Apple II Bits

LoadingReadyRun, a comedy troupe named after the Commodore 64 but which has avowed Apple II users among its ranks, is in this business for more than just giggles. They’re also here to make a difference with the Desert Bus for Hope, an annual video game marathon to raise money for Child’s Play, a non-profit that provides toys to children’s hospitals around the globe.

The seventh annual Desert Bus kicked off on November 16 and ran for more than six days, all of which was streamed live over the Internet. The event featured many special guests, among them Penn and Teller, Paul and Storm, and Bill Corbett — but none as special as the Apple II.

Audience participation is a key factor of Desert Bus, and one challenge invited viewers to create a six-second looping Vine video that somehow commemorated Desert Bus. Apple II community member Lady Sephiroth submitted this entry:

Lady Sephiroth tells me that the featured Apple IIe was in fact connected to the Internet at the time of the video. So this was no academic exercise: she truly was navigating to DesertBus.org, using the IIe as a terminal to access the event’s IRC channel.

Connecting to the Desert Bus IRC channel via an Apple IIe. Photo by Lady Sephiroth.

An Apple II being featured in a live event is neat, but the real win? Desert Bus for Hope raised $521,450 — more than half a million dollars — for a lifetime total of $1,790,133.57.

For the children.

UPDATE (2-Jan-13): The total raised by Child’s Play Charity in 2013 is $7.6 million.