Happy Wednesday, my friends. Johnny here, tech lead of Desert Bus for Hope 6 with a special announcement. With the assistance of Steve “But wait, there’s more!” Dengler we are broadcasting DB6 in a much higher resolution this year. Using technology we have dubbed “High Denglervision™,” you will be able to watch all of the insanity in minute detail!

In order to properly test out our new equipment, and to give you a sneak peak, we will be broadcasting a tech rehearsal next Wednesday, November 14th at 4 PM (PST). The whole crew will be there to put the new gear through its paces. We really hope that you can join us to help make this years Desert Bus for Hope even better. Your feedback during the tech run is integral to its success. Thanks so much, see you on the 14th of November!

Hello everyone, and Happy Monday! We know that Mondays are not always generally joyful affairs, so to make yours better we have a shiny new website and some nifty announcements. May they brighten your day!

Our first announcement is that donations have gone live! So for those of you who just can’t wait to start causing us pain, you may now donate towards making us drive the Desert Bus for way. Too. Long. For the children, as always.

We also have many shiny new banners, buttons and posters that you can download, post and print to help us spread the word about the Desert Bus and build the anticipation. You can find all of those here.

And, to really help you start the week off right, here’s a word from Daddy Ashton about how you can prepare for and contribute to Desert Bus:

 

 

Stay tuned for many more exciting announcements coming later this week!

Alright, time to admit something. Challenges have gotten crazy at Desert Bus. Last year it was nearly impossible to get a challenge in, so this year we’re changing things up a little. Here’s how the new challenge system will work:

Desert Bus is just under a month away and the preparations for the event have swung into high gear. We already have a stunning array of crafts, prizes and other surprises, but we’re still working to try and make this year’s event even bigger and better.

The good news is, if your company wants to sponsor Desert Bus for Hope 6, there is still time! To find out how your business can get involved with this year’s run, please contact Kathleen De Vere and Kara McLachlan.

 

Hello Internet!

Today we have another very important PSA from Daddy Ashton. Know absolutely that we adore all of you, and are endlessly grateful for your incredible support. That said, it turns out there’s not actually a lot of room on the moon. And it kinda smells bad.

Here, we’ll let Daddy Ashton explain:

 

Hello Internet!

Today is a very exciting day, with a very exciting announcement! In fact, two very exciting announcements!

Announcement the first

We have an official start date for Desert Bus for Hope six. We will begin busing on Friday, November 16, 2012. We’ll see you all then! Well, you’ll see us. We will feel you are with us in spirit, and we’ll pretend we can see you. We’ll be pretending a lot of things by the end of that week, like that we’re still even remotely sane.

Announcement the second

Daddy Ashton is here to tell you about the Desert Bus 6 Craft-Along, and how you can be part of it. Please watch the video below for all the crucial details:

Watch for other important Daddy Ashton PSAs in days to come!

 

 

Well, it’s been almost a month since we started Desert Bus 5, and thanks to our wonderful new shipping system and incredibly dedicated volunteers, many people already have their prizes. However, delays are inevitable, especially with postage this time of year, so if you don’t have your stuff yet, don’t panic.

Q: I don’t have my Fangamer Desert Bus 5 Shirt yet.

A: Fangamer has shipped all the shirts. If they haven’t yet arrived they will soon. If you live outside of the North America, shipping may be slower.

Q: My giveaway/silent/live auction item has not arrived yet.

A: We have shipped almost everything, but we’re still waiting for shipping information for a couple of items. Please check the email you used to sign up for a donor account with and make sure our emails aren’t going into your spam filter. If you do wish to inquire about your items, email:

• prize at desertbus dot org AND cc kathleen at loadingreadyrun dot com
• include your name, address and a detailed description of what you won and the prize ID number if you know it.

Please note that if you live in the UK or Australia, it’s likely larger items will not arrive until January.

Q: I haven’t received my Desert Bus 5 poster yet.

A: That’s because we literally bought ALL the poster tubes our supplier had in stock and we still needed more, so we’re still waiting for a shipment. The posters will be sent out as soon as the mailing tubes arrive. Expect delivery early January for Canadian/American addresses, later for international.

Happy Holidays!

Hey all! Although only one of you won this, our last auction of DB5, I thought you might like to see what good and weird things ended up in the box of memories.

Now that Desert Bus is over, we understand that you may be feeling a little lost, uncertain of what to do with your time, or where to go on the internet. Well, we have a few suggestions for you.

 

Desert Bus videos:
Having learned from past years that we always end up being too busy to upload videos of all the crazy stuff that happens during Desert Bus, many of our viewers have taken it upon themselves to post Desert Bus videos to YouTube for all to watch, enjoy and qwop to. We greatly appreciate this! This year there are a few YouTube accounts in particular that have uploaded a huge number of videos, and which are linked below.

VGMarathonFan
Cawendaw
Gamingnerd 

 

Crafts:
One of our crafters has very kindly put together a list of all this year’s Craft-Along contributors who have blogs, websites, Etsy stores, Deviant Art pages or Flickr accounts, along with the links to those places. So if you’re interested in some of the work you saw in the Craft-Along, if you’d like to do a little handmade Christmas shopping, ask about commissions, admire more of their work or tell them how awesome they are, have a look through this list. And many thanks to crafter Helen Cowart for putting together this list!

 

Twitter

Nearly all of the Desert Bus crew are Twitter users, so you can keep track of their breakfast choices, favourite ponies and general shenanigans year round. And if you’re not already, you should certainly be following the Desert Bus Twitter feed.

Alex
Ashton
Graham
Ian 
James
Jeremy
Johnny
Kathleen
Matt
Tally

Many of the crew are, of course, also the folks behind LoadingReadyRun.com, the sketch comedy group that began Desert Bus for Hope. They have shows on the Escapist and PATV which you should check out. In addition, Tally writes a weekly crafting blog with a new craft idea and tutorial posted every Friday. Ian, Cori and Beej are members of sketch comedy troupe Synaptic Chaos Theatre, and also post numerous amusing podcasts, videos and panel shows at tiltyhouse.com. Alex is promoting his new collaborative graphic novel project, Shards, and Kathleen draws a daily webcomic called Things My Cat Hates.

 

Online Community

It can be hard to get back to the “real” world after Desert Bus, spending time with people who didn’t experience the week of madness and magic and can’t understand why you keep yelling “Africaaaaa!” every time the photocopier breaks down.

To help in your quest for kindred spirits, we encourage you to connect with all the other folks who commented on the Desert Bus Facebook page and Twitter accounts, as clearly you have at least one very important thing in common. The LoadingReadyRun forums are also a great place to hang out, full of very cool Desert Bus-loving folks. And, of course, the chat will likely remain populated and active for quite some time.

We’d also like to remind you that if you’d like your own little piece of Desert Bus, you have until December 1st to order a copy of Mike Lunsford’s amazing Desert Bus 5 commemorative poster. A portion of the proceeds will go to Mike, to pay this remarkable artist for his time and talent, and a portion will go to Child’s Play.

 

Thank You

We simply can’t say it enough times: thank you to each and every one of you who tuned in to Desert Bus this year. You made this remarkable experience possible at all, by watching, telling your friends, donating, participating in the chat, bidding on auctions, buying the awesome Fangamer Desert Bus t-shirts, and supporting Team Ashton (the right choice). We are forever grateful for your remarkable support. To all of you: well dong!

AAAAAAAAAAAAFFFFFRIIIIIIIICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

THANK YOU!