house... it's quite the ride. Anyway, now that work is settling down and the sale is pending, I'm thinking about projects again.

As I posted recently, I've started making scented candles. R&D is pretty much done, now I need to focus on marketing/branding and promotion.

What I'd like to do is create a "brand" for the product line, along the line of "XYZ, by The Furducers". My biggest requirements are that the name must be: easy to remember, easy to spell, and easy to google. You don't want to lose business because people can't spell your goobledygook name, or keep getting diverted to other businesses with the same name.

My plan is to give each scent a quote from a show or movie that's related to its flavor. So "Catalina Wine Mixer" smells like a beach/ocean and grapes/wine.

In addition, I'd like each flavor to be associated with an animal. A very subtle hint of furry, not overwhelming- something that a non-fur could appreciate. I'm thinking something like how "familiars" or "totems" work.

In that sense, I was thinking about "Familiar Scents" for a name. It's simple and available, and accurately represents the product line.

Or... I was kind of thinking about a name that incorporates either "sun", "flame", or "desert" in some way, and making the mascot/logo something phoenix-related. I heart flameyburds, plus it's rather appropriate, considering candles = flames = fire. So I also came up with the name "Helioscents".

And of course I need label design! If you saw my setup at MFF, I had nothing labelled. Only once I put out labels that said "Christmas Tree" and "Apple Jack" did I really start to get people's attention. I tinkeres with some 1x2 5/8 inch labels, which fit neatly onto one side of the hex jar, but are simply too small. I've purchased some larger sticker-labels and I've been itching to try them out.

So I guess, I'd be interested to see if anyone would be up for completely opened-ended art commissions, basically! Or if you know someone that would be interested, pass it along.

I've still got a ways to go, but I think this will be fun! Everyone that's tried the candles has loved them so far. Just gotta get the ball rolling :D

Back to work! *sew sew sew sew*

I just got back from MFF last night, what an awesome and much-needed trip. But wasn't MFF last week? Yeah, I stuck around to see family and stay for Thanksgiving.

I had a very successful experience at my Dealers Den table at the con. Thanks to everyone that stopped by! I took home several plush commissions. I'll be updating my profile to reflect these shortly! Also, to everyone that grabbed one of my magical business cards, I will hopefully be updating the Furducers website... eventually.

ORDER QUEUE
 xandertheblue - Completed
 alkalibismuth - Completed
 deadman4142 Drako (grabby paws plush)
 furian (anthro plush)
Stickpup (hat)
 dracka (grabby paws plush)
 artyskox (grabby paws plush)
 kingkougra1 (grabby paws plush)
Audax (grabby paws plush of Raith)
Audax (derpable plush of Raith)

Now that I have your attention...

I'm opening for a limited number of commissions RIGHT NOW.

THINGS I'LL DO THAT I'M PRETTY GOOD AT:

- Plushies ($50 - $80 shipped, extra for int'l)
Designs available include: "Grabby-paws", Feral, and Anthro.
If anyone is interested, I'd be willing to give custom MLP plushies a shot. I've been tinkering around with a pattern and I would like guinea pigs!

- Hats ($20 - $50 based on complexity)
If you can draw it, I can probably sew it.

Turnaround time will be 1-2 weeks, since things have settled down around here moving-wise.

HERE'S WHAT TO DO
Email a description of what you want to furducers@gmail.com, and I'll respond ASAP.
Paypal only, please.

MUCH LOVE

We're having a "MUBIN SALE"! We need to lighten our load to make our moving a little less strenuous and expensive. Would that be strensive? Or expenuous? Sometimes We are not sure.

Either way, we have a ton of fabric at ridiculously low prices. Maybe you need some pieces to add highlights to a suit? Or perhaps minimum orders from fabric retailers are too much, and you just want a sample? Take a look at what we've got to offer.

We will ship WORLDWIDE.

Http://furducers.com <--- this is where the magic happens

I will give you one (1) hug if you repost this!

For developers, statisticians, and other related nutjobs, I'd like to propose a list of read-only tables or exported files that contain most/all of the data relevant to site submissions. This will hopefully cut down on CPU time wasted generating pages for bots, and possibly promote interest in the site in general.

Table 1: user general info.
Numeric userid, site handle, creation time.
Publicly semi-available data that can be skimmed from a user's main page. If you know their URL, you can get there, but there is no full listing of all FA accounts.
This data can be used to show site growth over time, and possibly interesting trivia about common username patterns.

Table 2: submission data
Numeric userid, numeric submission id, submission timestamp
(Optional extra fields: detailed notes, category listing, maturity rating, tag list)
Semi-public info: a bot could go through all of the submission id's and collect data that way, but obviously mature stuff wouldn't be available.
This info can demonstrate peak posting times, breakdown of mature/general art posted, and common themes in the descriptions/tags. I'm not looking for a dump of all the uploaded content; just the info surrounding it.

Table 3: comment data
Submission id, commenter user id, time. (Optionally: comment contents.)
Semi-public, semi-available data: obviously bots can't access comments on mature pieces, and now that FA allows comments to be hidden, some comments may disappear over time or become otherwise inaccessible.
This can be used to determine who comments the most on which artists, best times of the day/week/month/year to receive comments, how quickly people post on submissions. If comment content is included, it could be used to detect retards, trolls, etc. (E.g. "DORRY.")

Table 4: favorites data
submission id, user id (of fan, not artist), time.
Semi-public, semi-available data: again, mature submissions are inaccessible to bots without cookies, but also only the favorites shown on a user's main page display "when" the favoriting happened older favorites' times aren't displayed.
This data would be useful to see when people favorite stuff, in terms of time of day/week/year AND with respect to submission time. Could also be used to locate "hidden gems" in the site by relatively unknown artists.

Table 5: watchers
Userid A, userid B, where A watches B. Possibly also a timestamp, if it's stored. I know user watches are sorted by recency on a user's page, but I'm not sure if that's intentional or just a side effect of DB design.
public data: this info is completely public already and can be accessed by anyone without having to log in. Currently this data can't be gathered easily because of server limitations, possible throttling (total conjecture on my part) and such.
This'd be fantastic data to have so I could update Popufur, but also it would serve to detail how frequently people favorite stuff from users they're watching.

Table 6: activity
Registered users count, guest count, timestamp.
No frills- just the data displayed at the bottom of the page. If it's actually cached somewhere. If not, I've been tracking it for weeks already.
With this, you can see how active the site is by hour of day, day of week, around conventions and holidays, etc, and if site activity and favs/comments activity are correlated!

Anyway, that's all I came up with. Anything else that people would like to see? Like I said, this data would provide data mavens with info they can mostly already get by site scraping, thereby saving everyone headaches. It wouldn't need to be real-time, either. Daily or weekly or monthly snapshots would be even better. Xml, json, csv, whatever- just zip that stuff up.

I think this could potentially drive value-added development by third-party coders, so I'd like to request some sort of API, if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

Thanks for reading <3

http://scrapbook.superwailingbonus.com/?f=25279
Soooo I kinda had a birthday last week. I would have posted this sooner, but I'm right in the middle of migrating my web hosting. NO APOLOGIES

The Bad Dragon Crew and friends met me at George and Dragon in central Phoenix. It's a delicious English pub! Yum!

And then there was CAKE.
http://scrapbook.superwailingbonus.com/?i=30323

It's a Beatmania controller with Thriller Edition Michael Jackson riding a Taren!
(In case you haven't heard people make fun of me, Michael Jackson died on my birthday in 2009, so everyone spends my birthday harassing me about it.)

My commission queue is getting low, so you know what that means: more plushie commissions!

Sema and I just moved into our new apartment in north Phoenix, so I'll be able to put those 3 hours we'd normally waste on the road to sewing.

I offer three different styles of plushies:
- Feral, lying down (a.k.a. "Grabby Paws") https://www.furaffinity.net/view/7481244/
- Feral, standing up https://www.furaffinity.net/view/7669500/
- Anthro https://www.furaffinity.net/view/7285962/

For mor examples, feel free to browse my gallery.

The Grabby Paws style comes in two different sizes, as seen here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/7637365/
I can scale my patterns, so if you need something bigger or smaller, I'd be happy to accomodate.

Plushies commissions start at $70-75, (including shipping within the USA) and go up depending on complexity. All species welcome! (International customers, please inquire for shipping costs.)

I can work with both fleece and fur, so I'd be happy to give your plushie a fuzzy body, or a cool hair style, or fur accents. I can also add accessories to your order, like goggles, a hat, or stuff like that.

If you're interested, send an email to furducers[at]gmail.com with a link to your character, and what style of plush you'd like, and any relevant information.

Hope to hear from you soon! <3

I'm going to be setting up my spare sewing machine in our apartment across town, and I just remembered... I only have ONE foot pedal control!! I can't remember where the other one is for the life of me.

Here's the rub: the cheapest foot pedal I could find for my machine is $30! That seems a little ridiculous considering the whole machine costs under $100. But anyway...

I was wondering if anyone reading this had a spare one they'd be willing to sell me? I'd be happy to keep the money "locally" as opposed to giving it to some random website.

Here's what I'm looking for:
http://www.sewingmachinesplus.com/J00360051.php
http://www.vacsew.com/brother-foot-.....j00360051.html
http://www.sewingsupplywarehouse.co.....xc7359021.html

It's either a "Model J00360051" or "Model KD-1902". It's a pedal/cord combo, and it's meant to be used with a Brother LS-2125 sewing machine.

If anyone has one, comment/note/email me! tarennauxen[at]gmail.com

THAAAANKS <3

Caution: super nerdery ahead

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5tm3Oe4pYg
Global Communication - Epsilon Phase

Above is a link to one of my favorite songs ever. When I first discovered the ambient genre thanks to Spinner Radio back in the late 90's, I just loved listening to this song whenever it came on. I had several copies of it on my computer, one of which was subtitled "Chapterhouse Remix". It sounded identical to the "original", so I didn't pay it much mind.

Anyway, fast forward about 15 years- it came on SomaFM one day while I was at work. Since I had nothing better to do at the time, I Wikipedia'd it, because I could NEVER figure out where the vocal samples came from. Turns out the album it's on, Pentamerous Metamorphosis, is an ambient rework of the album "Blood Music" by the band -- you guessed it -- Chapterhouse.

After a little scrounging, I found the original piece that Epsilon Phase was based on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4EZJEdGuxI
Chapterhouse - Love Forever

"have to learn to feel...
reach into the light...
changing all the time."

...holy shit, it took me that long to find that?

Recently I've been feeling like I finally got a good working grasp of my responsibilities at work, right as I gave my two weeks' notice. Well, this morning I got a big reminder of why I'm moving on!

I'm responsible for building software releases that get distributed among a number of internal and external users. People that have requested specific features are responsible for verifying their updates work correctly. However, most of the time I never hear back from them. Zo what happens is when shit breaks, it's instantly MY fault for not checking with the requesters that it's all good to go.

But if I stay the course and demand that I get everyone's buy-in that everything is correct, there's one guy that never does it, which causes delays. Then I have no fewer than four managers get on my case for "What's taking so long omg?"

So yesterday I said fuck it, I'm just going to verify this jerk's stuff for him. This morning I got an email from my condescending coworker saying "you cannot do this, this violates our process, and only so-and-so can verify that it functions correctly."

Basically, damned if I do, damned if I don't. And they can't seem to figure out why I'm leaving! In fact, when said abusive coworker found out I was leaving, his first reaction was "Who?"

Middle fingers for everyone! Whooooooshhhhh

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/.....le-fingers.gif

Over the weekend, my personal site, superwailingbonus.com, was hacked, causing redirect scripts to be inserted into pretty much every php file under the domain superwailingbonus. I don't have wordpress installed, which was the cause of a lot of these issues, but I'm sure there was some rotten code somewhere in my site that provided a wide open back door. I've been using that domain for close to 7 years now, so I'm sure there are all sorts of holes in code I wrote when first learning php.

It appears that no data was lost and all of my databases are fine, but every page on SWB will redirect you to some "rr.nu" site.

This is also the case for "popufur.com" since it was under the same ftp/shell account.
However, furducers.com is safe.

I'm probably just going to nuke most of it, and clean up the rest, like popufur and my image gallery. It's not difficult to fix, just too tedious to do through a phone.

In the mean time, stay safe. If you are with Dreamhost or haven't checked your site in a while, you might want to make sure you're not affected.

If only these script kiddies could channel that energy into something productive, maybe this world would be a little better place.

Introspection

Lately I've been very interested in the mythology/symbolism of the phoenix. A while back I posted about the four sub-characters I've created. (see: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/6785597/) I guess they're similar to totems. Totems are supposed to be archetypes, and these are specific, individual characters. I guess you could call them just that, I suppose. I don't see myself AS them, like I used to with otherkin-ness and whatnot, it's kind of like inner-world facets or personalities. Whatever.

Funny enough, I actually found another 'character' out there that embraces the four celestial creatures of Eastern mythology! With some modifications, of course :P. His name is Paragon, but his website hasn't been updated in over 11 years. http://www.avians.net/paragon/ Just thought that was neat, since I've been considering designing a single character that incorporates the markings/features from the other four.

Originally the character I designed, Zohaki/Zoe, was based off of the second of the celestial critters, a vermilion bird, or a phoenix. To me, the character represented warmth, energy, passion, intensity, ambition, performance, and success. For one reason or another, this character was more in the background, and I never really thought about it much.

I've felt more of a connection to pa-ho-nickses lately for some reason- probably due to certain live events lately. I've been trying to become more communicative and organized, and recently made the decision to change jobs. I see this is as my chance to start fresh in a new 'life', overcoming the adversity of a really incompatible work environment, possibly moving residences. A lot of major life changes, all for the better. It seems like it's all focused on my situation at work, but man if you had to listen to me for the last 2 years, that's seriously all I complain about. Now that I'm doing something about it, instead of just putting up with it, I feel this incredible sense of psychological liberation.

So I've been doing research on the flamey-bird, and what I found was really neat!

"the phoenix flies far ahead to the front, always scanning the landscape and distant space. It represents our capacity for vision, for collecting sensory information about our environment and the events unfolding within it. The phoenix, with its great beauty, creates intense excitement and deathless inspiration."
http://www.mythicalrealm.com/creatu.....s/phoenix.html

"The Phoenix is symbolic of rebirth, hope, purity, chastity, marriage, faith, constancy, summer, eternity, immortality, and light."
http://monsters.monstrous.com/phoenix.htm

"There is only one Phoenix at a time"
http://www.eaudrey.com/myth/phoenix.htm
(There can be only one!)

"Feng-Huang- (Chinese version) In this version, the bird is sent to earth to perform extraordinary works and to help the development of man. It appears in different stages of the world's progress, and then returns to heaven."
http://www.eaudrey.com/myth/phoenix.htm

"The Fenghuang has very positive connotations. It is a symbol of high virtue and grace. The Fenghuang also symbolizes the union of yin and yang... In some traditions it appears in good times but hides during times of trouble, while in other traditions it appeared only to mark the beginning of a new era."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenghuang

"Both male and female birds can sing the sweetest melody in the five Chinese harmonic notes, and it is said that their tune was the basis for the Chinese musical scale"
http://www.avians.net/paragon/fenghuang.htm

I've been kinda redesigning the character. First, I'm tinkering around with the colors. Instead of a red and orange, it'd be a more red-orange-yellow gradient. And instead of being a phoenix-gryphon, it'd be more of a phoenix proper, but maybe with gryphon ancestry, just so the body structure can stay the same :P. And then instead of a regular gryphon/lion's tail, its tail would be long and feathery, with lots and lots of colors, representing a fiery sunset! Also, I want to change the character to be androgynous, as legends say there can be only one at a time, and that the Fenghuang is the union of male and female (let's just interpret that as "halfway between"), also asexual, since it reproduces on its own. The character is soft and fuzzy, but also has the ability to set itself on fire (naturally) and extinguish itself as needed. Also want to change the name ever so slightly, to Zoharim. It's the plural of the Hebrew "zohar", which means bright, brilliant, light, glow, radiance, etc. One source translates it as "sparkling". Interesting. Might adjust it later, who knows.

http://www.furbuy.com/seller/Furducers.html
http://www.furbuy.com/seller/Furducers.html
http://www.furbuy.com/seller/Furducers.html

Also
http://www.furbuy.com/seller/Furducers.html

Just wanted to write this here so 1) I don't forget, and 2) people don't think I ran off with their money!

I owe the following people things!
-  tojo-the-thief a squid hat
-  zantal a custom hat
-  reveal a custom hat (don't worry, I took a picture of the concept art... and now that I'm home I don't have to worry about not having certain colors)

I'll probably take care of those tomorrow ... I should also probably post the other plushies I've completed recently.

I'm kinda considering doing projects for myself more, but I'm always open to entertaining the idea of commissions.

Yesterday was Athus's birthday, and I spent it hanging out with Sema at the BD shop. We came back from FC on Tuesday, and I took an extra day off as a "decompression day", which just so happened to be his birthday.

I really don't feel much in terms of emotions, so when this whole thing happened 3 months ago, I only really felt numb for a couple of days. Within a week or two I felt "okay"-ish. The only real feeling I had was guilt that I was not as outwardly expressive as other people. I don't miss Athus any less, I just am incapable of feeling or understanding the correct emotions.

Right after it happened, I did go through my own sort of grieving process by making that plushie for his mom. It seemed cathartic enough to help put it all behind me, but after last night, I feel like I'm right back where I started.

Seeing how upset everyone was yesterday just reopened that wound that I thought was scarring over. I was thinking about it on the ride home last night, and I described it to Sema as "a shelf".

You know how some people "put their feelings in a box" or a "closet"? I put all of my painful emotions on a shelf. Everything I experience is in plain view in my mind, but over time, as I let them sit there, they gather dust and cobwebs, and slowly become irrelevant or faded. Sometimes I put too much on the shelf and it collapses. However, last night was something different: the shelf was dusted- it's as if I had just put it there yesterday.

I was in kind of a funk/haze all last night, and this morning that emotional numbness came back that happened right after this all started. Sema explained to me that it meant that I had never "dealt with" the loss, just ignored it.

But I just don't understand, what am I supposed to do? Emotions are completely foreign to me due to my AS (superpowers), so the only thing I know TO do is work around it like an obstacle on a go-kart track- every time I come across it, all I have to do is dodge.

What do "normal" people do? Maybe this is something I'm going to have to bring up in therapy tomorrow. :/
(crossposted to livejournal)

Since I started college in 2003, I've kept kind of an "audio log" of songs that catch my ear from time to time. After a while, it serves as milestones. I can look back and remember what things were going on when I hear a certain song. I've been slowly compiling my list all year, and now that it's almost over, this should be the final version for now...

01. Watch Out!! part.2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2au.....eature=related
02. Vermillion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwCj.....eature=related
-- Still picking out my favorites from the Beatmania IIDX 18 soundtrack, nice stuff to listen to in January/Feb, colder weather, having intermittent difficulty with work.

03. Little Boxes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2lGkEU4Xs
-- Watched WAY too much "Weeds" earlier on in the year.

04. 9000 Miles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8PWsI4sRJU
-- Found this mixed in to a D&B set I heard play over DI.FM.

05. Kailua http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=354wKq1ivlM
-- More IIDX 18, and warmer weather.

06. Pierce The Sky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUvQm1zc2Bc
07. Roppongi Evolved ver.D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RctXxjNDk_k
08. Possession http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AAR8c8s7_4
-- This was about the time we went on our cruise to Mexico in April

09. D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H44XhGIZ5og
10. Fading Day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2FZb2AjWrg
-- Reminds me of the anticipation leading up to Anthrocon

11. Just Hold On (to all fighters) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMdXg5GYWRA
12. Session 9 -Chronicles- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l-g99qWwNM
-- Songs I'd listen to to get pumped up before Dealer's Den would open in the morning

13. Turii -panta rhei- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHOkSgSMJKU
14. Not Eternity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYOZVh3lt8Q
-- Songs I'd listen to while working all night in the zoo

15. Interlude (Concourse A) - note: can't find this one
16. Bad Maniacs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNiTp88Ebs
-- What I listened to on the way home that afternoon...

17. Labyrinth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIIDo7YitmY
-- All I could hear while I drove to the hospital that night...

18. Moonlight Shadow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt8d3Shlfrg
-- Part of my grieving process was sewing his plushie while listening to Mike Oldfield for hours on end

19. Blue Rondo a la Turk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc34Uj8wlmE
-- Heard this playing while watching movies at their house. That rhythm is very catchy.

20. Butterfly Dragon (Empty Eyes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAQ56_dfOfY
-- The wake.

21. Assault of the Silver Dragons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6OV6B6_X4
-- Moving past sorrow to find the strength to continue and persevere

22. Chimera http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_Dbhfp8YPY
-- From our trip to Dave and Busters, lol pump it up

23. Cansei de S Nik http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNzutT_aRDE
-- Finally managed to listen to this around MFF time, and it's actually somewhat catchy

24. I'm So Happy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3U_PDGSsv0
25. Super Highway (Munich Mix) - note: can't find this one
-- Christmas time!

26. Overture from Tron Legacy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8OE.....eature=related
-- Heard this in a mix over DI.FM as the finale, and boy did I forget about this movie's soundtrack, dang.

HEY YOU
YEAH YOU
LOOKING FOR SOME PLUSHIES?
TAREN IS OPEN FOR COMMISSIONS!
(Couldn't resist poking fun at all of those silly FA banner ads that all follow the exact same formula.)

I think I'm ready to take on some orders for custom plushies! At the moment I have one "body style" available, but I've shown that I can make slight changes for different species (longer nose, add claws/wings, horns, etc...) So if you're interested in a quadrupedal/feral plush, I'm up for it!

- $75 base price. May increase based on complexity, $100 maximum.
- $5 off your order if you would like to pick yours up at FC 2012! <3
- Includes Priority shipping within the US.
- International shipping available, contact me for details.
- Payment is required up front. I prefer payment in full, but if you want to do some sort of payment plan, that's fine, just ask :)

What I'll need:
- Reference pictures! The more the better. Something that captures your character from as many angles as possible. It's a full body design, remember!
- A description of what you're looking for. I tend to work from reference art, so if there's anything you need to clarify/point out, make sure to point it out or I might miss it.
- Love!

If you're interested, contact me at furducers@gmail.com! (No FA notes, please, those tend to get lost/forgotten.)