COL Ricardo is now 100% officially SM/2 Professor. I removed LC Guthwulf from the details and such for the courses and placed Ricardo's details there. It appears that CM Flelm is back from the dead too, so ICQ marking should be more regular. The Computer Basics Professor is also getting somewhat better from his illness and is marking tests again. It seems we might also see the PHP course in the next month or so coming back. The next planned step in the ASP and PHP courses is a unified database design course to teach how you should design a database (there are bad ways of doing it). After that, we'll have ASP/2, which will cover the basics of the kind of online databases used by the TIE Corps site and such.
Sometime this weekend, I'll be uploading a competition to the site about a new (or rather, the first) motto for the PLT Daedalus. This will then be used for a competition to design a new banner for the PLT (using that motto). I've talked to the Flight Officer about some sort of regular cadet mailing. Core to this is the fact that one of the biggest criticisms leveled against the Training Office is the lack of communication and interaction between it and cadets. Currently, that interaction is only initiated by cadets in the form of asking questions via email, IRC and so on. The mailing will include things like a summary of events going on in the TC (as a "See what you're missing" kind of thing), Wing/Ship highlights (promoting a ship/wing each issue, giving cadets an idea of which ship/wing to join), exerts from the Training Manual and tips on completing their training. We might also include a section on procedures (ie. How do I do this?) but that one is still a maybe. Hopefully, this thing will result in higher cadet graduate rates, giving us more pilots.
On the website front, there's a new poll on the site. It's in response to the rather horrible title for Episode 2. The poll asks members what they think of the title. Over 75% of voters have expressed negative feelings (54% saying it sounds like a crappy B-movie, the rest asking for their rifle). 7% of voters admitted that they don't actually like Star Wars and they're really in the EH to pick up chicks, while just under 5% of the voters are so deluded that they think the title rocks and Lucas is God. :P In the area of new features on the site, I've had a few ideas/suggestions recently, including a "Countdown" counter for the IWATS10K total. I'm also thinking of adding a quick-jump form element on the competitions page so people can enter a competition number and it loads, as opposed to manually going through the list (similar to the Profile ID form element on the TC roster search page). Other stuff in the planning stage includes a serious rewrite of the EH Ladder to deal with issues in the last season, along with a message board.
Currently, the total graduate count is around 8,940. My total graduates (for courses I mark) has just 74 more til I get to 6,000. Graduates from my courses currently account for around 66% of all the graduates. And happy birthday to COL Shadowhawk. :P
ID Line Blast from the Past
TRN/CT Dras Hempor/Delta Company/PLT Daedalus (IWATS Core, 9th Aug 1999)
FL/LCM Sarriss/Alpha 3-1/Wing I/SSSD Sovereign (mIRC/2, 14th Aug 1999)
Current Staff
HA Astatine - Training Officer/IWATS Dean
VA Mell - Training Office Assistant
COL Ford - Professor, TIE Fighter Tactics
CPT Predator - Professor, Rebellion Tactics
CPT Daisuke Airyu - Professor, Graphics
LC E. Tarkin - Professor, XvT Fighter Tactics
LC Marcin - Professor, XvT Missions
CM Flelm - Professor, ICQ
AD Ari - Professor, VBS
MAJ Aylius Khan - Professor, Computer Basics
COL Scoser - Professor, TIE Missions
COL Ricardo - Professor, Squadron Management 2
COL Striker - Professor, XWA Missions
TO-DEAN/HA Astatine/CS-6/SSSD Sovereign
MoH/IC/OoR/GOE/GSx2/SS/BSx3/PC/ISM/MoI-DC/LoC/CoS/CoE/CoL/LoA/OV-3E
{IWATS-IIC/1/2}
"Command Attache free since January 2000"
"I just can't seem to score with chicks. They just bounce off the edge of the hockey goal and lie there chirping in pain."