ANTHRO: Whodunnit, and how

The staff

   Anthro’s editor in chief, aka ‘tyrannical overlord’ (or is that the other way around?), is a lifelong devotee of science fiction, comicbooks, roleplaying games, and overall geekitude named Quentin Long. His website Quentin’s List is an online resource for writers who would like to hone their skills, and he creates posters and T-shirts under the working name Graphic Descriptions. In addition, Long co-edited the bimonthly webzine TSAT (main and mirror sites; online forum; and mall) from #19 (Dec. 2001/Jan. 2002) to #48, its final issue. Of particular note, for the furry community, is the fact that TSAT was a twice-a-year fixture in the Recommended Anthropomorphics List, appearing in the categories Best Short Fiction, Best Novel, and/or Best Fanzine.
   Born and raised within bicycling distance of the San Andreas Fault, Long is one Californian who does not surf; thinks that ‘New Age’ ought to rhyme with ‘sewage’; and does not approve of the irrationality in which far too many of his countrymen indulge—among other things, see also: the alleged ‘scientific theory’ of Intelligent Design Creationism. Long writes his own biographical sketches.

Behold the face of Bard!   In Anthro’s first six issues, Long was ably aided and abetted by faithful minion associate editor Michæl W. Bard, who is currently more of an emeritus-type figure. Bard is a gent from Torontoon—sorry, ‘Toronto, ON’—who shares Long’s tropisms for science fiction, comicbooks, roleplaying games, and overall geekitude. It is unclear whose puns, Bard’s or Long’s, are the worst; best not to allow either of them the opportunity, if at all possible.
   Bard paints little figurines for a living (see also: the award-winning Deep Strike). He was also co-editor of the webzine TSAT (main and mirror sites; online forum; and mall), and has done since the bloodless coup d’etat in which Bard and Long deposed TSAT’s reactionary, running-dog founding regime, Messrs. Jeffrey Mahr & Co.
   Given the enormity of Bard’s intrinsic evil—he once worked tech support for Microsoft—it is unclear how this… person… has managed to retain citizenship in as civilized a nation as Canada. Bard thinks he writes his own biographical sketches.


The tools

   Each issue of Anthro is lovingly assembled, by Long, on a ‘Pismo’ model G3 PowerBook (500-mHz G3, 1 GB RAM, MacOS 9.2.2), using Adobe GoLive 5.0 for HTMLish stuff and Adobe Photoshop 6.0 for all things graphical. Once it’s done (for a suitably inclusive value of ‘done’), Panic Software’s Transmit 1.6 is the app with which Long uploads all files to Anthro’s host server.
   The Anthro house font is ITC Avant Garde Bold. Long uses this typeface straight for titles, and he Photoshops the bejeezus out of it for (zine, column, and other) logos.


The ‘Easter eggs’

   Each clickable link in Anthro is set up so that when the mouse is over that link, it displays a description of its target in your browser’s statusline. This is a JavaScript thing, so if it doesn’t work on your machine, the first thing to do is check your browser’s Preferences to make sure that JavaScript is active. Those of you who are FireFox users have to do a bit more than that: From the Tools menu, select Options, then go to Web Features; Enable JavaScript; Advanced; and make sure the Change status bar text checkbox is… er… checked.
   In addition, we’ve got another JavaScript trick up our sleeves: The ‘A’ icon at the end of each page in the zine. Click on this icon, and it’ll bring up a small window which gives you the actual URL of whichever page it is. As with the ‘description of target’ thing, if this doesn’t work on your machine, make sure that JavaScript is active.


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