Dynasty Posted September 14, 2007 Posted September 14, 2007 Friends, Colleagues, and Fellow Forum Members, I do want to start off this informal letter with an apology. I am sorry that I have not supported TxBands like we did when it was new. That is about to change, I promise. I have refreshed my forum coding knowledge and once again learned how to make a bullet list: Why has Dynasty not been around? The Media Library was taken down (explained below) Out of Town Starting College World of Warcraft Now just some basic information about things, past, present, and future. Who are Dynasty and Clarinot Well, my name is Travis. Call me by Travis, or Dynasty. I am a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Aerospace Engineering. I play the baritone in the Longhorn Band. Clarinot is Alex. He is also a freshman but is going to Trinity University in San Antonio, majoring in pre-med or something related. What the heck happened to the media library? The media library had potential. Both potential to bring people to the site (everyone knows that it slowed after media disappeared) and potential to get us sued for all we're worth. At the end of GN, Greg (or Skramp of Skrampsnewplace.com) was asked, in my opinion, threatened by legal action, to either shut down his site. Apparently (speculation), TxBands.com and Indianamarching.com were also mentioned as being possible future targets. Honestly, we were scared, so we took the media library offline. BOA never contacted us. So now what with media? We tossed up the idea of streaming it, where you can hear it but can't download it. Or the iTunes streaming playlist. Since neither I or Alex are legal experts, and this clearly falls into a gray area of legality, we stayed away from it. Folks, just remember, TxBands never took video because of the clear legal implications. Audio files technically could come from anywhere. Unless there is some identifying part (ie Announcer's voice), it would take some effort to identify where the recording came from. I would imagine that there are a fair number of video sharing sites on the internet. One would think that by simply searching for a school name and/or high school marching band that we might come across videos. It's just a theory. So whats the deal with media? Just keep your shoes on. There are legal, ethical, and moral ways to solve some of these problems. The Future of TxBands Alex and I make two promises. The first is the most important: TxBands will not sell out for the purpose of financial gain. It is by far extremely unethical that we ask for community support to pay for our server fees (still 119.40 a year!) and then we would sell out for our personal gain. It won't happen. Secondly, TxBands will never go away. When you go to Skramps you can see that obviously the domain has been bought by some spam company. TxBands does have potential. Alex and I, unfortunately, are busy with school so we don't have much time to moderate like we used to. Therefore, we are going to try to focus mainly on development. I hope we can expect to see some changes soon. Currently under development is a new photos section and possible re-introduction of band bucks. If the forums look strange, that may be because I am working on reorganization. Just hold tight. In conclusion, if you're reading this, thanks for staying with us. I really forgot how much this site meant to us all. Without further ado, take care. Travis Quote
Xenon Posted September 14, 2007 Posted September 14, 2007 And you can still expect some reviews by me and a strong presence of staff members at many events including BOA GN. I can't really speak as to the possibility of more Danpodcasts, but I do know that some people would knock Dan over the head if he didn't make some more. Quote
mbui Posted September 15, 2007 Posted September 15, 2007 Reviews, indeed. In addition, I will be doing something new on TexasBands this year. I will be posting my own judging sheet after each event. I like to "play" judge sometimes. Just sit back, watch the shows, put down my numbers, and then compare them to the actual results. I write down my own numbers immediately after each band has performed using the actual recap and judging criteria of the respective circuit. I did this last year for Finals at the BOA San Antonio Super Regional Championships and Semifinals at the BOA Grand National Championships. The difference between my recap is that I show how I arrive at the actual score for each subcaption--something that BOA doesn't show on their actual recap. I did this last year on the BOA Forums and got a great response from it. For those interested, I posted my recap spreadsheet from last year below. I also did some for DCI this past summer. If you're interested in those, let me know and I'll post them as well. Realize that this is all for fun. -Michael Quote
Danpod Posted September 15, 2007 Posted September 15, 2007 You should see Mike go to town on those sheets! Podcasts, of course. I'd hate to deprive the world of my craziness. Quote
bossman Posted September 17, 2007 Posted September 17, 2007 did anyone elses page spread widen? Or is it just me? Quote
mbui Posted September 17, 2007 Posted September 17, 2007 Don't worry...the page is supposed to widen due to the size of the sheets. Quote
bossman Posted September 17, 2007 Posted September 17, 2007 well it didnt do it on my dual monitors, but it does on my 19inch. Quote
Dynasty Posted September 17, 2007 Author Posted September 17, 2007 Well I am excited to see what our writers can do for us. Does anyone have any suggestions on what we can do on TxB to serve you? Any new features that might help bring more people to the site? Quote
bossman Posted September 20, 2007 Posted September 20, 2007 well i would love that too, but if it were to come back; how would we get to watch them??? Quote
bluebellbrass07 Posted September 20, 2007 Posted September 20, 2007 QUOTE (bossman @ Sep 20 2007, 07:22 AM) well i would love that too, but if it were to come back; how would we get to watch them??? Youtube/video google. Or buy the DVDs Quote
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