Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in GreenReaper's LiveJournal:

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Monday, November 30th, 2009
2:10 pm	Furry topics in Wikipedia offline release; others soon to be deleted Just over a year ago I mentioned on wikifur that WikiProject Furry had managed to sneak both furry fandom and furry convention into Version 0.7 of Wikipedia - the latest offline release of the wiki-based encyclopedia. This has finally been cleaned up and is being prepared for release (it's a little over 2GB). I derive far more enjoyment than is proper from the thought that children in developing countries are going to look up hobbies and get furry convention as the first hit. Kudos to the Lego and philately [stamp collecting] groups as well! For the curious, here's the ranking of topics by importance, and the criteria for ranking. This data is over a year old; its publication triggered reassessments and the removal of several articles that didn't really belong in the project (such as Rocko's Modern Life and CatDog). Coincidentally, we still have 110 articles due to the addition of other topics - though sadly a few, like Furrlough and Shanda_The_Panda, are likely to be deleted today or tomorrow for lack of third-party references. They will follow several other furry topics purged recently. The information within them is preserved on WikiFur, of course - it's greatly improved our articles on The Suburban Jungle and Newshounds - but it's still a shame. Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Friday, November 13th, 2009
4:17 pm	BBC News magazine investigates that "furry" thing Those within the fandom may already have heard about this, but for those who haven't . . . drop by BBC News and you should see a little something about furries there. It's not perfect, but the tone is appropriate, and the large proportion of quotes from those who know what they're talking about gives it a lot of value. Further reading: Marshall Woods - Ian Wolf - Kathy Gerbasi - Fred Patten (Wikipedia) - Mark Merlino - TaniDaReal Current Mood: pleased (Comment on this)
Friday, November 6th, 2009
7:12 pm	Being "a good person" A recent post made me think about something a friend once asked: whether I thought they were "a good person". To be honest, I didn't know them well enough to have a good answer; even now, I'm not sure it's my place to render an opinion. Hopefully they can judge for themselves how this would apply: ( What it means to be "a good person" ) Current Mood: thoughtful (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 30th, 2009
2:30 pm	Ride share to MFF? Anyone heading up to Midwest FurFest on Thursday evening, and - ideally - back on Monday (Sunday might work too)? Got free space and can swing by the Northville/Plymouth, Michigan area? I don't take up too much room, and I can pay for gas. :-) Edit: Found a ride - see you all there! Current Mood: hopeful (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
10:09 am	Anthrocon 2009 photographs My Anthrocon 2009 photos are now up. You can see them in a slideshow - though if you're not a fan of parade pictures or flags, you might want to skip to the end of it once you get to that point, as there are a lot of them. Honestly, there are no shots that jumped out at me as super-awesome this year. The event itself was a lot of fun, though! Current Mood: cheerful (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
9:09 pm	GitHub discriminates against non-humans At a suggestion from giza, I was looking into Git tonight, and thanks to a coincidental comment from Kakurady I happened across GitHub, an online repository-hosting service. Unfortunately, they appear to discriminate against non-humans in their terms of service. I guess devout furs, therianthropes and otherkin just have to host their own repositories . . . *grin* Current Mood: amused (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 9th, 2009
12:32 pm	SSL certificates just got cheaper I was interested to learn that StartSSL has been added to the Windows root certificate list. StartSSL offers free email and domain name SSL/TLS certificates, and low prices ($30 and $100 respectively) for corporate identity/code signing and Extended Validation (EV, "green bar") SSL/TLS certificates (Verisign wants $1500 for the latter). Some addresses cannot be used to sign up (notably Hotmail and Yahoo, but not Gmail), but you can issue certificates for them once you've passed initial authentication. This offers a new perspective on why Thawte is shutting down their Web of Trust initiative, which I've used in the past. The StartSSL root certificate is only distributed with Windows 7, but this may not be that much of a problem, as it's been provided in an optional update, and both Windows Vista and (I believe) Windows XP SP2 will automatically check back with Microsoft if presented with an unknown root certificate. Users can also get an update manually. Current Mood: curious (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 5th, 2009
2:47 am	I'll say this . . . Every time I visit ArtSpots, I wish I were more of an artist so I could get to see my stuff there. (I also think it'd be a neat way to grow the site if they let me upload art by other people into galleries reserved for them, and have those people approve it before it would appear publicly, but that's just me. :-) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
8:16 pm	Public Service Announcement: You run a con? We know who you are. If you run a charity or other tax-exempt organization in the USA - say, a large furry convention - don't be surprised when ( we know your real name . . . or where you live ) This does not apply to those normally termed "volunteers" by conventions, or even most "staff", only those with a direct hand in running the event's organizational body. (cross-posted to furoperations) Current Mood: determined (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
11:20 am	Reinventing search I'm not a huge fan of Yahoo (though they did send me a corkscrew set once), but I have to admit they're doing some pretty cool stuff with search. You can actually make your own plugins for results. Here's a shot from one I spent several hours cursing at whipped up last night: Yep, those are links to section headers, and a thumbnail, both using data extracted from furry art with XSLT and massaged with some PHP. The title and description are customizable, and you can add tags to display structured data. It's not perfect, but it's possible to do interesting stuff with it. Current Mood: curious (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
12:39 pm	I got (most of) my photos from RainFurrest 2009 (slideshow) up last night. Still have a backlog from other conventions this year, but at least that's one off my list. For the record, I had a good time. There are certainly worse ways to spend your birthday than being chased by zombies with tails. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
10:31 am	You are what your friends eat The New York Times has an interesting report on how your friends - and their friends - control your lifestyle to a surprising degree. Possible applications to fandom? Maybe we need to encourage the popufurs to lose weight, so we can too. :-) (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 5th, 2009
10:45 pm	You know you're a geek when you're poring over decade-old research on cache replacement policies and their implications for handling flash crowds for fun. :-) Of course, there are plenty of reasons to do it for profit, too. And a person who sounds like they could be talking about furries, but isn't: America has always been the land of self-invention, but lately that concept has been applied to the body in unprecedented ways. (Comment on this)
8:50 pm	Obama announces plans to expand savings credit Well this is interesting . . . looks like we might be getting changes to the retirement savings credit - in particular, expanding the range of those eligible. Possibly good news for those of us who already save, but are over the current limits in earnings. The auto-enrollment in IRAs probably isn't a bad idea, either, though it'd be interesting to know who was going to be involved in running them. (I imagine the Thrift Savings Plan might be involved.) Of course, the vacation days to 401k idea will encourage USAians to take even less time off work, which is unfortunate considering how little is taken (and given) already. (cross-posted from financial_furs) Current Mood: curious (Comment on this)
Monday, August 31st, 2009
2:27 pm	A good reason to bring your No. 2 pencil to Anthrocon next year For those who don't watch drg_kcgerbasi - Kathy recently released a significant piece of research - preliminary results for the survey taken at Anthrocon 2009. In case you don't know her, Dr. Gerbasi was the lead author of perhaps the only serious treatment of furry fandom in published academic literature so far, Furries from A to Z. While the findings she made are of great interest, it's a shame her team couldn't manage to get more people to take the survey this year due to last minute review-board issues - several noticeable statistical differences were at the borderline of significance. I suspect changes will be made for next year, and I urge everyone going to AC to take the survey (especially non-furries and female furries). I'm also eager to hear more of 2008's results, which were delayed due to data entry issues (outsourcing to your nephew is apparently a losing proposition). The few details about fursuit ownership/interest released at the debriefing this year were very interesting; it's a topic that hasn't been seriously considered, mostly because we didn't have a significant fursuit population until the last decade. (Cross-posted to anthrocon) Current Mood: excited (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
11:31 pm	End of an era WikiaFur is dead. All hail WikiFur! Current Mood: good (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
8:45 pm	4GB memory on 32-bit Windows? It can be done . . . Apparently the barrier that stops Windows Vista 32-bit from using all 4GB of memory is mostly a licensing issue. I tried the instructions in there about 3/4 of the way down for setting up a test kernel and they work beautifully for me. For reference, on Vista SP2 kernels the required offsets are 30C43A and 30C47B. If you don't know how to follow the instructions on the page, I suggest you don't do it. Your mileage and drivers may vary. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 24th, 2009
11:20 am	A non-surprising result So it turns out that shisha - the stuff you smoke with a hookah - is just as bad for you as cigarettes, if not more so. Which wasn't really a surprise, was it? I know some people out there in the fandom are fans of this, so please: don't smoke, period. I'd hate to lose anyone to brain damage or cancer, but probably not as much as you'd hate dying from it. Current Mood: blah (7 Comments |Comment on this)
2:32 am	Spent the night tidying up a few things on WikiFur, including selecting new featured content for the front page (with a little help from bogglerat). This year's move has been a pain, but it's nice to see it all coming together. The server's coping just fine with the increased traffic - it barely broke a sweat, despite bots hitting it over once a second for new (unrendered) pages. The APC cache really makes the difference between slow and super-fast there, although the new version of DynamicPageList with its own caching probably helped a bit, too. Time flies. I swear, the Upcoming Events section is four times as long as it was when we started . . . I'm pretty sure the timeline used to fit on one page, too. At least the map still does, though it's a stretch. Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
Friday, August 21st, 2009
11:09 am	Need a room for RainFurrest! Edit: I've found a room! See you all there. I've decided to celebrate my birthday at RainFurrest this year. It's my first event in the Pacific Northwest, so I hope to meet a lot of new friends - and perhaps catch up with some I know from afar who live in the area. Does anyone have a free room slot for Thursday night to Sunday/Monday? I'll be leaving on Sunday evening for a redeye flight back to Michigan. I can pay an equal share of the room fee - ideally just for the three nights, but I can cover the fourth if you're staying until Monday and can't find someone who needs the room just for that night. I'd like to stay with no more than four other people if possible. I don't mind sharing a bed (with male or female), or sleeping on the floor some nights. Fursuiters are fine - I like fursuits! :-) I'm a non-smoker, and I don't drink, but I don't mind those who do in moderation. I am registered for the convention. More information on WikiFur. Current Mood: hopeful (7 Comments |Comment on this)