Unofficial Desert Bus Challenges Conversation Thread OF DOOM

[MrPayneTrayne]

I look forward to seeing how it works out.

And to anyone who feels hurt by the way the challenges are being administered, just....work with daddy on this one.

[Drdiggit42]

Worst case scenario they go back to the old way or try something different. I do think adding filters on the busing end of things may make it easier, but that's not necessary and you guys are busy.

[Jamfalcon]

I just want to throw in some support for the new system — as someone who doesn't have much at all to be giving, I'm looking forward to the chance to suggest a challenge or two that will be fun, but I wouldn't have wanted to put forward $20 - $50 for, and then possibly missed seeing it. Obviously I'll still be donating if the challenge is performed, but I'll feel better about putting in $10 here and there if I know other people are going to be donating for challenges they like.

[Lord Hosk]

OK, so
if they match last year, they bus for 6 days 6 hours meaning they will make the final crash at 3 A.M. PST Friday November 19th.

If they follow the insanity line they have established through 5 years of awesomeness. They will raise $422,550 which will put them at 6 days 8 hours meaning they will final crash at 5 A.M PST Friday November 19th

8AM Eastern, Noon London, 11PM Sydney (if my math is right)

[Phailhammer]

If they bus for that long, they finish on the 23rd, not the 19th.

[Lord Chrusher]

Also, for algebra I had to write a word problem to solve with a linear equation.

The table below is the amount raised for the children by driving a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas in 5 consecutive years.

1. 22,805
2. 70,423
3. 140,449
4. 208,250
5. 383,125

Write a equation in standard form and find what will be raised in Year 7.

BTW, you raised too much money last year, you should have only raised $329708, DB5 is a aberrational data point, screws up the math

While it is the simplest function (other than a constant value) that you can fit, a linear function may not be the best fit. The next simplest fit is a power law:

y = a x^b

I have fit both a linear function and a power law to the data from previous years:



Using the RMS (root mean squared difference) as a goodness of fit, the power law function is a much better fit (an RMS of $15 648 versus an RMS of $33 224 for the linear function). Using the power law I predict that Desert Bus VI: Desert Bus III in America with raise $536 917. The crew would have to bus for 6 days and 11 hours, ending at 8 am Friday in the Moonbase, 4 pm in London and 3 am Saturday in Melbourne.

[Yaxley]

I do think adding filters on the busing end of things may make it easier

I had to read this three times before I realized you weren't substituting "busing" for a swear.

Also, good to hear about the promotional materials. I had been meaning to ask about that. I look forward to postering the walls where I work.

[Lord Hosk]

While it is the simplest function (other than a constant value) that you can fit, a linear function may not be the best fit. The next simplest fit is a power law:

y = a x^b

I have fit both a linear function and a power law to the data from previous years:

The problem with a Power law function is that you quickly hit infinity with stuff so I didnt do the math on it, which had I done (which I have now) it doesnt really take that jump within the realistic window, its out past 40 years.

Also desert bus 11 we bus for 7 days... and buy the children over a million dollars worth of toys and games.

[LadySephiroth]

In response to the end of the video ... why was the start time changed to 9 PM PST? For us east coast bussers, that makes it start at midnight I will nap if I have to but ... i won't be able to watch as much of feed as I want to ... I hate to miss cool stuff, and I want to see as much of the zanyness as I can ...for the CHILDREN!

We're sorry about the start time being not as good for you and your neighbours out on the east coast - we realized that would be an unfortunate side affect of this start time change. However, hopefully it won't mean that you get to see any less of the feed overall, maybe just a bit less at the start. And it might let some of our viewers in places like Europe see more of the start than they've ever been able to before.

There were a few different considerations behind the time change, but one of the big ones concerned our end time. When the end of Desert Bus will happen is always guesswork, but we made some educated guesses based on previous years. We're hoping that pushing back the start time will actually mean that many more people are able to be around to watch the very end of the run. We'll see how it goes obviously, but we wanted to give this a try.

As I say, there were some other considerations, some of them tied to things you don't know about just yet, but that was one of the big ones.

Tally, that's awesome, thank you for replying! I wasn't able to make it to the final busdown last year because it was too late ... if this means I get to see the end I'm cool with it!

[PlasmaCow]

For the UK that moves the start from 3am (4am Europe) to 6am (7am Europe).
Obviously though the start is just a small part of the whole, but it's always nice to be there when things get going - not sure I'll personally manage waking for 6am though.

As for the new challenges setup, unless you're fairly regular with reseting the system, like every 2-3 hours or something, you're still likely to run into the whole "are they still around to see the challenge they requested" problem, even if getting them to pay there-and-then is no longer an issue.

[Lord Chrusher]

Will there be a listing of completed challenges? This is something that could be done on the wiki in the absence of an official system.

One thing that could be useful is to keep track of events as they happen on the wiki.

[Lord Hosk]

Is Emperor Kool going to be at DB again this year?

[Yaxley]

If this year is going to be recorded like last year, then being around for the challenge won't be the biggest deal. I mean sure, live is better, but you'll still be able to see your challenge eventually.

[Lord Hosk]

If the archive comes out a little sooner I will dedicate myself to cataloging it over the Christmas break. I think Fugiman was upset about the format of the archive last year and there was a lot of work to convert it to something viewable.

If they say "name of challenger" "Challenge" before each one it will be very simple.

[Fugiman]

Last year the stream recording was FLV with embedded MOOV-atoms. Kroze promised to convert it all and release a torrent.

At the end of May, I gave up waiting for Kroze and uploaded all the raw footage to YouTube (DesertBusArchive account), which handled the conversion for me. Then I downloaded the mp4's that YouTube so nicely provides, renamed the files, and created a torrent.

So yes, finding out a way to convert it took a while, but once I realized YouTube could handle it the actual process was easy. I don't know what the recording plan is this year, but I'll try to ensure a raw torrent is out before Christmas.

[AdmiralMemo]

Will there be a listing of completed challenges? This is something that could be done on the wiki in the absence of an official system.

One thing that could be useful is to keep track of events as they happen on the wiki.

And if there is a list, official or not, we will also need to put in a list of how many times certain challenges are done. e.g. Caramelldansen X 5, etc

[Myrph]

For the UK that moves the start from 3am (4am Europe) to 6am (7am Europe).
Obviously though the start is just a small part of the whole, but it's always nice to be there when things get going - not sure I'll personally manage waking for 6am though.

I may have calculated it wrong, but I worked it out to be starting at 5am, not 6 in the UK, it being PST to GMT since by that time both of us will be out of daylight savings. Feel free to correct me if I've messed up somewhere though.

[Lord Chrusher]

It should be 5 am in the UK. There is an eight hour difference between the UK and the west coast of North America when both are on standard time or both on daylight savings.

[PlasmaCow]

yeah, maths fail.
but yeah, 5am, definitely not happening - unless of course I'm just back in from a long night out at the pub or something.

[Kapol]

Also, I'm a big fan of the idea of having a number of checkboxes for who the challenge is for when submitting challenges. This will (hopefully) provide a way to filter out challenges that the group can't do because people aren't there while getting to more challenges even faster.

[Lancer]

I do think adding filters on the busing end of things may make it easier

I had to read this three times before I realized you weren't substituting "busing" for a swear.

Oh, you still want a "filter" when there's "busing" going on...
*wonk*

[JustAName]

I need to start putting flyers everywhere! [/impatient]

[Graham]

So yes, finding out a way to convert it took a while, but once I realized YouTube could handle it the actual process was easy. I don't know what the recording plan is this year, but I'll try to ensure a raw torrent is out before Christmas.

Don't forget the whole thing gets recorded on Twitch.

Also, we're planning to use Twitch's "highlight" function to... well, to highlight good clips as we go.

[Kirkygirl]

You never know when someone might get clubbed.
-Kirkygirl

[Geoff_B]

You are more than likely to know who that someone will be though *coughAlexcough*