A report, in which Muz talks a bit about coding stuff, launches a membership survey that you should take, and threatens to promote people. Brought to you with limited commercial interruptions thanks to a lazy advertising sales department.

-> <- <p>

Coding is a pain in the neck.

For those of us lucky enough to not have had to do coding, I want to tell you how lucky you are. It is dirty, unforgiving and grinding work. There are also some people that are really good at it. That is because they have a different kind of patience than I do. (and I work in retail, so figure that...) A misplaced single character somewhere in the pages of code can render the whole thing inoperable.

Imagine if a forest burned down every time a leaf fell the wrong way. Yeah, it gets bad.

Anyway, for the last few years, we have been fighting a losing battle with our website. It's taken untold amounts of hours just to keep it running the way it used to, let alone trying to patch in new and awesome stuff that we all want. This has to do with the coding languages we are trying to use not really being kosherized with the old server that we have had since...well, i think since the Exodus.

At any rate, things have to change. Over the last few months, Orv, Jac, JaM3z, Halc and I have been chewing on options about what we should do about this every-looming problem. No matter which way we turn, it looks like there's going to be some impact to the site, where we will have to go old school for some time as we are working on a new recode. It won't be a surprise sort of thing when it happens: we'll warn everyone ahead of time, but still...it's a lot of work and a lot of heartburn.

To make things even worse, Orv told me today that he has been getting more and more crushed with real life work, and that he has decided it best to step down.

Orv has been our Seneschal for the last year and a half, has worked his fingers to nubs trying to get the work done. He has done so by playing a very intense shell game with the different resources and coding structures (he had to move our forums and wiki to a different server just to keep them from crashing always.) He's also had to put on a wetsuit and wade deep into the crap-filled sewer of our old code, trying to rewrite it so that it work faster and better with all the new stuff he has been doing. On top of that, he's been working massive hours in RL on a plethora of stuff that has been tearing more and more time from him. That's seriously impressive.

On top of all that, Orv is a genuinely nice guy. Easily approachable, good-humoured (take his HTML course for proof if you've never met the guy), and even-keeled, Orv has been a boon to the DC since before he even stepped up. The guy is just plain cool.

Having talked to a couple others on the Dark Council, there's only one course of action.

Refuse his resignation.

Sadly, since we can't really do that (Taigs, can you check for me?) We've decide instead to award the guy for the heavy work he has done, the huge impact on our club that he has done since signing up to be in the coder staff. And that is to make him an Elder of the Brotherhood.

Thank you Orv, for all that you do, all that you have done. Don't be a stranger, please.

In his place, we needed someone who can help guide us through the next few steps of work. It should come as no surprise that JaM3z has agreed to step up. He's a great coder and has been working on the site on and off again for about as long as I have been in the club.

Good luck, JaM3z. You may need to see where Orv hid that wetsuit.

-> <- <p>

Every once in a while, I go and check the site statistics, to see how our traffic is doing, how many new visits we have, etc. Year to date, we're trending to have more new unique visitors but less repeat visits.

This tells us a few things. It means that we are still getting a fair bit of new people coming into our site. This is probably due to search engine optimization and the recruitment beast that is our TOR guild. It also tells us something that we have known for some time: and that is that a lot of our existing members only show up during vendetta events, or not so much at all.

Now, these metrics are based on who is hitting our main page, which some of our old members may not even go to that often. Many of us have our wiki or our forums saved as bookmarks. And it's only down 2%, so it's not really anything to freak out about.

Which means naturally, that I freaked out about it. ;P

So, I went and made a survey. The survey is anonymous. It doesn't ask for anything personally identifiable. It does ask ten questions that will help me and the DC understand what people like and don't like about the Brotherhood, so that we can work to make the DB a better place. Please, I encourage everyone to take this survey.

Click here to take the survey

Thank you.

-> <- <p>

For a while now, there have been some minor discrepancies in the way that the Lightsaber Combat Guide/hand-to-hand Combat Guide and the Character sheets have been set up. There were a few tweaks that are not reflected in the guides, and while I meant to go back and sort that out, I kept pushing it off, because...well, frankly, I knew that I'd want to go back and redo the guides eventually anyway.

To that end, I have been assembling a team of people to help me with that project. I've already gotten a few people on board with it, but I am in need of a few more. If you are interested in working on the next version of the Lightsaber Combat guide, shoot me an email and tell me why I should pick you. Real life martial arts relevance, ACC mastery, RPG experience, etc. There's a good chance of getting some nice shineys out of the work, and soem cool in-character benefits, too.

-> <- <p>

Ask the GM time.

Sang asks "<@Sang> AskTheGM: Muz, what plans do you have for the DB, post-Horizons and how do you plan to promote inter-unit relations and interactions."

Horizons will be a interesting vendetta. Right afterwards, infrastructure will be in play to help facilitate inter-clan events at a higher rate of support and with higher than normal awards for the winners. This will help the DB develop ties between units and help further at least a few unit fictional entities. As far as plans after that, I have a rough plot line hashed out for the next Great Jedi War. We have also kicked around a new way of running vendetta style events with Jac, and there's some interesting things brewing from that discussion.

Malik asks "Muz, what kind of awesome stuff do you and Shik have planned for the next xmas stuff? And how long until we get the face selector?"

There are a few things in the morgue files that we have been looking at using for Herald Style Hanukkah. We'll be ready for it. As far as the headshot selector, there's still a fair bit of work that needs doing on that. We need a lot of options available to make that work well at initial outset, and we need the code to work with all the new stuff, so it'll probably be a while yet. We are working on it, though.

Tyre asks "How do you keep your hair so silky? (seriously)"

I wash it. yay4genetics.

For having such good questions, Sang, Malik, and Tyre are awarded Dark Crosses. Watch next time for when I change my nick on IRC to 'AskTheGM' or email me your questions to get featured and a shining DC for your efforts.

-> <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> <-

That's about all for this time. If you need anything, shoot me an email, look me up on TOR or PM me on IRC.

-> <- <p></p></p></p></p> </p>