A message from Sledgy:

Surprise! A new Contest is up already and it's a Team Battle! Thanks to Johnny_Luddite for his help on this one. Lets keep this place movin' and a shakin'!

YEEEEHAWWWWWWW!

PS. The Potpourri 3 contest goes until this weekend so if you havent submitted for that yet, get on it! Yesssssss!

Just a heads-up, Sledg has posted Contest XXIII. Bust our your potpourri pants and get to mixin'!

I'm playing proxy again for Sledg. Here's what he has to say:

Ok MTC folks, here are our options for the next contest. Please vote for one. ONLY ONE. If you mention two of them i will count the first mentioned one as your vote. Voting will be underway until next Saturday.

1. Beddy byes mix - Mix to listen to as you go to sleep.

2. Calendar mix - A song to represent each month of the year.

3. Potpourri III (@eric sez: this gets my vote)

4. The songs you should have listened to growing up, but didn't.

5. reSoundtrack a day of your life to improve/alter/direct it in some way. (In honor of some great/pretty good movies, I'm giving a 24 hour time limit. So, this could be graduation day in Texas, 1976, or friggin' Rex Manning day. It's up to you.)

6. A "Choose Your Own Adventure" style of mix. If you're not familiar with this childhood icon, brush up here: http://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure

Sledg or Eric starts off the beginning of the adventure, and then through artist names, song names, and lyrics we continue the story through 'til the end.

7. Negativity Mix. A mixtape for someone who would be a foe of yours if they were on MTC. Could be a minor or major celeb (Sal could have Mark E Smith for instance) someone you know personally, a hated historical figure, a hated fictional character, anyone, just as long as you rip them to shreds with your mixtaping prowess and let everyone know why he/she does NOT float your boat.

8. A Wedarriffic Mix. Take two people (see categories in last idea), marry them off to each other and create a mixtape to be played at the wedding.

9. Music your Grandkids will need to know about.

10. Forget Henry, Will You Accept My Mix, Lucy Whitmore*
[a mix to woo and seek the affections of a film character] Choose your own film and character. [[*50 First Dates]]

The winning idea's owner gets a badge. YAY!

I'm playing proxy again, posting as proxy for SLEDG:

Congratulations to Calaveth, Rachael, and Johnny_Luddite, who came in First, Second, and Third Place in this very difficult contest. Thank you to everyone that participated.

Next up, another "Contest Contest", where everyone posts their contest ideas on this page, we then vote, and the winner gets a badge. If you have an idea, post it here. After a week, we will vote and after another week of voting we will have a brand new contest.

Also, I would like to see what kind of MTC wallpapers you creative folks out there can come up with. For a little side contest, you all have a whole month to submit to me your creations (in the dimensions the currently available wallpapers are in please), to:

sledgbrainerd@gmail.com

At the end of the month we will have a vote on the winner. I encourage everyone to give it a shot!

And last, if any of you out there have any suggestions for the site, please feel free to message me about them. Daedalus suggested maybe coming up with an MTC facebook application. What do you guys think about that?

Special Badges are headed to the anyone who posts what their favorite album from the year they were born is, and why. Post it here as well.

Contest XXII has been posted, y'all. Get on it.

Many thanks to Sledg for spearheading the awesome contest committee (c)!

So, since Sledg doesn't have access to post updates quite yet, I'm acting as his proxy. Here goes:

Hey MTC-ers,
Here are the narrowed down selections for the mix contest. Please pick the one that interests you and leave comment. If there was another one that was suggested in the forum thread that you prefer over these, feel free to write them in. Please keep selections to the ones that were in the thread however. I left the descriptions in the words of the people who suggested them.

1. From Johnny Luddite
"FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE" A broad one this. Songs about Russia, songs with a Russian theme, Russian songs, songs that sound like they might have come from Russia, interpret it as you will.

2. From Johnny Luddite
"THE YEAR OF BUBBLING UNDER" Select the year of your choice, and fill the mix up with album tracks from that year that never went top 40.

3. From Johnny Luddite
"NOAH'S ARK OF NOISE" A mix featuring animal tracks two by two. e.g. 2 songs about dogs followed by two songs about chickens, etc etc. Maybe we could have a horrible rule for this one that once someone has posted songs with a particular animal, that animal couldn't be used again. One way to get quick spur of the moment entries.

4. From Calaveth
In the vein of Robot vs Monster, "PIRATE vs NINJA". Two teams duke it out, only the most awesome survive.

5. From Calaveth
The music you should have listened to growing up, but didn't.

6. From Cassee
You could steal a theme from the FTOTZ club and do "Sin." There are infinite possibilities for songs about bad behavior, but also sin and redemption.

7. From Bea
"The Alternate Soundtrack"
...specific scenes where music was used would be re-tracked, and in the description field for every song picked would be the name of the scene in the movie and the song originally used in it, and it would be in chronological order. The Alternate Soundtrack, you know. A real challenge could be to do this with musicals (only) and find songs that could replace the original songs exclusively written for the musical.

8. From Rachael
A mix for a celebrity/politician/public figure.

9. From Rachael
A food mix.

10. From Derhay
Forget Henry, Will You Accept My Mix, Lucy Whitmore*
[a mix to woo and seek the affections of a film character] Choose your own film and character. [[*50 First Dates]]

11. From Galaxiepi
Mixes about BALLS.

Im gonna leave the voting open until this Saturday when the winning contest goes up and the winning ideas creator gets a sweet-ass badge to show off.

So please vote and formulate some ideas for next time because these Contest idea contests are gonna become a regular occurrence. Thank you.

-sledg

We officially have our first moderator. Everyone, put your grimy hands together for sledg. He's going to be helping my out with badges and contests and all that jazz.

Word on the street is that sledg is going to take a vote for contest ideas in the forum. Go check it out. While y'all are voting, I'm continuing to work on the site in my offtime.

So, to celebrate, anyone who posts 'YAY!' (within the next two weeks) gets a fancy new badge from our moderator.

KICK OUT THE JAMZ!

Okay, everyone take a knee. ...

So, since MTC cannot die, I'm trying to formulate a gameplan to buy me time to work on the next version. As of now, the plan is to fix some of the issues with the current site (mix creation, badges, profiles) and streamline some backend processes (contests, badges, points) so that I don't have to spend so much time administering things.

Once the backend tools are in place, I might pick a few people to help me moderate and run contests.

This is all very up in the air, but I'd like to know -- what would y'all like to see fixed from your perspective. Mix creation is #1 on my list, followed by a few other annoying bugs.

Sound good? Break!

As I contemplated how best to phrase the verbiage explaining why I was closing the site, I became inspired. I realized what needed to happen if I were to keep the site afloat.

Details are sparse at the moment, but I will be posting again shortly to gather feedback. This obviously isn't going to be a speedy turnaround, but I think we can make it happen.

MTC4LIFE.

Heya! Contest XXI ended over the weekend, but I was visiting my most wonderful mother. I will do the prize issuing tomorrow, as I just got home from a 5 hour drive. eek.

Hey all. In betwixt moving in with the girlfriend and some heavy-duty freelance work, my spare time is almost nil. I'm ashamed at how I've neglected this site. My bad.

Expect a contest to be posted by the end of the week.

I love you all.

What a rad contest. Some seriously superb mixes. Congrats to everyone who played along.

A new contest is in the works, but I'll be moving this next week, so it may be a bit slow to come up. I'll keep y'all posted.

Have a good week, crew. MTC4LIFE.

First off, contest 20 just dropped today. 20 contests. Amazing. Go play along. Awards to players.

Beyond that, I wanted to apologize for my frequent absence from the community. Both Corey and I are finding it hard to balance MTC time with that of our personal lives. Just so you all know, I'm working to find that balance.

Contest 19 is OVER. I even made it in the top 3 -- impressive.

Congrats to everyone who played along -- badges have been awarded and points as well.

Keep an eye out for an epic contest starting next week -- MIX CONTEST 20! YOW!

Czech it out! A massive 500 points to the winner! Yay!

Contest 18 is FINISHED. The top 3 were in tight competition.

Congrats to T-bag, camilasalles and Cassee for first, second and third place. Actually, congrats to everyone who played along. I've given you 200 points for doing so.

Finally, a badge to everyone who yells YAY! before 10am PST on 01/11/2008.

I'm connected to internet via a bitchin' 33.6 faxmodem and holy hell is it slow. I just wanted to wish everyone around these parts a happy holidays -- I'm keeping a list and checking it twice -- expect some badges when I'm back in the land of highspeed.

Much love.

Thanks for playing along, there were some really amazing entries. Badges and points have been awarded.

I'm going to be out of town for work for the next week, so expect a contest upon my return.

Rockout.

Contest 17 is live. Thanks to sledg for the suggestion. Now go play!

A really cool idea struck me the other day, so I thought I'd run it up the flagpole and see what everyone thinks:

1 -- People create a 'share' address on their profile with their mailing address (not viewable by anyone except the user)

2 -- People flag mixes that they've made as being 'up for trade'

3 -- Two people agree to exchange mixes

4 -- Each person send *us* their mix, in an unaddressed, postmarked envelope with an exchange ID written on it,

5 -- We generate labels and resend to each person, thus keeping the end-user's contact information private.

6 -- Sending is broken into two or three 'batches' throughout the month.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Insults? Hurl them my way.