Competitions begin today!

[Mumbles]

So, the competitions begin today. They will run for 6 mo. We may stop them after 3 if there is a lot of interest and submissions. There will be a shell, a cake/mine, and a rocket competition.

 

Shortly there will be a new section for the competitions showing up. There will me more instructions and rules there.

[mormanman]

So, the competitions begin today. They will run for 6 mo. We may stop them after 3 if there is a lot of interest and submissions. There will be a shell, a cake/mine, and a rocket competition.

 

Shortly there will be a new section for the competitions showing up. There will me more instructions and rules there.

Ok I have a suggestion and a question.

Question: When are the competitions going to end? I'm not complaning but I don't want to run out of time.

Suggestion: I think it might be cool to have an HE competition.

[Mumbles]

As for the question, about as soon as I get off my lazy butt and get them judged.

 

As for the suggestion, absolutly not.

[NightHawkInLight]

Suggestion: I think it might be cool to have an HE competition.

I agree with Mumbles. I would have been very disappointed to see such a terribly negative competition on this forum...Please save it for E&W, in my opinion we don't need that front here.

[qwezxc12]

Mumbles,

 

When you judge, perhaps dividing the shells into categories would be equitable:

 

3in/75mm and under

4in/100mm and up

 

Many people are limited in the size shell they have been able to produce and/or shoot due to their locale or budget. It would be discouraging for someone to have their 1.5" shell judged against Al's 6in insert canister...

 

Just a thought...

[oskarchem]

Yeah, I'm with qwezxc on this one, you know I meen Al makes 8" shells. So divide it into categories please...

[Mumbles]

There will be categories, yes.

[mormanman]

Suggestion: I think it might be cool to have an HE competition.

I agree with Mumbles. I would have been very disappointed to see such a terribly negative competition on this forum...Please save it for E&W, in my opinion we don't need that front here.

Its fine but I was just thinking like just in the HE section maybe?

A firm "NO" is exceptable too. Still just a thought.

[asilentbob]

No need to go and try to have competitions with HEs just so you can see some explosions. No one here that has HE section access and deserves it would EVER willingly enter HE videos of their own stuff for a competition. I hope no one here that experiments with HEs is that stupid.

 

That would just be asking for trouble. And yes, law enforcement do occasionally read through public forums like this.

[mormanman]

No need to go and try to have competitions with HEs just so you can see some explosions. No one here that has HE section access and deserves it would EVER willingly enter HE videos of their own stuff for a competition. I hope no one here that experiments with HEs is that stupid.

 

That would just be asking for trouble. And yes, law enforcement do occasionally read through public forums like this.

But law enforcement can't look in locked/coded files, can they?

BTW, I excepted the firm "NO."

[asilentbob]

Law enforcement have essentially unlimited resources. If they want to get into something, they can.

 

I'm just explaining why.

[Mumbles]

While they cannot directly see them(well to my knowledge), a simple request to the hosting company would likely get them all of our files from which they could then see it. Private messages and passwords and IP addresses are encrypted so those may be safe. Still anything really sensitive I'd carry out in PGP.

[mormanman]

OK, no HE compititions then. That is fine with me. And BTW I didn't know they could do that. Maybe I did though and just did know that.

[cplmac]

Cool, I've been perfecting my ladyfinger/snaps in hopes of another competition.

[psyco_1322]

Lets restart the competitions ay? Just to get the members into the idea of competing and making things. Not sure what we could do for the winners though.

[Mumbles]

Probably should. They've been going on for a while not, like multiple years I think. It'd probably be easiest to pick a conventional date to start to keep it standarized. I'd propose possibly new years. Allowing a buffer period for submissions following it of perhaps a week. There would always be the option to submit for the next years worth of submissions. Given the infrequency of submissions we may need a year, but we could truncate it depending on volume.

 

We had discussed a few things for the winners. A special tag. A copy of Rooster's Malta visit video. I might be the only one besides him who has seen it, and it's very cool. Perhaps some end disks. The international nature of the forum makes shipping much of anything rather hard.

 

I guess I'll have to go dust off the judges chamber. Just don't expect anything to get done this weekend.

[psyco_1322]

This weekend? Are you nuts? Thats the last time I would expect something to get done.

 

So are you proposing to only have competitions open for a week? Thats what it kinda sounded like you were getting at with the buffer week. I would say have it open for atleast a month or two. That way people can get time to read about it, make something, find time to shoot it, and post.

 

Rooster went to Malta? Thats sweet. Given that the winner, if receiving the video, would not seed it out. That would be the only thing wrong with that, I would think. End disks are cool, their cheap and come in many sizes. Im not sure how hard international shipping is, I shipped some shirts to a guy in Canada, that wasnt bad, just a small label I had to write in all caps on. Possible some rocket tubes? Im thinking things other than chemicals that pyros could use. Chems present shipping problems with most people. Shell hemis? Sticks, lol. How about a willow log! ! ! after about ten thousand stamps the post office might take it.

[Mumbles]

A year, with a period of time to allow submissions from new years. Open from Jan 1st 2009 - Jan 1st 2010 or something, but accept submissions until say the 8th of Jan. I just want to allow videos to be rendered from what will likely be a busy time. They could always be submitted for the following year too.

 

I have no idea how popular these things will be, so it may take a year to generate an acceptable number of entries. I know I really only build and shoot stuff in the summer.

 

There are age liability issues to take into account too for some prizes. Perhaps it'd just have to be bragging rights and a pat on the back.

[psyco_1322]

So the competitions will go on for a year but will only be open to post videos for a week? I say you just make a thread in the announcements and ask the members what they think, put up a poll and see how many hits we get and just try it out.

[asilentbob]

I believe Mumbles means that the competition will be open for submissions during the whole year, with a few days after new years too encase people have stuff on digital cameras or whatever that they need to crop, edit, upload, etc.

 

In some cases the person who made the firework might not have taken video of it themselves, but a friend might have... Which is kinda the case with psyco and I at PGI, psyco took all the vids and it ended up to be quite a big file size so we are still trying to get them sent to me too. Looking into bittorrent as its easy to just leave your computer on to download a huge file and bittorrent checks hashes automatically to make sure you get the whole file.

 

To help generate interest I think it would be cool to get a compilation video made for what all was entered and by who each year... BUT everyone would have to agree to their video being used in such a compilation... I think we discussed something like this a year or so ago... but can't remember.

[Bonny]

I think the year long period is maybe not great but probably the best plan. As was said, many people don't really build and/or shoot much in winter, plus the delay dealing with the video uploading etc BS. I think there may need to be some more divisions though...especially in aerial shells. You can't really stack, for example, a 3" TT ball shell (although very nice) against an 8" double petal or something.

I realise that personal preference (style) will likely be a factor in judging shells, but I think they must at least be separated by shell size.

 

As for mines maybe 1-2" and 3"+ category???

Rockets...not my scene so no idea, but I do like to see the vids.

[psyco_1322]

That is a very good idea Bonny, I thought that was kind of unfair when I seen the comp entries for the first time, not that its changed.

[Mumbles]

Oh no, it's been that way all along. We'd never pit 8" shells against 2". I've always thought the best way would be 4" and under, then 5" and over. Potentially a middle category of 4-6" if there was enough interest. It's hard to compete a 4" against a 2", but just as hard to do so against a 6 or 8". Frankly, we're never going to have enough big shells to ever have any competition there anyway. Perhaps 3" and under, and 4"-6" Short of trying to do well at PGI competition, I'm still only going to make maybe 1 8" or larger shells a year. They're not much more work to complete, just a bit beyond my budget and current setup. I had to do some improvising to create that 8" shell I just posted a video of.

 

I should probably go back and look at what kind of stuff we have gotten and base it from there.

[qwezxc12]

If you're going to start the competition submissions all over again, could I suggest at least a cursory judging of the videos posted so far? No tangible prize needed past an acknowledgment on the board.

 

I think it would be good for a few reasons, not the least of which is many people (me included) have already submitted what they thought were some of their best work so far...because the idea was that the competition threads were open and the submissions counted. It would be a shame to say, "never mind...I know we said there was a competition going on, but we changed our mind, those didn't really count...but we're serious now"

 

It could also be a good thing because it would set the expectation level for new submittal if folks saw what set a 1st, and/or 2nd place entry apart from the rest.

[Mumbles]

Oh yes. The current submissions will certainly be judged.