July 20, 2008
Headmaster Report #12

Welcome to another Headmaster report, though a shorter one this time around. I saw a midnight showing of The Dark Knight (as well as a second showing today), and it was amazing. I recommend everyone to go see it. It's definitely my favorite superhero movie, and it's in my top five favorite movies, beating out some of the Star Wars films.

Second, some of you may know the iPhone 2.0 software update came out, and along with it was the App Store. The store is cool, tons of stuff, but one app I downloaded (for free too) is called PhoneSaber. It's exactly like it sounds. You touch a lightsaber hilt, and a colored blade (five colors to choose from) ignites, sounds and all. After that, you move the phone around, and you here sound effects of lightsabers clashing. It's nerdy, but fun. Just thought that was an interesting, and relevant, little story.



News

--Capital Starship Studies is still open to applications. You must be at least the rank of Protector and have passed the exam before. Send applications to Dacien and myself along with your own personal answer key for the exam. Include in the application what you like and don't like about the course, and how you would make it better. We would like to make a selection by the end of the week, so look at that as your "deadline".

--We've decided to extend the July Journeymen Competition for another week, frankly due to not having many submissions. Come on guys, this is a really easy competition, just a one page fiction. Leaders, please promote this to all of your journeymen. I know some of you have feuds starting soon, but this fiction would probably take like half an hour to write, and crescents are always nice to help promotions. Details for the competition can be found here. Oh, it is extended until Saturday, July 26th.

--Welcome to another edition of Blast from the Past Week - Safe Computing! That's right, from today until next Sunday, July 27th, you may retake the Safe Computing course to add to your dossier. You may also retake it if you want to have some extra electives lying around, but remember to email Dacien and I first to remove the old score. Safe Computing isn't all that hard of a course, it's pretty easier really, and probably takes thirty minutes tops to complete. This is a one week only event, so head on over to the Shadow Academy and get in line! Course notes can be found here.



Projects

--As all of my reports say, we're currently working on like nine new courses and five or six degrees, so we are keeping ourselves busy. Don't expect anything new to be released until mid to late-August, though. The programming courses are also being updated and changed around, with some new ones written, so we are completely revamping the programming department at the Shadow Academy, hopefully to help train some new DB coders.

--If you volunteered to audit a Shadow Academy course, please try to get them finished within the next week. Dacien and I would like to have the changes coded in early August, so obviously we need the audits. If you have emailed us telling us what's up, that's cool. If you've already submitted your audits, then I should have replied verifying that they were received. Otherwise, get busy.

--I'm not too sure where the Dark Vault revamp stands right now. It wouldn't be completed for a while, but I've realized that there is a much easier and simple way to go about it, so we'll see how that turns out. Wiki pages are also still being worked on. I've been so busy, they just keep getting pushed back, but they will get finished. After that, like I said, we will be looking into revamping the fleet.



Featured Course of the Report

Due to Blast from the Past, the featured course of this report is..... Safe Computing! Hurry, you only have one week to take it! Course notes can be found in the news post above and the important links section below.



Important Links

--SA Website

--SA Degree Requirements

--SA Forums

--Safe Computing Course Notes



Summary

• Capital Starship Studies open to applications
  
• July Journeymen Competition extended one week
  
• Safe Computing reopened for one week only!
  
• Finish up those SA audits!
  

Sith Warlord Aabsdu di Plagia Dupar
Headmaster of the Brotherhood

Report time.

Well, i've been waist deep in several projects lately, as well as helping a few other people with their stuff as they need it. One that almost everyone has seen is the awarding of the Seals of Remembrance, which were awarded for the recent Independence Games.Also, I've been working with Jac to help him do some of the work needed to get the New CHaracter Sheets ready for beta testing. There's a metric buttload of work involved in that...much more than most think...but as anyone who has had the pleasure of looking at it already, we can tell you how incrediawesome it is going to be.

Aside from that, I've been working on the Character Image Generator. This will be a cool sort of thing where you will be able to fish through different faces, and then change them through a set of options like eye color, hair style and color, skin tone, etc. Yes there will be plenty of species as well. And there's some really cool orther options we're looking to add in. So here's a screenshot from my sandbox, where i build everything. click it to zoom, but it's still pretty small.

What you're looking at is a sandbox for *just one face*, with a crapton of options. The idea is to make it so that everyone can narrow down to what they actually look like, and it can display on the doss, or saved and put on the wiki, so that we're not stealing images offline from other people...and so that half of our characters in this club aren't replicas of bad anime, video game characters, or whatever.

So yeah, this is another one of the sandbox images, showing a sample saber and it's guts. If you've been reading my reports, you saw this. Now, you're smart people, so I won't draw you all a map. I think you'll still be able to figure out where I'm headed with this sort of thing.

KOTOR MMO confirmed...kinda. "We've got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development," EA CEO Riccitiello told reporters. "The first title, based on the Warhammer property, will launch soon. And the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about in partnership with Lucas [Arts is] coming out of BioWare, which is, I think, quite possibly the most anticipated game, full stop, for the industry." When contacted by GameSpot, BioWare reps declined to comment further.

Clone Wars TV show/Movie is going to be more 'fun' than dark. "I wanted this to have the banter. I wanted this to be funny," Director Filoni said in an interview at Skywalker Ranch.

You're not going out in that, are you? Heck, your own brother would go after you if you were wear...wait a minute...

SW custom Steampunk action figures. No collection is complete without them.

And guys, if you're going to send me pics, they kinda have to be pg-13 to get on here. We don't need to get the site flagged as porn and end up filtered out at everyone's work or school. That girl with the lightsaber.... well.. That's not PG-13. And I hope it wasn't a member in the pic. :P

Congrats and thanks go to: Dante on T:G
Bloodfyre on CM
Tron Sadow on his Steel Cross
and about 140 people who scored themselves Seals of Remembrance
And I got promoted to DP, which is a huge honor. Thanks for all the kind words, everyone.
Well done, all around.

And that's all for this time. If you guys have any questions, or need any help, shoot me an email, or PM me on IRC. Have fun!

Welcome to my first report as Tribune!

I apologize for the slight tardiness, but my wife decided to have our son a couple of weeks early...:)


Gaming Nights
These will run from Sunday to Friday for the moment, but I plan on bringing back some sort of Sunday tournament at least monthly once I can see about whether or not we can go back to the SIT type of rewards. I'll be sitting down this weekend to award all of the past CF's that need to be awarded as well as any PoB's that need to be caught up on.

ICTE
A new site! With reporting and live scores so that no one will have to worry about if they hit their 6 or 7 opponents.
Karel and I were chatting last week about how I'd love to get a site complete with live scoring, and lo and behold, he made one for me while I was semi-LoA playing daddy to my newborn. For a look at the site check out http://teutza.com/icte/news.php as it should be totally operational by this weekend.

Grand Master's Royal Guard
This should be ready for release in the coming month as I need to get with Muz and Sarin on the prospectus that I sent them regarding the return of the Guard. It will mostly be a points based honorific with the emphasis on active gaming instead of being separate from the rest of the DJB.

New External Gaming
I've been in contact with three groups already about setting up some limited scale comps for us. More info on this as we get closer to a finalized comp.

Console Gaming
I've been investigating the major console gaming community sites that deal with competitions, and I'll be forwarding a plan to Muz/Sarin on this at the end of the month.

Remember... ICTE starts at midnight EST on Saturday and runs for 24 hours.... I hope to see everyone on #outerrim!

Signed,

Dante