Information about the rates, accomodations and guidelines for persons interested in purchasing space in the dealer's room at Midwest FurFest has been made available online. All the necessary information can be found on the Dealer's Information Page. The necessary forms (the Dealer Application, Registration Form and Dealer Agreement) are available online in PDF and MSWord formats. The convention does request that any dealer-related correspondence be mailed to dealers@furfest.org and not the main MFF mailing address.

A test version of FurryMUCK running on Fuzzball FB6 is being made available for users for the interim while FurryMUCK proper awaits new lines. This is not a permanent version of FurryMUCK: any changes made to this database will not be preserved when connectivity is restored to FurryMUCK's site. Site uptime is not guaranteed, due to Californian rolling blackouts and the fact that this IS a test server and may crash occasionally.

You may connect to it at the IP address:


209.237.26.136 8888

Or by hostname:


furry.com 8888.

ConiFur has updated its web site with registration and hotel information, as well as links to subscribe to an announcement mailing list and a chat mailing list. Click "Read More" to read the latest announcement from the Convention Chairperson.

The Cyantian Chronicles has expanded once again with the completion of the last Satin & Silk arc.

FurryMuck is indeed up, but their temporary lines are being overwhelmed by addicted muckers. No folks, FurryMuck cannot be run on much less than a dedicated T1 or equivalent. :-) Read below for a couple of updates from the site admin, S'A'Alis.

Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's guides, has died at 49 of a heart attack. More information at the BBC. Hope he's confusing the heck out of the angels in Heaven right now with his crazy stories.

Fans of FurryMuck have noticed that it's been unavailable. Apparently, Furry's DSL provider went out of business and took both of Furry's lines with it. For now, FurryMuck is at a temporary IP address and port, 12.37.14.197 8888. Two new DSL lines have already been ordered.

I received the following email from the FurBid administration account:

The May 3 episode of the TV show "ER" had a sub-plot involving two stereotypical furry fans. Alt.fan.furry is up in arms about this, though to me it seemed no worse than the kind of treatment Trekkies or goths usually get on TV shows. If you missed the episode, Pressed Fur has put up RealVideo clips of the furry-related sections in their new 'Fiction' section, and has a pretty good synopsis of those parts of the show.

Rigel on FurryMuck posted the following: Anthrocon 2001 is almost here! If you are a costumer, plan to attend Anthrocon 2001, and would like to participate in the Masquerade, here is what you should do:

This article at CNN is a neat read. Evidentally, last Thursday, May 3rd, the National Zoo welcomed the one millionth visitor to their new giant panda exhibit. Some intriguing facts are peppered throughout the article, including just how we convinced China to loan us the pandas. I, for one, didn't even know it was a loan...

If you're an artist who follows alt.fan.furry or yerf.yap semi-regularly, you've probably already seen this. However, if you haven't, you might want to take a peek at the Artists' Rant Board forum which was opened by Rebecca Gallant, an artist who works in the fantasy (including Furry) and wildlife genres of art. The forum has some tools which appear to be quite interesting, even to the non-artistic. There are areas for peer critiquing, tips and techniques, commission discussion and much more. While not exclusively "furry" this forum does support the fantasy genre as a whole, and the artist who opened the forum definately has done a number of "furry" works.

Here we go again. Yahoo News has an article titled 'Group Celebrates 'Furry' Lifestyle'. I didn't find it very informative -- it was short and felt stilted. I guess, reading the context around it, that this article is actually an excerpt from a local Ohio TV station (Channel 5) report on fursuiters.

Comic-Con International, the non-profit organization which sponsors San Diego Comic Con, the Alternate Press Expo, Pro-Con, and the Comic Book Expo, has entered into an agreement to acquire the comic convention WonderCon.

For those wondering about Furnetwork being down, it's back up, but partially. The front page is being hosted by YourHost.com, and all the user accounts are safe, if unaccessible. There's further news on the front page(www.furnetwork.net). Full service is expected to be restored before the end of the month.