Well this is awkward...

Hi, my name is Dacien and I work for a mysterious, homicidal maniac hellbent on conquering whatever remains of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood once you've all killed each other off. The job doesn't pay very well but comes with nice perks like not being killed and tossed around like a ragdoll. I also edit courses and grade exams and stuff, when I'm not actively plotting your demise.

With the slow month of December behind us and the frenetic craze of a Great Jedi War rapidly approaching (it starts Friday night at 7pm EST!), I don't have a lot of news to report. We're in the final stages of preparing to launch three revised courses, and after the GJW wraps up I hope to make serious progress on finalizing the new Alchemy and Lightsaber courses that will be based on the new, amazing guides.

My only piece of really new news is a revision to the Dark Savant - Programming requirements. When I was appointed Headmaster, dbb0t -- er, James -- and I made some significant changes to the programming degrees, switching them over to www.codecademy.com. I think that has worked out nicely, particularly for the two Maven degrees. However, the Savant degree, which you have been able to earn by taking the PHP, Python, or Ruby courses, has not panned out quite as we had hoped.

Specifcally, every single person who has earned the Savant has done so by taking the PHP course. I love PHP and think it's very beginner friendly, but it's not useful to the Brotherhood these days. This wonderful website is built on Ruby using a web framework called Rails. To help give people a better appreciation for what the Seneschal and his staff are actually doing, and, maybe, to give some people the basic skills they need to lend a hand to James and his people, we're going to start requiring everyone to take the following two Codecademy courses in order to earn the Savant:

• Ruby -- Start here.
• Rails -- Wait until you've finished the first few Ruby lessons to tackle this one.

PHP and Python will no longer count towards the degree requirement, unless you are currently working on one of them for the degree. If you've already started PHP or Python, please email me ASAP with a link to your codecademy profile. You'll be grandfathered in under the old rules; everyone else, go do all the (Ruby) things! (c) Howie

The Audit!

Audit work is progressing on both the Department of Writing Studies and the Department of Lore Studies.

Top Exam Takers!

Since my last report, the top five exam takers at the SA are:

Name	# of Exams
PRT GrilledOnions	24
PRT Junazee	22
PRT Chrome	20
PRT Nayc Gai	19
PRT Nayla Kaui	17

Great work, everyone!

Conclusion

As always, I'd like to close this report by asking for your help. The SA is a massive wall of text that covers ever-shifting topics and is prone to typos and run-on sentences. If you spot substantive or grammatical problems, please let me, Ood, and the course PROF know so that we can fix them ASAP. As we work through the Departments during the audit, we're also going to be asking for help reading and editing -- if you have any particular expertise, let us know when we announce the next Department being audited. There are shiny things available. :P

Bubba

Sith Warlord Dacien Victae di Plagia
Headmaster of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood