10 May 2009

Headmaster Report #24

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News

--This is my first report since the start of the Ninth Great Jedi War, and it was certainly an awesome vendetta. Congrats to Clan Arcona and Malidir for placing first, as well as everyone else who spent time competing. The Shadow Academy event - "Instruction" - was very successful. We awarded a total of 168 degrees during the seven weeks of the GJW, a number I am very happy with, especially since that's more than the number of degrees awarded in my entire first year as Headmaster.

--Even though the SA was on "hold" during the GJW, projects were still worked on and tons of progress was made. The biggest change was that the Shadow Academy site was converted to php coding, making it less susceptible to injector attacks as well as all around cooler. Big thanks go out to Arion Sunrider for his tireless work on getting the site converted during the war, not to mention all the bugs he had to fix during beta testing.

What's changed with the new site? There's a lot of little admin things that were done to make things more organized and fluid, but on the public side of things: the drop down menu of courses now actually drops down, the SA Staff page has finally been updated with the proper EPs, and is also automated. Also, when you submit a course, the next page will have a list of your answers, so that you can copy/paste that into a document for you to store until it is graded. Oh, and if you want to retake an exam, just retake it, you don't have to get Taig or I to delete the score first, the site does it automatically! There's more to come, so stay tuned. Note: the public SA site is still being converted, so you probably won't notice some of these changes for a few days.

--During the GJW there were a few times where the problem came up that of the electives you can use for higher level degrees, only four of them are actually available to take right now. While this is enough to earn the degrees, it's a tight number, we realize, and so we wanted to try and fix this problem. So, the number of electives required for a Dark Savant is now one, instead of two. That should help this issue, along with the fact that we will be releasing new electives soon, as well as a Blast from the Past Week coming up that will allow everyone to pass an old course.

--As of this report, Weapons Basics has been removed from the active course listings. This isn't a permanent change, but we are working on a big revamp of the course, so for the next few months it will not be offered. Hopefully we'll be able to release it sometime in July.

--After serving my entire first year as Headmaster, Magistrates Dacien and Kalak have stepped aside to focus on other projects. I thank both of them for their hard work. Vorion and Impetus have both been selected as my new Magistrates, to congrats to them.

--Thanks to those who contributed to my promotion to Dark Side Adept, I love force lightning! Also, big thanks go out to my Praetor Taigikori for his hard work during the GJW. He managed to balance SA stuff while still competing heavily for his clan, and will be awarded soon for all his hard work! Thanks also to all of the SA's EPs, who worked to get exams graded as quickly as possible while also beta testing the new site.

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Projects

--What's going to happen? Well, in the next three months you can expect three new courses, two new degrees, the division of a current course, as well as the revision and updating of three of our current courses. Plus a smaller, more secret project that will hopefully be finished during the summer. And this is just May, June, and July!

--My next report is going to be a pretty important one, so watch for that one. On another note, we will be continuing with fictional updates in my next report, since there's tons of stuff to build off of after the Great Jedi War. Journeymen Competitions will also start back up soon, probably in my next report, so watch for that as well, since they are great ways for younger members to earn crescents.

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Important Links

--SA Website

--SA Degree Requirements

--SA Forums

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Summary

• 168 degrees awarded during the GJW!

• The SA site has been recoded in PHP! Tons of additions! More to come!

• I'm an Elder now!

• Dacien/Kalak step down; Vorion/Impetus new Magistrates!

• Weapons Basics temporarily removed from SA

• Dark Savants now only require one elective, not two

• Tons of stuff coming in the next three months, watch for falling debris

Dark Side Adept Aabsdu di Plagia Dupar

Headmaster of the Brotherhood