Are you going to Further Confusion 2015?
Yes!

Where will you be?
I won't have a dealer table or anything, so I'll be hanging out anywhere I can find well-lit tables for drawing, although that's usually a rare commodity at this convention. This probably means the Creators Lounge during daylight hours, and the Artist Alley area after business hours. As always, I'm eager to do sketch trades, or even just doodle weird porno in people's books!

What crew do you run with?
Not actually too sure this year, since a lot of my usuals aren't able to make it this year (inlcuding  guppy, booo). So instead I'll be attaching myself to whatever groups of like-minded artists I can find.

What panels/events are you attending?
The only one I know for sure right now is the Charity Poker Tournament. There still doesn't seem to be an Adult Moose Panel, for whatever reason.

Is there an alcoholic beverage named after you that I can try?
Yes! A few blocks north on Market from the convention center, there's a bar called Da Kine Island Grill. As well as truly lethal tiki drinks, they brew a couple beers in house, including "Nani Wheat", a weissbier with notes of tropical fruit. I can only assume they're such big fans of mine that they somehow skried my favorite style of beer and named it after me, because otherwise that'd be like a HUGE coincidence.

I've got a week off work here between Christmas and the New Year, and no real plans on what to do with that time... so obviously I should be drawing furry porn!

Go ahead and pitch me some picture ideas. Is there some character of mine you want to see more of? Some character of yours that would work well in my style? Some particular position or fetish you'd like to see me tackle? Some show character deserving Rule 34? Just leave a comment on this journal, or send me a private note. I'll take a few that get my interest and see what I can make of 'em.

Clip Studio has started doing that pausing thing again. This behavior that I can find absolutely no one else reporting anywhere on the Googles has somehow followed me through a full OS wipe and reinstall.

Here are the symptoms again, and if anybody can scrounge up any leads I can follow, I would be SUPER STOKED to hear them:

- Every now and then, CSP pauses all input. There are usually 2 or 3 bursts of pauses in a row, where all input stops for a couple seconds.

- These pauses are sporadic. They seem to happen about every half hour, but sometimes more, and sometimes less.

- They can happen when I'm using the Wacom, or the mouse. Doesn't matter.

- They don't happen in Paint Tool SAI, Photoshop, or any other program.

- I've tried shutting down all other software while I draw, it still happens.

- I've tried adjusting the task priority for CSP to High, still happens.

- There is a burst of activity in the "Ethernet" pane of the Windows Task Manager Performance graph that corresponds to these pauses.

- Despite this spike above, I've never been able to catch a corresponding event in the Network activity table in the Resource Monitor, where it can tell you what program is sending/receiving how much data. (Maybe there's a packet sniffer or something that can catch this better?)

- I've done several full scans for malware on my system with various products (Ad-Aware, Windows Defender, etc) and found nothing.

- These pauses do not happen on my laptop, which has much of the same software stuff on it, and is MUCH lower spec (slower processor, slower graphics, less memory, etc).

I got an account on that new Furry Network site:

https://beta.furrynetwork.com/nanimoose/

Ahaha, I'm not leaving FA or anything, but I do like to try out these other sites. So this is the one that was set up by some of the Bad Dragon guys, I guess? It certainly seems to be more focused on the social aspect of things, so I dunno how well that's gonna jive with me.

And yeah, I've been pretty slow with the arts lately. I'm still having that occasional pausing problem in Clip Studio, which is really unpleasant and makes me not want to use that program.. and of course now that I have used CS, Sai is feeling a bit too limited. So... meh. :P

There are three cons coming up that are local to me that I plan on going to:

This weekend it's a new furry con, Pacific Anthro Weekend: http://pacanthro.org/

In early December, there's GaymerX, an alternative-sexuality gaming convention: http://gaymerx.com/

And of course there's FC in January: http://www.furtherconfusion.org/

So that PAW con kind of snuck up, I haven't really heard any of the local furs talking about it. In fact there was more buzz for the fundraiser they did last year than for the con itself this year. Very odd. Still, might as well check it out. Hopefully they'll have a decent drawing/hangout room, it shouldn't be hard to have one better than FC's. :P

GX used to be in San Francisco proper, in Japan town. Now it'll be in the same space on the side of the convention hall that FC uses. It'll be interesting to see how that works out.

As usual, if you catch me, I'd be happy to doodle some porn in your sketchbook... Ha, well maybe not so openly at GX, but certainly at the furry cons!

I'm having some odd issues with Clip Studio on my desktop here.

Every now and then, while I'm in the middle of drawing something, everything will just... stop... for a couple seconds. And then start moving again. It's just enough to completely throw me off my flow. The frequency it happens at can be anywhere from about once every half hour to ALL THE FUCKING TIME. It's so frustrating.

This doesn't happen in other paint programs (Sai, Photoshop, etc), so it's not a system-wide problem.

This can happen weather I'm using the pen or the mouse, so it's not a Wacom problem.

This doesn't happen on my much lower-spec laptop, so it's not a resource problem.

Anybody have an idea what could be going on here? I'm flummoxed. :T

Hey kid. Yeah, you! Do you wanna do some folders?

All the cool kids are meticulously organizing their galleries into folders. Maybe you could fit in with the popular crowd once you reference every image in your whole gallery by character, so people could find a comprehensive list of pictures of that strap-on fox girl. And you certainly don't want to be the last guy on the block not to have dedicated categories like Rule 34 Art or Games and Interactive Stuff, do you? And imagine bearing the shame of not having an easily-accessible index of those talking dick comics you did years ago!

Yeah, there you go. Now just sit back and ride that sweet obsessive-compulsive high.

Hey, any artists out there use Clip Studio Paint? What do you think of it?

http://www.clipstudio.net/en

I downloaded the demo and was playing around with it.. Of course the demo is so hobbled that all of the interesting features are disabled. I'm especially interested in the tools they have for editing lines after-the-fact, like cleaning up intersections and moving with pinch.

I'm pretty impressed with it nonetheless. I'm pretty clumsy with it, but that's just unfamiliarity, I think. It certainly has a lot of features (even among the scant few that are unlocked) that my Paint Tool Sai lacks.

I actually had tried to purchase this from the site linked above, but when I submitted the order it just came back with a blank webpage. I've checked my credit card activity and my email, and it doesn't look like they've charged me or anything.. I notice that this program is also being sold over at Amazon, but the publisher is different (SmithMicro rather than Celsys).

So how about it? What have furry artists been producing with this software? Is the EX upgrade worth the extra cash?

Hey, Bad Dragon.

Popsicle molds. Like these things, but based on your existing dragon dick models.

Get on it.

Hey, people going to Biggest Little Fur Con! Have you seen That Map of the space? it's twice as large as last year. And the dealer room has moved from a dozen or so spots on one side of the room to its own Huge Room with a good 70 tables, plus an adult-only dealer area. That's fuggen awesome!!

I don't have a dealer table, but you should usually be able to find me at a public table in the common area or quiet room. Feel free to throw a sketchbook at me (please do not literally throw your sketchbook at me) and I'll doodle you up some porns!

I also plan to sign up for the GSR's Poker Tournament on Saturday at 11AM. I did this last year and got third place!

I'm so excited for this con. Why is it not Friday already!!!

I am a go for BLFC next month! I'll be hanging around the common tables a bunch looking for art trades and such. I'll also be hitting some of the poker tables!

So before the introduction of a sidebar caused the universe to explode, I was messing around with some ideas about using GLSL (a thing that lets a web browser to use the system's 3D graphics card) for displaying art. This allows for super SUPER smooth panning and zooming. Check it out here:

http://nanimoose.furryhome.com/glsl-viewer.php
(NSFW art, of course -- also a click-through adult content warning page)

As far as that sidebar is concerned.. Yeah, that's just a fundamentally bad decision. I don't mind it where it is when you're looking at an image that would fit in the reduced space.. but for larger images, it physically shrinks them to make room for this thing. And then it takes up (but doesn't use) a big chunk of horizontal space all the way down the page. That's simply unacceptable.

Is FurAffinity not first and foremost supposed to be an art gallery site? Making less physical room for the art is really showing where this site's priorities lie now.

I've got an update to my Nani race mod that's compatible with the latest stable Starbound beta, Upbeat Giraffe:

http://nanimoose.furryhome.com/moosebound.php

All the items have been rejiggered to fit the new game structure, and there's a custom ship AI and a bunch of stuff!

For a few years now, I've had this Photoshop process for cleaning up sketches. I've tried to describe this process before, but it's still a long, manual, convoluted process. This year, I decided it was just too tedious and there had to be a better way.

So, leading up to (and during, and following) this year's FC, I've been working on a web application that automates this sketch cleanup process as much as possible. It's now done! The batch of sketches from FC2015 in my scraps folder were all processed by this tool.

So here it is:
http://nanimoose.furryhome.com/sketchcleaner/
(Demo image NSFW due to exposed moose tits)
(Also this works best with an up-to-date desktop version of Chrome)

It operates in four steps:
1. Upload: Drag and drop an image file to be processed
2. Perspective: Tools to compensate for camera angle distortion
3. Crop: Trim away extraneous area
4. Clean: Identify points in the image where plain white paper can be seen; the app then uses this to extract the linework from the paper.

There's more detailed instructions and a sample image to play around with there at the site. Let me know if any artists out there find this thing useful!

Yep, I'll be at FC as usual! I'll probably spend most of my time in that "creator's lounge" area. I'm always up for sketchbook trades, and usually up for just doing doodles for free! So feel free to throw sketchbooks at me! (but don't literally throw them)

I'll be wearing my Big Vinyl Badge and carrying my DS and sketchbooks that are Branded, so I should be pretty easy to spot. I'll also be checking FA when I can, so feel free to use comments or notes to get in contact if you can't find me there.

I plan to enter the charity poker tournament, and hopefully I'll remember that this is the type of poker where the clothes stay on.

There's a new interesting place to eat a few blocks north of the con, the San Pedro Market Square, which is like a food court for San Jose dot-com hipster foodies. It's pretty rockin', if you can ignore all the dot-com hipsters that hang out there! There's a lot of types of food available, and it's all pretty damn good. There's even a place that does a mighty fine Poutine!

My personal website was down for a few days... I wasn't too concerned about the art archive being down (since most of it can be found here and elsewhere) but it did mean that my poker games and such were completely offline. It's all back online now! There's even a SUPER SECRET new GirlNani pic there, just for site visitors.

http://nanimoose.furryhome.com/

My site there is running on donated space on a server  guppy owns, which in turn is sitting on donated bandwidth from a friend of ours who runs a bunch of hosting stuff out of his house. It was a mini-tower linux box taking (relatively) dainty sips from his massive bandwidth pipe, just sitting unattended in his garage for years on end. Eventually enough dust collected in its power supply that it stopped putting out power, so last weekend Gup and I came by to collect that dead PC. This thing was OLD, much older than we remembered. AMD Athlon, USB1, floppy drive, serial port, and that weird old game/MIDI port. And dust, many years' worth of dust through it, end to end.

The new server is one of those Zbox mini-PCs. It's much smaller, uses less power (from an external, fanless, DUST-PROOF power supply), bigger/faster hard drive, and of course it can run circles around that old Athlon. So hopefully we'll be running smooth until that thing looks similarly ancient!

If anybody happened to try to go to my website last night while the server was being brought up, they'd have first seen Guppy's bluefurry.com showing up in its place, and then "PERMISSION DENIED", and then my site's raw code instead of its output. But now it's all working, at least as far as I can tell!

I've been putting together a new PC, so I've been reinstalling all my software. I saw there was a new version of the Sai English Pack that I always use (the fanmade one from Destwo), and downloaded it... and up pops this obvious crapware installer that riddles my system with shit before I manage to kill it! I just spent all morning cleaning up its mess.

I'm really surprised and annoyed by this. I've been using this English Pack for years and years, and to see them do this.. It's just sad. Fortunately I had the old reliable installer in the files salvaged from my last PC, so I am at least up and running with my old usual version again.


On another note, it's been many years since I put together my last PC. More than the speed of booting from an SSD or the power of a modern CPU, I'm struck by how SILENT everything is now. With my old PC, you turn it on, and all the fans (case fans, power supply fan, CPU fan, GPU fan) start going at full blast. It was like the solid, reassuring banshee scream of a turbine engine. Now, fans are all "smart" and don't spin up more than they need to to do their job. I can't even hear it! It's eerie.

It's been about 24 hours since I released Strip Texas Holdem Poker. The game has, of course, been a dirty little snitch about how you all play it, so let's look at some statistics!

http://nanimoose.furryhome.com/holdem/stats.php
(those are live statistics, so the numbers there may not mesh with what I've observed now as time marches on)
(also you can click on the stat bars to turn data filters on and off)

First of all, it's been played about 1500 times in its first day, and the majority of games are actually played to completion and not abandoned. That's exceeded my expectations and makes me so happy.

Of the games that are completed, the win rate is about 12%. If it were truly random who of the six players wins, the win rate would be more like 17% (1/6). This means that my AI is posing some challenge, but is certainly not impossible to beat, which is exactly what it's intended to do.

For character choice, I'm surprised to see that newcomer Blackheart is the favorite (20.39%), edging out Pai Gow's favorite Raz (19.77%), and other newcomer Buck is in a distant third place (15.43%).


Speaking of statistics, do you wonder how the AI decides weather certain pocket cards are worth going in on or not? It turned out to be really hard to find odds calculations for the various card combinations for a variable number of opponents, so I made my own:

http://nanimoose.furryhome.com/stuf.....kerVsStats.gif

In this graph, the two cards are on the two axis, so there's a diagonal line for the pocket-pair cards. Anything above/right of that line is off-suit, and anything below/left is suited. Suits aren't differently valued in the game, so it doesn't really matter what the suits are, just if they match or not.

In that animated GIF you can see how the odds change as players are added, and the rarer matches become more probable. The most obvious example is Flushes; With 2 players, there's hardly an advantage to playing suited cards... but when you get up to 6 players, the advantage is staggering!

You can also see the tool I made to get these probability statistics:
http://nanimoose.furryhome.com/holdem/prob.html
This just brute-forces random games as fast as it can. The statistics start out pretty noisy, but after a while the law of averages kicks in. The longer you let it run, the more accurate the results are.

This raffle is closed! The original post and replies will remain here, but no new winners will be picked.

---

Please read this entire journal before responding! Especially the "RULES" section!!

It's been a few years and a few false starts, but I'm finally holding my second big free art raffle! Much like the last one, I'm looking for your characters to be paired up with my characters for me to draw doing the business.

To enter, reply to this journal (or Note me if you don't want to be public about it) and include the following information:

1. Write "Yours:" followed by the name (or general description, if unnamed) of one of my characters. Literally any of 'em! If you're not familiar with them, the regulars' character sheets are linked up near the top of my user page.

2. Write "Mine:" and the name of one of your own characters, or your fursona.

3. Link up some sort of depiction or description of your character. If you've got a character sheet or some piece of art that shows the character close to how you like it, that would be best! Otherwise, link up (don't write it out in the reply please!) a text description of the character.


RULES:

A. Adults only! Not 18 or over? Not eligible.

B. Don't stuff the ballot box! One entry per person. Don't use shadow accounts or other dumb tricks. Violators will be violated.

C. You don't get to set restrictions! I decide what the sexual situation will be. I'm not looking to be purposefully offensive, but the drawing may take one or two steps over into funny or weird territory, like my art often does. If you're not comfortable with your character getting drawn doing the sorts of situations I draw, don't enter. Also, don't expect all of these to be full color digital drawings. I' may also belt out a few pencil sketches since I'm trying to get some much-needed practice in on that sort of thing.

D. I reserve the right to remove entries from the pool for any reason at all! For example: "I've drawn you free art before." Or: "Your pregnant spearmint-themed brony centaur frightens me, and I don't want to draw it."

E. I also reserve the right to play favorites! I will be choosing some entries at random, but others I may pick if the character pairing is just something I'd really like to draw.

F. This is an open-ended raffle! I don't know how many of these I will do. I can't promise I'll do these at a fast pace, either (especially once we're past the weekend). I will stop when I feel like stopping.

G. Most importantly, Have fun! Don't assume you're going to be picked, and don't whine if you aren't. Just sit back and enjoy the porno.

I didn't go to AnthroCon. But all the cool kids are doing post-AC journals and I didn't want to be left out. I am considering going to MFF later this year, though.

But hey, my birthday is this Friday! And I have a gift for all of you! On my birthday, you can go into just about any 7-11 and get a free small Slurpee! This has everything to do with my gracious benevolence, and nothing at all to do with my birthday falling on 7/11.

The original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbzUTRAUac4

The remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQgQDK0RqGo

You're welcome.

So I just got back from BLFC in Reno and posted some of the sketches I did, they're over in Scraps. This con was kind of a big deal con for me, so I've got some thoughts to get off my chest.

- The Drive

This year the con was a bit earlier in the year than last year. I drive to Reno from farther west, which meant going over Donner Pass during snow season. I was a bit anxious about this beforehand, but it turned out to be no big deal. It was storming up there pretty bad, but they had crews out there keeping the road clean, and I didn't need to put on chains or anything. Anyway, I was prepared -- I had two other people along just in case the pass lived up to its namesake.

- Throwing Money Around

This time around I had set up a thing on my phone to keep track of all the money I lost and won on the casino floor. I didn't keep track of that last year, and lost more than I care to calculate. But this year I was in the black for slots (basically did three pulls at the big fishing-themed one they had, won fifty bucks, and ran away) and a bit in the red for Pai Gow poker (two net-positive outings and one negative).

I also entered one of the daily Texas Holdem poker tournaments (my first real tournament ever, actually) and got third place. There were a bunch of other furries playing in that one (Sargon, Vendra, Nuke, Double O Fox). Between the 3rd place prize and the 4 bounties I collected for knocking out other players, I was up about $150 or so there. Which I promptly blew on my next Holdem outing on a regular no-limit table. But still, doing so well in my first tournament was an incredible rush.

So all in all, I came out about even! Can't complain about that.

- Competition

A venue the size of the GSR is much too large for a single convention at a time. I remember last year we shared space with a rabbit breeding convention (large groups of actual rabbits smell far worse than furries) and a huge Cinco de Mayo carnival that took up half the parking lot. I actually came back to the GSR between that con and this one, and it happened to be hosting both a crossdressing competition and a rockabilly convention, complete with muscle car racing. That's right, drag queens and drag racing, all in the same place! It was magical.

This year, the only problems I had with other attendees was Sunday night, when a Worldwide Panic concert took place. This is a jam band from Georgia, kind of in the vein of Phish or the Grateful Dead, so their followers are this special blend of country hick and stoner hippie (hickpies? green-necks?). It was fine until the concert let out, and then this tidal wave of ultra-stoners blocked up all the elevators for an hour or two.

- Oh Yeah, Furries

I did spend a good amount of time down in the con area, too. I probably should have table-hopped more than I did, but I did get some good doodles done. I like how this con is laid out physically, all the bits of it are attached and in the same area. I'm curious to see official attendance statistics, but I'd say it's about twice the size as the one last year.

BLFC has quickly become my favorite brand of furry convention. I really like the feel and the venue, and the upstairs gaming room can't be beat.

No, seriously. They've factored in all sorts of odds. You mathematically can't beat it.

I see some people already making journals about Biggest Little Fur Con even tho it's still more than a month away.. But that's fine, since there's still enough time to make arrangements if you decide you wanna go! I went to BLFC last year, and it was the most fun I've had at a furry con for a long time. It's in one of those casino/resort things, so the rooms are generally quite cheap compared with the usual con hotels. But then you can blow all the money you saved on the casino floor!

My one complaint about the GSR is that their poker room is really small and run-down compared with other casinos in the area (at least it was last year). But that's okay, because if you wanna go play poker, you can go to any other casino in the area! The Peppermill had the best poker room, of the ones I saw.

Anyway, let's get through these dumbass meme questions.

How do I get a hold of you?
Shout really loud! Oh, I guess I will have my cel on me and I'll be checking email and FA notes periodically.

Dealing?
No.

Marketplace?
No.

Art Show?
No.

Fursuiting?
No.

Well okay, Consuela, where will you be?
They set up some tables for a zoo or creators lounge type area, I'll generally be there if I'm not busy somewhere else. If you catch me there, I'll probably doodle up some smut for you if you ask!

Boundaries?
No donkey punching.

Drink?
Yes! Faggy rum drinks for me, please.

Casino?
Yes! I want to spend some time pokering, both Pai Gow and Texas Holdem.

Naughty times?
What, like... you want a sign-up sheet or something here? Way to not make furries look like sluts, question on a con meme.

How will I know if you need to be left alone?
I will physically push you away.

Can we hang out?
Yes, unless I physically push you away.

Can I pre-order a badge/art thing?
No.

So this place seems like it had fun while I was out at FC! Let's clear some things up.

No, I'm not leaving FurAffinity.

Yes, like every other furry artist in the universe, I am going to start keeping an active Weasyl account. https://www.weasyl.com/~nanimoose

While I was at FC, I happened to run into two of FA's new coders PR team (so new that I don't see them listed on the Staff page, so I'm not going to call them out by name). We had a good long chat about various things about the site, and it's given me some hope about the direction this site will be taking -- primarily that there IS a direction and not just more of the feature quagmire we've been stuck in for the past half decade.

I don't really want to get too deep into THE ISSUE, so let me just say this. It seems like I've always been at odds to some degree with the staff here on FA. I've had submissions disappear, I've had my favorite icon banned. But it doesn't matter. I'm not here for the staff. I'm here for you guys.

Oh, and the porn. I'm here for that, too.

So a couple weeks back I was down in LA for vacation and went to the Getty museum. I bought an expensive 2014 calendar there, this wonderful oversized thing featuring those wildly inaccurate maps from the early days of transatlantic navigation. I opened it just now, and indeed the reproductions of these maps are beautifully done and very, very large on the page -- so large that they didn't leave any room for the actual calendar itself. No grid of days, just tightly-packed columns of numbers. It is quite useless as a calendar, where I usually mark up days with stuff. So instead I'm hanging up a calendar that a hardware store sent me for free.

This might be for the best anyway, since this hardware calendar is an unparalleled work of fine Bad Art. It's from Zoro Tools, who (if you take a gander at the bottom corner of their website) have some sort of badly-drawn cartoon fox guy as a mascot. So for this calendar, they've got some hastily-assembled Fursuit hanging out awkwardly with hardware people using hardware products.

Look at it. Look at the legs that bunch up at the ankles like oversized sweatpants. Look at that plastic, soulless, wall-eyed stare. And look at that poor woman! Look at the resignation on her face. How much would she have given to be absolutely anywhere else at that exact moment?

Want more? Here he is trying to insert himself into a scientists' social circle. They apparently have given up trying to spurn him away and instead are doing their best to ignore him and shut him out behind their backs. Here he is at the Zoro Tools reception desk, finally throwing his hands up in defeat and admitting he has no fucking idea what he's doing.

Oh yes, my friends. This is going directly up on my wall first thing tomorrow.

Guys. Guys. GUYS.

I just got my ten-thousandth watcher here on FA. That number is boggling my mind! I can't thank all of you enough, you are awesome.

(watcher number 10000 was  kokkinos, if you're curious)

I really, totally want to do one of those free art raffle things to celebrate. But I also really, totally don't have time to do it right now. Hopefully soon! After Christmas maybe? Or after FC?? I'll let you know.

Also, shortly before the downtime I set up an account over at SoFurry. I'm not jumping the FA ship or anything, it's just an alternate place where I post art. So the next time FA explodes, that's where I can be found.