Toast Beard Compo General

[Aussie]

4.4 hours. that sync was 4.4 hours long.
that's absurd.

What can I say?

Daring Do is almost best pony.

Anyway, option 1 would mean there would be no ZIQs until season 2 ends in like, July, and I personally like ZIQ more than ERS. Option 2 might be okay, but the people who are all ambitious for their entries won't have enough time to make their ERS entry. I'm kinda liking option 3 the most, and placing a time limit on songs would definitely speed things up.

ps. holy shit i haven't posted on MLR in forever

[Solarsail]

Putting a message up saying 1 entry per person /unless you really have to/ would be good. I think people would understand the intent of that, but would allow someone like Aviators to put up two songs.

[Freewave]

Yeah while i'll miss the 2 track allowance it could be for the best or MAYBE only on ZIQ when there will be more entries. a 5 min track limit is something to shoot for but really is unfair to any club versions of tracks or prog but it may help steer people that way to more compact tracks. I was not too happy about the whole Tarby situation in terms of the shouting about it being off-topic (and it was) but really was disappointing to see that conflict for that entry. It would be nice for people to consider whether a track is on-topic (ontheme or even pony) or a troll entry (while often still fun) before entering it just to keep TB under control. Then again Dark Symphony wasn't that much of a pony track and yet was one of the best entries.

I do think since a lot of people can't hit every TB that they try to hit every other one so next week may actually be a lot smaller perhaps as people may be exhausted from this one. I missed the week before this one but it seemed every one brought their A game this week which is part of why it was just so large. Maybe continuous winners of TB should go on to an Brony Idol type competition at a higher level.

I will say the biggest issue (and no offense) is that the sync-listen itself has both tech problems (html 5 , too many entries on a page) and that whoever ran the tempo didn't go at quite the same speed of queueing and playing the tracks. There were several time i saw QUEUE and went to hit play and literally had to rewind 3 times before the chat went to play the track. If there's 60 tracks (and there was more than that) and the time spent between tracks goes up one minute that's an extra HOUR right there of waiting. I'm used to seeing QUEUE and then seeing PLAY 15 seconds later.

Anyways TB as always was amazing and just overwhelmed by amazing diverse tracks but a lot of things came to a head last night in terms of getting it all to fit and run smoothly. I don't normally catch the beginning but I couldn't make it through to the end this time and it must have been even harder on the east coast. Don't know if starting a bit earlier is even an option or could even help or if we just need to work out the kinks with what's already been recommended.

[natsukashi]

Something that pisses me off is that tb always is at non euro-friendly timezones. So if we're gonna split it or something I propose that we get some love for eurofags and put sync at managable times xoxo <3

[Random111223]

Something that pisses me off is that tb always is at non euro-friendly timezones. So if we're gonna split it or something I propose that we get some love for eurofags and put sync at managable times xoxo <3

This. Can't really be awake at 5am.

[natsukashi]

even 2 hours earlier would be immensely beneficial but 4 to 6 hours earlier would be the best :c

[bartekko]

Something that pisses me off is that tb always is at non euro-friendly timezones. So if we're gonna split it or something I propose that we get some love for eurofags and put sync at managable times xoxo <3

^

but that might split the synclisten between europe and america

[Ropony]

As for the technical problems everyone has been having with the site, I'm gonna have to propose that we drop soundcloud embeds entirely on these and just use the onsite embeds and dropbox from now on. In my experience last night, even with only like 30-40 entries on page, my computer still lagged a huge amount, this has been bothering me to the point that I went ahead and ordered some more RAM. Having more RAM may or may not fix my issues with the site, but i still have a couple friends that say that the site takes over 5 minutes to load for them and I'd like for them to be able to enjoy it as well. Also with soundcloud, we get the issues of the HTML5 embeds causing crashes on some peoples browsers, i think this has been limiting the number of people that are able to attend synchlistens and should be addressed soon.

Now, dropbox isn't perfect, it has it's issues that allow people to submit future entries, however i don't think this is anywhere near as big of an issue as the lag that soundcloud embeds cause. Perhaps we'll just have to trust people to respect the system with the dropbox embeds.

Also, one other possible site to look into for embeds could be this one over here.
http://eqbeats.org/

[natsukashi]

Something that pisses me off is that tb always is at non euro-friendly timezones. So if we're gonna split it or something I propose that we get some love for eurofags and put sync at managable times xoxo <3

^

but that might split the synclisten between europe and america

Yes, it's not something that I'm fond of, but it's better than having a sync that only is managable for americans and australians to attend without bucking up your sleeping rythm. >.>

[Solarsail]

I'm annoyed that Seth never links to where the songs he puts up are from (Toastbeard) and so many, many listeners and even some musicians have no idea this exists and it's where most of the music and artists they like came from. A lot of content never goes up on Youtube or EqD to get those thousands of listens they deserve.

So I'm going to link it in every TB-song-containing EqD music post, in the comments, from now on. Until Seth starts publicising MLR's existence.

[bartekko]

If someone doesn't send stuff to eqd, it's because they do not want it to be on eqd.

Also, the toastbeard is from musicians, to musicians, so having like, 200 people on the synclisten would not exactly be healthy.

[Solarsail]

If someone doesn't send stuff to eqd, it's because they do not want it to be on eqd.

I don't mean that (of course it should be up to the artist whether they choose to submit), I mean that people should know that the artists they follow do more than just what goes up on EqD.

Also, the toastbeard is from musicians, to musicians, so having like, 200 people on the synclisten would not exactly be healthy.

I'm the (edit: ok not the only) person who posts regularly on this forum that is not a musician. Should I not be here (serious question)?

Just finding it strange that people can listen to a lot of pony music but have no interest in following MLR/Toastbeard.

[Ropony]

I'm the only person who posts regularly on this forum that is not a musician. Should I not be here (serious question)?

You're not alone, I'm not a musician either, i also know of a couple other people that don't make music, yet still follow toastbeard. I do also understand the point that the synchlistens can get bombarded with spam, however, i don't think it's the fault of the non musicians listening to it, it's more the people spamming "g" or whatever. (seriously guys, it's gotten pretty old now.) And like bartekko said, if we had 200 people in a chat, it would not be very pleasant at all for anyone in the chat. Perhaps there could be a second, more public chat for the non-musicians to synchlisten in if we were to get this featured on EqD, i dunno.

[Solarsail]

How does anyone else feel about advertising Toastbeard more widely? I know sci updates the ponychan /media/ thread occasionally with transcripts.

[Marshmelon]

I was not too happy about the whole Tarby situation in terms of the shouting about it being off-topic (and it was) but really was disappointing to see that conflict for that entry. It would be nice for people to consider whether a track is on-topic (ontheme or even pony) or a troll entry (while often still fun) before entering it just to keep TB under control.

I'm sorry for causing this, and I won't organize to troll toastbeard again.
If Jeffthestrider was right, and this is a place for a group of musicians to show off their music to their friends, where is the public competition?

[bartekko]

Making a public second chatroom? A good idea.

Maybe someone would pre-listen to the toastbeard to eliminate the troll entries, and we could allow some brony radio to host it publicly?

[sci]

(preemptively: if I missed something, feel free to bring it back up)

Option 2 might be okay, but the people who are all ambitious for their entries won't have enough time to make their ERS entry.

I'm not particularly worried about that since, traditionally, the concept of a compo is to work within a small time limit.
But (what like) 15 weeks without ZIQ does seem a bit extreme.
hrmm...

I will say the biggest issue (and no offense) is that the sync-listen itself has both tech problems (html 5 , too many entries on a page) and that whoever ran the tempo didn't go at quite the same speed of queueing and playing the tracks. There were several time i saw QUEUE and went to hit play and literally had to rewind 3 times before the chat went to play the track. If there's 60 tracks (and there was more than that) and the time spent between tracks goes up one minute that's an extra HOUR right there of waiting. I'm used to seeing QUEUE and then seeing PLAY 15 seconds later.

Yeah, this is part of the problem...the pause between QUEUE and PLAY is easy enough to fix, but the technical difficulties are a bit harder to deal with...

Maybe continuous winners of TB should go on to an Brony Idol type competition at a higher level.

If / when I do split the compos, this is precisely how I don't want to split things: by skill.

So if we're gonna split it or something I propose that we get some love for eurofags and put sync at managable times xoxo <3

This is what I'd normally do. Specifically for WAT syncs, I tend to place those 3 to 6 hours before normal ZIQ time.

Also, one other possible site to look into for embeds could be this one over here.
http://eqbeats.org/

Along with pagination, this is something I'd like to implement. But, again, "in time". :\

How does anyone else feel about advertising Toastbeard more widely? I know sci updates the ponychan /media/ thread occasionally with transcripts.

This is something I've considered to be outside of the scope of the compo.
If you want to mention that your song was an entry to TB, that's fine, but I think it should be left up to the person who made the song.

There was a post for TB on EqD for a while, but it was both a mess and kind of pointless. Any updates would be posted /after/ the weekly sync, and all the attention from the post would be pointed at an empty #bronymusic, pretty much.
Organizing an open-to-the-public sync and advertising that on EqD might help, but it's not something I'm planning on doing.

[Solarsail]

OK Sci.

[sci]

and just in case that wasn't enough wall of text:

Code: Select all

<natsukashi> I just think that the time is ridiculous when we're about 50/50
<natsukashi> us and euro
<natsukashi> even 2 hours would help immensely but 4 hours would be optimal imho

ok, I tried plugging in some numbers and got this as a new possible sync time:

6 PM EST (toastbeard time)
...which would be 9 am (+/- 1 hour) austrialia-time, 11 pm brit time, and midnight natsukashi time.

how's that sound?

[natsukashi]

It sounds wonderful imho! :3

[Freewave]

and just in case that wasn't enough wall of text:

Code: Select all

<natsukashi> I just think that the time is ridiculous when we're about 50/50
<natsukashi> us and euro
<natsukashi> even 2 hours would help immensely but 4 hours would be optimal imho

ok, I tried plugging in some numbers and got this as a new possible sync time:

6 PM EST (toastbeard time)
...which would be 9 am (+/- 1 hour) austrialia-time, 11 pm brit time, and midnight natsukashi time.

how's that sound?

I can only say for myself that starting 4 hours earlier i would miss this each and every time being in mountain time zone. that's just a huge jump in time. If the american version started an HOUR earlier it might be better.

In the end if there was a separate european sync-listen it would be pretty easy to run. It would be a far better time for them than a compromise for both continenets, they could just take over the irc chat at that time and have european "mod" run the show and that's all it would take. Only thing it would really effect (and this would be a problem) is when submissions would end and when voting would be open as that could be a problem. Any chance a separate voting page working the same could be created if that was the issue?

Did splitting the page WORK last night w/o any problems>? Does it mess with voting or can mods just split the page at the 30-40 submissions mark and start a second page and there's no issues? That and taking out those html 5 links would take care of the technical issues.

[Freewave]

I'm annoyed that Seth never links to where the songs he puts up are from (Toastbeard) and so many, many listeners and even some musicians have no idea this exists and it's where most of the music and artists they like came from. A lot of content never goes up on Youtube or EqD to get those thousands of listens they deserve.

So I'm going to link it in every TB-song-containing EqD music post, in the comments, from now on. Until Seth starts publicising MLR's existence.

If someone doesn't send stuff to eqd, it's because they do not want it to be on eqd.

ahh if it were only that simple. then again you're right in that the only way to win the lotto is to buy a ticket. then again the odds are about the same.

it would be nice if there could be less of a gap between artists and brony music fans .....but hey that can be for another thread...

[Interrobang Pie]

eliminate the troll entries

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

[bartekko]

NO x 30 or so

No one likes your trolling.

[Ropony]

eliminate the troll entries

Perhaps one of the better idea's I've heard in a while, would certainly help shorten the compo to a more reasonable length.