Hey all, Graham here. I threw together a little video to help answer the eternal question from the uninitiated: “What is Desert Bus?” Please send this around to spread the word!
Hopefully this will address rumors that we are actually driving a real bus through the desert for some kind of quest of personal discovery. That’s for afterwards.
We’re all extremely excited to get started with Desert Bus 7. So excited, that we’re going to get the party started early with a pre-show the night before we begin!
Join us on Friday, November 15th from 6:30-8:00PM Pacific Time for a behind-the-scenes look at what makes Desert Bus For Hope tick plus live music from The Doubleclicks and Molly Lewis! More surprises and delights await, but only for those who tune in!
Then we will wish you a goodnight as visions of deserts dance in our heads. But don’t sleep in, because Desert Bus 7 is coming at you starting at 10:00 AM Pacific on Saturday, November 16th!
Start your countdowns now. We’ll see you here on Friday.
Photo credits: Doubleclicks – Jessie Kirk; Molly Lewis – Atom Moore
Also, you should check out this awesome video that The Doubleclicks made about Desert Bus
US Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/desert-bus-for-hope/id729313552?ls=1&mt=8
Please note: We made a mistake when we set the riders for our content warnings and it appears that they have defaulted to the maximum settings for each. They should be;
You will see these changes reflected in the next update of the app.
Tonight, you are invited to join Ashton, me and our new friend Louis for a tour of the Desert Bus for Hope iPhone app. Starting at 6:00 PM PST, we’ll give you a complete rundown of the app’s features, talk a bit about its development and answer any questions you might have about it. We’ll be streaming as a Google Hangout, so you can join in and participate through YouTube or Google Plus. I’ve embedded the video below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeK499RCwr4&feature=youtu.be
We’re really excited about the app, and anxious to show it off, even while it is still mired in Apple’s approval process. In case you can’t make it, we’ll also leave the archived video here for viewing at your leisure. So come out and get pumped for Desert Bus with us, or on your own time, if you prefer.
Also, be sure to focus all your latent psychic powers on turning this light from amber to green. Let’s get this app out of Apple’s hands and onto our phones ASAP. We cannot wait to let you use it.
Hello everyone! As you may have noticed, many of our prize listings have now gone live on the website. If you hadn’t noticed this yet, you’re going to want to stampede off to drool over all the pretty things now. Go ahead, we understand. We’ll wait.
————-
What did we tell you? SO many pretty things! We have roughly 300 prize lots this year to auction and giveaway. Not all of them are visible quite yet, this is just the start. There are more listings to come in the next few days, so keep coming back to the website to check for newly added items.
Schedules for live and silent auctions are also up, so feel free to start marking your calendars with the auction times you don’t want to miss. However, please note that until Desert Bus begins next Saturday, auction times are subject to change, so we recommend that you check back on Saturday morning to see whether any of the auctions you want to see or bid on have moved.
As before, in addition to our exciting live and silent auctions, we’ll be doing giveaways for donation drives, art challenges, writing contests and more, so stay tuned during the run for opportunities to win all kinds of amazing stuff! Our social media team also has a whole pile of sweet download codes for games and musical albums – they’ll be giving those away via our Twitter and Facebook feeds and the live chat.
————-
While our Prize Mistress Tally has been hard at work in the prize mines, she has not been going it alone. We’d like to say a big thank you to Heather Dery, Jess Bell and Mannie Ross for coming in on afternoons, evenings and weekends over the past month to help Tally get the prize mines sorted and ready for Desert Bus 7. These ladies have been an incredible help in getting our prize listings ready for your viewing pleasure!
Heather
Jess
Mannie
And a special thank you also to Lori Miller, who made us a fantastic prize mines hard hat. Safety first! Or at least second – the children are always first at Desert Bus, after all.
Hi folks, this is Jer, and today I’m happy to finally reveal the details of the so-called “Secret Desert Bus Project!”
Anyone who reads my Twitter should by now be familiar with the Secret Desert Bus Project, which has dominated my feed for most of the last couple months. In fact, it’s come dangerously close to being all I talk about period, as it has slowly grown to dominate the entirety of my waking life. Ashton and I, along with our new friend Louis Moga, have spent many long days and sleepless nights finishing a project that was probably over-ambitious from the start—and was certainly under the gun from a scheduling perspective since before it began. Even so, we have finally put the finishing touches on it, and I am happy to at last introduce you to Desert Bus for Hope for iPhone.
A little over two years ago, I hung up my silly sketch comedy hat to go back to school. As a result I spent most of the last two Desert Buses running between classes and trying to keep up with the total on my phone. What I really wanted was a tool that could appraise me of the situation at a glance, at any time. Since graduating and getting a job in the software industry, I’ve tried to take cues from what I’ve learned and design an app that provides as much of the Desert Bus experience as possible in mobile form.
You may remember Louis Moga as the Desert Bus fan who compiled last year’s Burma Shave archive. As it turns out, he’s also a fantastic software engineer, able to turn my designs into a very slick and functional app. Louis’s experience and technical prowess really knit the team together, and his hard work is probably the greatest determining factor in the quality of the app.
At a glance, the dashboard displays the current total and a graph showing the trajectory of the run so far. You can swipe the total to get other information, such as the amount needed for the next hour and the time driven so far. For more information, you can open the Stats & Graphs section to get access to more detailed stats, along with an interactive comparison graph, showing the team’s progress year-on-year.
We think it’s pretty impressive in and of itself, but it actually just scratches the surface of what the app can do. While there was a time that Desert Bus could be represented by just a blog and a total, our website eventually evolved to include challenges, prizes, a schedule and all manner of other details. To help us keep pace, the amazing “Daddy” Ashton Cummings put together a database that later became the spine of the present Desert Bus Website. For the Desert Bus App, Ashton has gone even further, fleshing out his out the website backend into a fully-featured API that allows us to do far more than just track totals.
In addition to donation totals, the app collects and collates all Desert Bus tweets and blog posts into a single feed, formatted for reading on-the-go. It contains the full schedule of everything at Desert Bus, complete with live auction details, event descriptions and guest bios. It lays bare the unlocked and known locked achievements for the run, and has complete stats for each driver. For donations, the app links to a simplified mobile donation interface designed for use in the living room, classroom or bathroom. Along with a complete listing of auctions and giveaways, it even has an interface for real-time bidding on silent auctions.
Those willing to sign up for a Desert Bus account will discover tools that track their personal donation, bid and challenge histories, and a form for challenge submissions to keep the crew on its toes.
All-in-all we’re super happy with the app, especially given how large and ambitious a project it is. We feel like we really shot the moon with this, and have done everything we can to ensure the best mobile Desert Bus experience we could imagine. If you have an iOS 6 or 7 device, please give the app a download and take it for a spin this Desert Bus: we think you’ll be glad you did.
There are two reasons I’ve waited as long as I have to announce the secret Desert Bus Project. The first is that secrets are fun, and I like surprises. The second, however, is not nearly as positive. As you read this, the Desert Bus app is making its way through Apple’s famously scary app approval process. This will take as long as it needs to, and could always end in failure. We have had an amazing crew of beta testers working day and night to ensure the app’s quality, but there is always the chance that it will be late, or not make Desert Bus at all.
I wanted to wait until I was certain that the app was coming out before announcing it and getting everybody excited, but at this point I’m resigned to the fact that we may not know for sure until the app actually launches out—which could be on or after the start of Desert Bus. I’m telling you about this now because I want you to know what we’ve been working on, since I’ve been teasing it for so long. I don’t think we could go another year without spilling the beans, so best to make a big announcement now instead of letting it slip out quietly later.
I do have some confidence we’ll make our release date.
Thank you all for your continued support in all things, and I look forward to seeing you all for Desert Bus next week!
Use this image as a background to create your cheevo-specific image. Click above to see the full-sized image.
An example icon for the Banhammer achievement
Another example icon. This one less hammery.
Are you fundraising for Desert Bus? We’d like to help.
If you are hosting a Desert Bus fundraiser, please contact Kara ([email protected]) with the details and we will happily post your fundraiser on our site, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
It’s a pretty simple equation: The more money you raise = the more money we raise = the more money goes towards helping sick kids. We think it’s a pretty good deal. So let us help to make your fundraiser the best that it can be.
After all, you make our fundraiser pretty awesome.
After a few all-too-short months of recovery time, the Desert Bus team is getting read to hit the road again! We’re planning lots of great stuff for this year, as always. And also as always, we need your help.
Submit to the Craft-Along:
One of the first things we announce at the start of each year’s preparations is the opening of the Craft-Along. Crafters, start your engines and imaginations, because the Craft-Along is now officially open! To find out how to participate in the Craft-Along, follow this link and read the instructions thoroughly, even if you’ve participated before. This year’s submission form is at the end of the page.
Some changes to note:
As well as an outline of all the usual guidelines, there are a couple of notable changes: the Craft-Along has a submission deadline for proposals this year – you must submit your proposed craft idea by August 1, 2013 in order to be considered. Also, this year we can only accept up to two items per crafter, so think hard about what you would most like to create!
And now, go forth, read the Craft-Along submission guidelines, send in your proposal, and get crafting for the children!
Hello Desert Bussers!
The Desert Bus 6 poster is now live at the LoadingReadyRun Store!
This year’s edition of the annual drawn-as-we-go limited edition poster was produced as the run went on by Michael Lunsford of the amazing Supernormal Step and includes such Desert Bus memories as Morgan’s mouth tentacle, the chocolate fountain, Taka and his Ego, and much, much more! Get it now! Because you won’t be able to later AND it’s supports a good cause.
The greatest Desert Bus poster in the universe is only available until this Sunday night, November 25th at 9:00 PM PST, so get yours now!
Note: Due to the distribution method for this year’s poster we are unable to sign it.
Please understand that it’s not because we don’t love you.
