Hey so Stokes has a facebook page now - if you like Stokes you should totally make sure facebook knows about it so that they can advertise Stokes themed t-shirts and Stokes themed adventure holidays to you.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stoke.....27234380661622

How gay is this? On a scale of 1-100 I'd put it at "I don't give a shit".

well done to  ravenfoxx you win with 54. what do you want me to draw?

everyone else: sucks to be you.

(Ember and Palaeo you were both out by less than 10 and I like you both so maybe I will draw you guys something too idk we'll see)

i'm going on holiday for a week. guess how many emails are in my inbox when i get home and i'll draw you a picture in ms paint or something.

Make me want to vomit.

if you want a website please ask me. i will do it cheap because i really need a portfolio more than i need money (but i would like a little bit of money anyway).

Do any of you like these things:
- Alternative/Indie Music
- Bicycles
- Comics
- Dressing up as animals
- Enjoying cups of tea
- Fotography
- Going to the woods at stupid times of the day/year
- Hanging out with old people who wear wigs and write poetry
- Imagining what the world would be like if ghosts and time travel existed
- Jam-making
- Kettling protesters
- Listing things that begin with each letter of the alphabet
- Meat-free cookery
- Not spending money/not buying things
- Orienteering
- Productivity blogs
- QUILTBAG
- Radical proposals
- Songwriting
- Travelling
- Unemployment
- Volunteering
- Weaving large bamboo fences
- Xylophones
- Yiff
- Zebras

Let me know in the comments if you like any of these things
let me know if you like other things too.

I guess if you don't like these things then that makes me pretty lame in your eyes (if you have eyes). Oh well!

sorry that should say "MAKING"

gonna be a massive faggot and making a dinosaur tail. probably using the money my dad gave me to buy a car or some shit (I would never ever want to drive in Southampton, it seems like murder).

Anyway the thought I had was to make it pretty much straight except for the end part with the thagomizers on, which will curls up a little it

probably will forgo shoving a coat hanger or whatever in it, if it needs some stiffness I could always add that in later i guess idk?

gonna have all the trimmings - osteoderms and thagomisers etc

Probably will use short fur for the actual tail bit (because I like fluffiness)

I guess I should build a prototype or something first? I have these awful curtains I want to get rid of (actually they belong to my landlord but I'm basically doing him a favour cutting them up).

Idk really where to go with this all. some of you are fursuit builders aren't you? What do you think of my idea anyway and what would you do next?

The Internet turns your thoughts into a product that ISPs can then sell on to others as entertainment. You are a commodity and you're just funding the system that turned you into one.

Don't you think that's a shame?
(I don't.)

Now I can work on my SUPER SECRET MUSIC PROJECT that needs a name.

Basically it's a userscript for Chrome that creates, on FA, a "persistent media player" with a "playlist feature". That means as you browse FA for music (as I often do) you can just queue up tracks and have them play through without having to have a hundred tabs open (as i often do) and without having to wait for a song to finish, close the tab, find the next tab, scroll down, press play, and go back to what you were doing before.

Well anyway, it needs a name. Any ideas? Puns are highly effective in names, though obviously I don't want to restrictive so all suggestions welcome.

Also I'm just wondering if any of you would be interested in using such a feature (and what browser you use if you are).

Nicked from  shins

Rules:
1. If you want one, you have to offer 10 free sketches yourself in a journal like this.
2. Only 10 sketches,nothing extremely complicated and with references.
3. A character each sketch, no group sketch, because that would just be abusing the system.

I will take my time on these. No rushing.

Bear in mind that what you get will probably be made in MS paint (though I guess I could write you a song if you have an interesting enough idea).


1.  shirokuroi
2.  emberofthephoenix
3.  arrodynamic
4.  intensebamboo

And I think we'll finish there.

I May Cut Off My Hair.

they are dreadlocks

I think it looks messy, it is a bit nasty to lie on when I go to sleep, it takes ages to dry after a shower, I am sure there are probably things living in there and I think it looks messy.

Now some people (most/all people I've asked actually) are saying "DON'T DO IT, YOUR HAIR IS SO COOL!" which makes me want to keep them, though in a way THAT makes me want to get rid of them. I don't want to be some guy that everybody knows and likes just because he has cool hair.

More than anything I want to get past the whole "I don't know what to do with my hair" period. And if I cut it off then I won't have to worry about it.

I've sort of semi-promised to do it to raise money for Comic Relief (but I did use the word "maybe" so I can still go back).

What the hell should I do?

Srsly.

What should I spend my £55 on?

If you have ever wondered what it looks like when a bee does a wee, please click here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bee_Squirt.gif

If there was an Open Art specification, the most important issue to tackle would be to get multiple websites to take it up as a site feature. Many furry art websites are run by small teams of people with little time on their hands, and even many of the more complex ones are able to do little else but focus on the most important features of their sites.

For these reasons, any Open Art specification should have a very simple and easy-to-implement entry level that is based on the fundamental tasks of any art website. On top of this, optional levels of features can be added that, whilst being perhaps more complex, make inter-site-operability more rich.

Watching
One of the most fundamental features of nearly all art websites is that of following or watching a particular artist. The standard scenario is that a watcher makes a subscription to an artist, and when an artist publishes a work or a journal the watcher receives a notification.

In an open system, the PubSubHubbub draft specification is ideal for this situation. The idea is that a server known as a "hub" is responsible for retrieving a feed from the artist's server, working out which items are new, and sending the updates to the watcher's server.

Assuming that a hub and a watcher server already exists, all an art website will need to do is create an Atom or RSS feed for its artists' work (which is fairly simple to do and may already be in place) that has an extra field indicating which hub handles its subscriptions, and ping the hub when there is a new update.



The PubSubHubbub draft specification can be found here: http://pubsubhubbub.googlecode.com/.....-core-0.3.html

There are problems with staying here. There are problems with moving.

If I take a room full of furries and say to them: "Regardless of userbase, which is the best furry art website?" I would get as many different answers as there are art sites.

I think the best thing for the community is an open protocol. For so many reasons.

Users
One of the reasons people tend to stick to this site is that it's ever. so. big. Home to many of the most popular artists, and doubtlessly contains the vast majority of any one person's friends. Move away and you risk losing that. And when you're in a community but can't communicate with people? Well it doesn't work.

But with an open protocol system that wouldn't matter. All the sites using it know how to communicate with each other, so as long as you and your friends or idols are on sites that fall under this umbrella it doesn't matter where you go.

Choice
So now that you don't have to worry about that you have way more choice. Want to use a site that has emphasis on clean art? A particular fetish? New talent? Music? No problem, there is unlimited scope. If it doesn't already exist, someone will come up with it.

Competition
So with users flowing around more freely between different sites, the competition starts to get more fair. If your site has usability or security issues you will need to put the time and effort into fixing that, or some other site will come and eclipse you.

Security
In the horrible event that one particular site gets compromised, at least it won't have the potential to affect as many people as if all data was centralised. And with tighter competition security will be higher on the agenda too.

Redundancy
Users no longer have to sign up to multiple sites. Artists no longer have to upload the same artwork multiple times to different places.


I honestly think it is in the community's interest to seriously consider this option.

What say you?

Things We Can Learn
- Don't trust hobby websites to keep your personal or private information safe.
- If you run a popular website, make sure you've got well-thought-out procedures in place for when its security is inevitably breached.
- There is no substitute for proper, decent planning.

Things We Will Learn
- Nothing.

At a point the head kissed my skin, almost as if to say sorry, before turning up the flesh to continue its journey. The laceration was briefly neat, as a line of smoke is when the wind momentarily holds its breath. Pressing onwards, the arrow forged a path through my body - parting tissue, ligament and muscle - twisting diligently as it went until it met bone, like china. An explosion, and one million pieces scattered and burried themselves in places they were never meant to be, startling nerves into sending one million agonising cries of "Help!".
Yet through the blood and pain and anger I couldn't help but marvel at the bowman's outstanding aim.

Hey guys, I'm recording some awful music!
One song per day for the duration of the advent period. If you've got any theme suggestions/requests then let me know and i will be happy to try and do them!

The songs are going to be on my Soundcloud page
http://soundcloud.com/music-from-a-tiny-island

The best ones may appear on my FA page at some point.

The End of the Silent Cartoon
The mid to late twenties started the death of silent cartoons. Sound on film was a realistic possibility and potentially provided audiences with a completely different way to experience a film.

Of course, the animation houses of the day wanted to use sound to its maximum strengths, and what better way to do this than invoking the complex and bewitching powers of music?

Many studios created series initially based on this concept, with names such as Merrie Melodies and Silly Symphonies - and probably most notably Looney Tunes, which ran to the end of the sixties and is still hugely popular today.

Talkartoons
I want to share with you some gems from the Talkartoon series, produced by Max Fleisher's Fleischer Studios. This is the series that birthed the household icon Betty Boop, though originally she wasn't meant to be the star of the show. I've been watching some of the series, hosted on Archive.org, and many of the cartoons are still funny and entertaining even today. A lot of them feature some absolutely fantastic music too.

Here are a couple of my favourites:

1. Old Man Of The Mountain, of which I love the sound track, http://www.archive.org/details/bb_o.....f_the_mountain

2. Be Human, because it's about animals and you're furries
http://www.archive.org/details/bb_be_human
(Also the bit with the cow cracked me up)

I haven't watched them all by a long shot, if you want to see them they're hosted here: http://bibi.org/2006/05/betty_boop_cartoons/ (to watch them online you'll need to click the "download" link)

I'd love to know some of your favourites!

Step One
New Stokes
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4568760/

Step Two
New Paul
I looked into the mirror this morning. Well, I usually do but I don't ever stop to really see what's there. I don't know what it was, why that morning was different, but I did it anyway.

It was strange. It was like there was this picture of me in my head that didn't match up with what I was seeing in the reflection. It was like playing cards using a foreign deck: you know the bells are just diamonds and the acorns do look a little similar to clubs, but the game still feels strange and new and a little bit wrong.

The stubble on my chin, the faint clusters of freckles here and there - I mean I'm not mental, I know they're there. But I suppose it's not important enough to remember visually. But even my dreadlocked Medusa hair, in my mind's eye, was still a river of perfectly combed and conditioned bronze (in reality I don't think it was ever quite that perfect).

The most shocking thing is my nose. The bulbous coin-shaped deformity on my bridge; the family curse. It's not huge. Really and truly I wonder if it's even noticeable from a normal approach. Which is a shame because it means I have to find another reference point to fixate on for self-deprecation purposes.

Else people will think I'm not normal.

Crazy, beautiful Russian animation from the 80s.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCvQaQ7xRN4
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1IQTKbnnds

MUTABOR

The next picerature I draw will be a gift for my brother, and as I am a furfag I thought it's probably best to draw an animal.
SO WHICH ONE?
Don't just be boring and suggest your own species please, suggest something different and a bit interesting.

Now for some reason I've started collecting (read: not throwing away) National Rail tickets. I have a pile of them about inch high, and I'm at a loss for what to do with them. I've already taken 52 and started to turn them into playing cards but there are still a lot left - I estimate nearly a hundred - that are full of potential but sadly empty of purpose.

If all else fails I'm just going to start doodling on them, one per day.

What I ask of you beautiful and dynamic people is that you suggest either: (i) cool things I could do with them; or (ii) some random nouns for me to draw on them.

You have ∞ minutes to complete this exam. You may turn over your papers... now.

Turns out the ones with the lights and huge teeth are always the females!

How The Male Angler Fish Gets Completely Screwed:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler

Did any of you read the poem that came with that submission I posted? I did hide it a little bit.






Also: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3780907 <3