it's the final busdown

From a letter I sent a friend explaining why I've spent the past seven days glued to an internet charity stream:

"We are in the last hour, formally declared, they are accepting no more bids, so they WILL end in another hour.

"Their total this year, btw?  Barring further merch sales, which from here will only be counted if it's merchandise specifically listed in support of Desert Bus, their total was $976,532.

Since writing that, by the way, ten minutes ago? Their total is now $977,938 for the year.

"To put that into perspective, in 2018 they raised $730,099.90, for 160 hours of fundraising, and in 2019, they made over 876K, buying 162 hours, and they were absolutely wrung out and weaving on their pins for that.

"*No one* expected that this year, the year they had to go virtual, and broadcast mainly from personal homes instead of being all in the same place, to raise this much. And I'm still astounded at another accomplishment, which they're not really fully considering: they took an event that is rigged totally to film, in several angles, one gathering room for performers during the run, and managed to hook up an insane variety of webcams, internet plans, data transfer and computer systems, to allow for the broadcast of both LRR performers in Canada, and special guests and additional volunteers worldwide, for seven days. And while yes, there were technical glitches, and signal shorts, and dropped signals, and problems with sound....they weren't using a system that had been in place for years prior. This was all new, begun in July or August, I believe, to get ready for the November event.

"So I'll be up from now, until they formally crash the bus, which is how they end the run every year, in about an hour, and then I'll go back to bed, reeling that this year has been so strange, so wonderful, and so bizarrely successful for the charity."

I was sure that I'd mentioned this more recently than 2013, but no, apparently that's the last time I spoke of it on the blog (with a mention before that one year earlier, and the first time I brought it up being all the way back in 2011). My Twitter feed largely tilts to Desert Bus mentions, and--barring the last two years, when I was boycotting Tumblr for the stupidity of their ban on adult content--my Tumblog is largely tilted to Desert bus mentions in November.

And I can't count the number of people I've told in Second Life about the charity, and how phenomenal I think it is. Because it really is. They've gone from a handful of people getting together in the basement of a friend's house, hoping to raise $10,000 for Child's Play, to now, I think fourteen years later? Where they've raised over seven million dollars lifetime in support of sick kids trapped in long-term care in hospitals.

Because that's all this is. That's all Child's Play does as a charity--they exist solely to help children get through one of the hardest experiences in any adult life, that they have to handle as children. And I'm so proud that they do.

This year brought us so many amazing things, but I'm only going to link a few that really stood out.

Graham Stark of Loading Ready Run explains what Desert Bus stands for.
The first intro, six days ago, for this year's Cloud Bus broadcast.
Jacob Burgess and others discuss how different this year feels.
Five days ago, Danny calls in, whose wish through the Make-a-Wish Foundation collapsed us all, because all he wanted to do with his was donate to other kids in need.
Alpha Flight's very 80s intro (the beginning of Alpha Flight was good, too, but that iteration was my favorite for the year).
Jacob Burgess wears the Very Nice Coat.
Alpha Flight's raccoon outro video.
The return of Teen Girls on the Street!
The first Night Watch News intro for the year, which introduced the Horrifying Eggplant.
Playing the Solo movie trailer but with the Star Wars Kinect dance-off music from the game. (For those who don't know, the Star Wars Kinect game had a dance mini-game, which was pretty much the goofiest thing ever, and Han Solo took part.)
Horrifying fun with Snapchat filters, featuring Graham, Jordan, Matt, Ian, and the cursed croissant himself, Ben.
The Smack Barm Pea Wet sandwich explanation, Part I and Part II.
The reading of 'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom', which eventually brought us Belopa, and a few days later, Laser Malena-Webber of the Doubleclicks' song tribute to Belopa.
Six days ago, Zeta's first shift.
Cam and Cori explain Blaseball.
Ashton has "fun" with Snapchat filters, and chat does not approve.
The worst Dump Truck ever: Trasure X Aliens edition.
Jacob Burgess names his appliances.
Danny's second appearance on the DB stream.
The return of Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa (first introduced at DB2019).
Reading of 'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom', featuring Belopa. (See also: the attack of the Fish with Faces.)
Beej reads auction descriptions after deliberately blurring his vision.
Second day of Zeta shift, and Cam is not prepared.
Jacob gives unrevokable permission for Zeta shift to eat anything he's made in Studio C.
Jacob's fantastic stretching advice.
The Garages perform live.
Discussing Belopa.
Alpha Flight outro part three: The Moose.
The Garages make a song for Jacob, "Eat the Bread".
Day Three Nightwatch News, Ben Drives edition.
Engineering starts a contest for the Shrine to Belopa.
Timothy Dalton reacts to one of the Auspicious Fish praising Belopa.
Rosewatta card readings.
The amazing live auction for the Star Trek prop replicas.
Jacob tells Zeta: Eat the Bread. (Bonus "Eat the Bread" video.)
Rosewatta card readings part II.
'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom' reading, day three.
Art Challenge entries for the Shrine of Belopa.
Cori becomes Gritty.
Dawn Guard intro, Hologram edition.
Mikey Neumann tells an Alan Rickman story.

Dawn Guard reads Rosewatta Stone cards.
Kathleen tries to explain Belopa.
Adventures in Snorsh tourism.
Alpha Flight outro: the Kangaroo.
Day Four of Night Watch News: Ben starts to slip.
Escape from the Sea Kingdom part IV.
Jennifer Belopez and Zeta Shift intro day four.
"Wheej" readds giveaway descriptions wearing a shirt over his head.
Failed art restorations.
Who are Maddy and Andy (DB2020 edition). (Bonus points for Andy singing Ride With Us.)

Andy reads the first recorded customer complaint.
Canadian mascots and the horror of Mr. Blobby.
Alpha Flight outro part five: the Manitoba Testicle Viper.
Night Watch News, the arrival of Benhattan.
'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom', part five.
Night Watch outro day five.
All is Belopa.
Alpha Flight intro day six.
The room reacts to baby Andy performing the Papers Please skit.
Jacob tells a story about his time in Poland.
Andy sings Tucson or Bust.
QWERPline: Quantum Distancing.
'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom' part six.
Beej sings 'When I Fall' from the Barenaked Ladies.
Last Alpha Flight intro.
Alpha Flight last outro: the Orca.
The final broadcast of Night Watch News, AKA "Is everything drugs"?
Ben sings This Year by the Mountain Goats
'Trapped in the Sea Kingdom' part seven.
The terrifying beginning of Omega shift.
Omega shares a video of why volunteers think Desert Bus is so important and chat breaks down.
The Sun returns to say hello to an auspicious fish.
Starting the final hour with Engineering playing with overlays.
The Final Busdown with all vocals out of synch).

Wau, that took way longer than I thought it would. Wanna know the really scary thing? This really is a short list--take seven full days times twenty-four and then put together a video strike team of 56 people to capture every moment into short videos to post to YouTube, and trust me--there's far more content up, for this year alone.

But that's Desert Bus, closed for another year. We'll see you--in some version--in 2021. Chat out.

but that's okay, because I know you'll eat the cultists like me first

Etienne Meneau has released a wine carafe shaped like oversized blood vessels. I'm impressed that each one holds a full-sized (750mL) bottle.

Wonder how it looks with rosé...

Oh, and Desert Bus for Hope 7 has launched! If you don't know anything about the craziness that is Desert Bus, here's a brief explanation: the cast of Loading Ready Run, in cooperation with the Child's Play charity, gets together members and friends to stay up as much as they can while playing the worst video game in existence. (There's no question on this; Desert Bus is universally acknowledged as the worst game to play, ever, mostly because it takes place in real time--to drive the bus for an hour of game time means you're driving the bus for one hour real time. And to gain one point, you have to drive to Tuscon from Las Vegas and back. Which takes twenty-four hours.) They also do skits, sing songs, and try to keep each other awake, and they broadcast all of this live. People watching can chime in with comments on live chat, suggestions of what to do, and make challenges--where they offer payment towards Child's Play if their challenge is completed on the air.


How'ver, I want to talk a bit about the LoveFest, the LoveCraft Festival, which this year benefits autism awareness. I will freely and openly acknowledge that I signed up to help with a build, and with the festival itself, and then got sick and basically flaked for two weeks prior to opening.


In fact, I was thinking seriously of just apologizing to the organizers, and withdrawing, but a random impulse saw me on the reserved plot, and once there, well, I had to do what I could.


While I don't normally identify people by name anymore, I have to give my great and humble thanks to Felice Nightfire, Sphynx Soleil, and mbeatrix, who helped me decorate, sink the land underneath the build for the basement level, and generally kept me going until it was done.


Without your help, gentle souls, trust me--the Shunned House build would not have seen the light of day.

And with that, I should tell you tomorrow is the last day of the festival, so hurry down!

It's an amazing set of builds, and a great group of vendors, and it benefits a wonderful charity.

Help if you can but do try to wander at least, because...it's very much in the spirit of Lovecraft.

they find it all, a different story

(from the Charity efforts album)

So...Desert Bus is this week!

(Ooh, sneaky blog, trying to unfix my fixes! Link works now.)

I've talked about this before, which still stands as a pretty good summation of why the Loading Ready Run crew does what they do, and why they play this silly thing, and why they stay up all hours to urge the internet to give them money--which they then turn over to every last dime to Child's Play. It's a great cause and a great charity and Desert Bus, every single year, stands as a monument to the care and craft and sincerity that geeks can bring to things that really matter to us.

How'ver--and tossing in a slight amount of the RL into this--for the past six weeks one of my loves has been in another state, in intensive physical therapy, learning to walk again. It's been hard, grueling work, but she's gone from being able to hold herself upright, using the parallel bars, assisted by a physical therapist, for one minute, to slowly walking with a walker, unassisted, for 750 steps (when last contacted).

It's not that this doesn't hurt her, or that her legs still aren't massively dysfunctional--because it does, and they are. Sooner or later, the degeneration in her spine will likely remove her ability to walk, ever. But the point of this is not to get her "normal"; the point is to give her the tools, and strengthen her body, so that she can push past the pain she needs to to help her live her life.

In addition, I've been trying to write to the daily word count for NaNoWriMo (I am dismally failing, btw), and--this week--trying to sort through massive amounts of collated recipes in magazines I've been saving and links online, for the things we want to bring for Thanksgiving with the family.

So...busy few weeks. Mostly spent traveling interstate and spending far too long on various buses and shuttles, and did I mention how that ties back in to Desert Bus?

It's a crazy, crazy week-plus on the internet. If you're interested in really fun charities, check them out. If you're not sure, check out Desert Bus' Flickr stream for photos (mostly this year), or if you're feeling really daring, check out Desert Bus' YouTube feed. (I would highly recommend the Snuggie Cultists or the Power Thirst commercial, among others.)

Or if you're really feeling daring, you can stop by my Tumblr, or hey, maybe a better option (because occasionally there is still NSFW content on my Tumblr, because reasons) is to go to Tumblr and search either "Desert Bus" or "Desert Bus for Hope". TONS of stuph will show up, much of it mine, but also other people, and if NONE of it convinces you to watch and cheer them on and toss them money, then obviously, this is Not Your Thing.

Which is okay, too, but seriously, every dime Desert Bus makes goes to support sick children. Which is a really good thing to do. And it proves the internet is actually a very caring and supportive place. (Which we need to hear more about, because usually we hear "the internet" and we think of rage-filled misogynists.)

So, that explains why I never got back to the whole Tony Harris teardown--I want to, I have the entry partially done, I have another two entries partially done, but travel+writing+Desert Bus has eaten my ability to blog.

southbound buses, Peter Pan, they left it up to us again

So, this week is my nigh-compulsory urging of family members, friends, and random strangers to tune in to the Loading Ready Run crew and their ongoing charity donation drive, Desert Bus for Hope. It's been going for five years now, raising money for Child's Play, which is a marvelous charity well worth supporting.

"We play the worst game ever made until people stop giving us money."
~ Graham Stark

If you don't know, Child's Play is a charity established in 2003, to directly support children in hospitals (long-term and short-term). Their figuring, specifically, was to support kids who aren't coming out of the hospital. The founders thought that they might as well talk to their gaming industry contacts, at the least, and see if they could get some videogames and a playable system donated to their local hospital, and from there it became an official charity.

At this point Child's Play is international, supports donations both to local hospitals directly and to the organization generally, and also takes stuff over money--in fact, as much as they want to keep the donations coming in, they've said if you have a pile of coloring books and crayons you want to give to a hospital, by all means, go do that.

In the meantime, here's a little more information on Desert Bus from Shamus Young--it's not really in-depth, but it has TONS of great links with more information on why the LRR cast plays Desert Bus, who made it, and what they're supporting that I haven't already mentioned.

Go. Give them money. Challenge them to wear strange hats. We move on.

I heard this morning that part of the confusion behind JIRA issues, and the whole vote/watch debate, is that concierge support staffers are telling people to vote over watching. I cannot adequately convey just how many brain cells screamed and died, hearing that. I am shocked to the depths of the person next to me, that's how baffled I am.

People. Lindens. Linden people. You CANNOT continue to tell people to do one thing, when YOU CHANGED YOUR OWN RULES so that doing that thing no longer matters. There are so many problems with this, but I just want to toss a few questions for my readers at large:

1. Concierge staffers: who's the one telling you to tell people to vote, not watch, for JIRA issues?
2. Lindens above the concierge support level: who's the one telling you to tell them to vote, not watch, for JIRA issues?
3. Any passing Lindens: how do we get you to STOP telling people to vote, not watch, for JIRA issues? Is there someone I can call? Can I hassle people? Should I respond to Linden tweets?

I'm dead serious, this has to change, guys. This is ridiculous and stupid, people. You're making the gaming industry look bad, stop it.

Random things to round this out 'cos I want to go back to pondering what to donate and when:

Artificial meat has been invented! Yes, it may look like pallid strips of scallops, but they're working on that. The scientific minds behind the process are pretty sure they can get it shelf-ready in a year.

Friend of mine tossed me pictures of the train cemetary in Bolivia. Apparently, the town that hosts this enigmatic thing is best known for vast salt flats, but it's also a major transport hub for the region, hence, the train cemetary, of the trains that came in and never left again. (I'm especially fond of Rebecca, but they're all cool.)

A new study has surfaced on 'hereafter' syndrome, which is the joke that when we enter a new room, we forget what we're "here after". Apparently, it's actually a thing. That thing being, passages into new rooms act in our brains like boundary events. So short-term memory closes off, and new buffer space is emptied, to allow for recognition of, and responses to, new information. In other words, walking through doorways really does make you forget things.

And finally, a new lighter-than-air metal alloy has been invented. There were already lighter-than-air constructed substances--they're called "aerogels"--but their composition makes for random configuration. Because of this lack of internal structure, aerogels are not very strong. This new substrate (a collection of hollow nickel-phosphorus tubes arranged into an organized lattice, with each tube being between 100 and 500 nanometers thick) not only compresses well, and bounces back to its original shape without damage, but is very, very strong.

I see space flight in this material's future. And they can bring along artificial meat! Yay!

and the threadless warning flags waved as though the wind was mad

Oh, my. We now have artificial mouse babies in the world. Well. Not artificial; let me not start off the ensuing controversy by taking a stand on the distinction between "real" and "synthesised" life--because, frankly, life being life, I don't see that there is one. But this definitely goes beyond cloning.

In more genetic news, lab researchers have synthesized a functioning sphincter. Yes, you heard me. Again using mouse cells--mice seem to be the new pigs on the block--they've created functional and adaptive natural constrictors that should have no rejection effects for those who...er...need replacements?

And from there, to...mysterious orange goo. That scientists can't identify yet. Which worries me. How can scientists get a great quantity of something they can identify as eggs, without knowing what kind of eggs?

Ware thee, the invasion starts in Alaska!

More on Google+ and the death of anonymity. Which contains a brief (and since deleted) use case of Google itself violating its own internal policies. How'ver, that led to this, which I believe answers many questions, including my main one:

MYTH: Not abiding by the Google+ common name policy can lead to wholesale suspension of one's entire Google account.

When an account is suspended for violating the Google+ common name standards, access to Gmail or other products that don’t require a Google+ profile are not removed. Please help get the word out: if your Google+ Profile is suspended for not using a common name, you won't be able to use Google services that require a Google+ Profile, but you'll still be able to use Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Blogger, and so on. (Of course there are other Google-wide policies (e.g. egregious spamming, illegal activity, etc) that do apply to all Google products, and violations of these policies could in fact lead to a Google-wide suspension.)

I am feeling much less unnerved and paranoid now.

Herbert F. Austin, Jr., has tracked down a great many archival photos, and has put them together into a draggable 360-degree presentation. The topic? Hiroshima, after the blast.

I also want to send your way a list of the thirty harshest filmmaker-on-filmmaker insults in history, which contains a link to the thirty harshest author-on-author insults in history.

I'm also happy to offer up another infographic--this one on typography, and what it means. I desperately want that as a poster.

I used to have a link for Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School on the sidebar (who knows, I may still), but now I'm happy to have Molly Crabapple, the founder of the Anti-Art School, releasing a set of 44 prints of reprobates (with a few virtuous souls thrown in for color, I suppose). They are all available for purchase.

Finally, there is financial drama over at the Escapist, which is sad, because they were becoming quite the polished production house for the smart and the funny. Still, signs were showing that the company was ailing when the folks behind the Escapist News Network, one of the online mag's flagship productions, moved to Penny Arcade's site and became Checkpoint.

There's more information here, but it's a tangle; I'm still working through it myself. But regardless, it's certainly sad to see.

why don't you give yourself a rest, oh give yourself some room

There's a fellow who's reproduced his entire house--on an 18:1 scale--in Minecraft. That takes an insane level of devotion, and also...insanity.

(from the bizarre album)

Yeah, so...sometimes we get steroid warriors in SL: champions of the more-muscles-means-hotter macho school of avatar creation, and seriously, a lot of SL--in terms of skins, shapes, and tattoos--are designed for these musclebound yahoos.

This is the first time I've seen the look on a fur, though.

(from the bizarre album)

But he poses well, doesn't he? (Thanks to Sphynx for capping the shots.)

And I am shocked and appalled, I say, SHOCKED and APPALLED that no one bought Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when it was listed on eBay recently. Even at that price. What's wrong with you? GO BUY THAT THING. Good gods, the steampunk street cred alone...

And...Tim Burton now has the rights to Dark Shadows. Oh gods.

First up, before you hit the link, what you need to know about the Daily Drop: Buncha geeks pick one object a day to drop from a measured height. This is then filmed.

That's it.

The Drop I want to draw attention to: Ted the Cat. YES YOU HEARD ME.

Trust me, you want to see this, it's not animal cruelty, and it's fascinating to watch. Plus it's only two minutes long! Go onnn...cleeek the leeenk....you know you want to.

Really. You do. Go. Now. We'll wait.

Back? More from the pit build in Minecraft.

(from the Minecrafting album)

I stayed in the earthen hut for a couple days, until I ran out of chest room--and had rebuilt the structure four times due to creeper attack.

(from the Minecrafting album)

A shot of the original construction, showing the full glass floor for the first level, the ladder on the wall leading down, and part of the all-cobble wallwork finished (we'd decided to use all sandstone only for level one; all levels beneath were fully cobblestone-lined.

(from the Minecrafting album)

Looking up at the glasswork of the two previous levels, starting on level three.

(from the Minecrafting album)

And Hank in the corner of the build, contemplating a better way up and down. A solid ladder all the way down one wall seemed cumbersome, somehow. So he worked out a better way.

(from the Minecrafting album)

While he did that, I was stuck with a Press 'I' for Inventory popup on the screen. It took me a few hours to figure out that, with the new update, I could only clear this message by going into singleplayer Minecraft.