Why Updates Have Been Slim Lately

You might have noticed that when November came around, the updates almost slowed to a halt, with the only activity being the NC Elections.

As you may or may not know, outside of doing SMBHQ, I am currently studying for a degree in film studies at York University in Toronto. Well, on November 6, the teach assistants and contract faculty went on strike, suspending my classes and leaving my year in limbo.

The last six weeks have been a very stressful time for me and I have been spending a lot of my time either trying to keep up with my assignments or playing World of Warcraft to get my mind off the stress.

I will still try to do updates when I can and there is still an RPC on Friday I am excited about.

Hopefully the strike will be over soon and things can return to normal in my life.

It's an imposter I tell you!

Some of you may have noticed a "blog" for SMBHQ on blogspot (I will not post the link and give it free publicity - but you can probably figure it out).

That blogspot blog has absolutely nothing to do with SMBHQ. The only official blog for SMBHQ is this blog that you are reading now.

Ignore that blogspot blog and hopefully the guy will get bored and stop posting pictures of dogs.

An easy solution to not owning a Wii

Next week I am going to start adding what I call "In-Store Reviews."

These will be short reviews (probably only a paragraph), which will based on my play experiences via in-store displays or similar demo formats. This will allow me to review games that I have not purchased, such as pretty much are the Mario games for the Wii.

Instead of putting a rating, I will say how willing I would be to playing the game in full. Then of course, if I ever do buy the game, I will later write a full review (though I would still archive the original).

Look out for it.

Get ready for Mario Kart month!!

The entire month of May is going to be declared "Mario Kart month" at SMBHQ.

We already have the Mario Kart Wii contest going on and later this week I will be posting the game page for that game.

Then, as part of my ongoing development of the Era Pages, in the subsequent weeks I will post game pages (and reviews where possible) for the three previous Mario Kart games (those being Mario Kart DS, Mario Kart Double Dash, and Mario Kart Super Circuit).

Hope you enjoy the racing action!

Yeah, I'm and old geezer

Today is my 26th birthday!

I am now at least a decade older than most of the fanbase of SMBHQ.

SMBHQ's Super Smash Bros Coverage

Super Smash Bros Brawl just came out and it is probably the biggest release this year for the Wii.

I want to make sure that there is proper coverage on the site for the came, at the very least a decent game page.

However, getting content for said game page can be hard when 90% of sites watermark their artwork and screenshots (something I've never understood -- it's not like they own the rights to images from games)

However, I should be able to get enough content for a decent sized game page, which will be up within the week.

Update on the Era Pages project

I figured that the first blog post of 2008 should be an update of the ambitious project of having all the game information in one convenient section.

I was glad towards the end of last year to successfully have created game pages for every game from 2006 to present. This year I hope to create game pages for the Gamecube era, maybe even trying for two game pages at a time.

I'm working on a minor adjustment for the gamelist pages, which should surface as an update either later today (if I have time) or sometime within the week.

The adjustments are as follows:

• A change in the colour-scheme for the Gamecube Era (purple) and Will Revolution (Grey)
• The games will now be listed as rows in the table, which looks a lot neater.
• I'm adding logos for the systems. I even managed to hunt down logos for rare items, such as the GBA E-Reader and the Philips CD-i.
• The main addition, will be the inclusion of "quick links," where you easily get access to reviews, game guides, or codes (subject to availability). I would consider that a fair alternative to having a separate page linking them.

I have the new Wii Revolution list pretty much done. I will work on the other pages later today and hopefully you will see them soon.

6Mil and Counting

I just noticed that the counter on SMBHQ has passed 6 million.

Thanks to all the people over the years that helped reach this milestone.

10th Anniversary: One thing down, a billion to go

I finished my redesign of the SMBHQ front page for the 10th Anniversary.

Other than navigation, it's not too different than the current one.

However, there is still lots of preparation in the two weeks we have left.

I've discovered that SMBHQ is compatible with a Nintendo Wii... Also, I merged my Blogger accounts with my gmail account.

And I'm back.....

It kind of sucks saying a tearful goodbye, only to return 6 hours later.

However, my mom made a good point to me by saying that if I have time to go to the movies and play video games I have time to update this site.

As such, I'm giving it another go.

So, get ready for a new era of SMBHQ with me and MetalMan making things pretty busy around here.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

As many of you no doubt read last night, Sean has decided to cease his duties as webmaster of SMBHQ to focus on his schoolwork. We thank Sean for his years of service to the site and wish him the best of luck in his current and future endeavours.

Taking his place as the main webmaster for SMBHQ will be MetalMan88, formerly of the Super Smash Quest section and more recently an updater for the Super Smash Stadium. In his tenure, MetalMan promises to "help get some of the cobwebby sections back up to spec, so look forward to plenty of updates with my name on them."

I also plan to take a more active role in the site, striving for at least weekly updates to some of the more stagnant sections of the site. Look for regular posting to pick up starting in April, and thanks for bearing with us during the transition.

Time to say goodbye

In November 1997 Kyle let me take over the guides section and I have been with SMBHQ for the last 8 1/2 years or so.

There was a point it seemed like I was running half the site, as I kept adding more and more sections to my repertoire on the site. There is of course Mysteries, which ended up being my main contribution. There is also the chat room, the mailbag, and who knows what else.

Then in August 2004, I was rewarded for my dedicated contributions by becoming co-webmaster of the site.

But now, 4 months before SMBHQ's 10th Anniversary and 2 weeks before my 25th birthday, it is time for me to move on.

I would stay if I could, however, real life has that habbit of sneaking up on you. As some of you may know I went back to full-time studies at York University in Fall 2005. I have tried to keep updating the site like normal, but things like readings, essays, and classes can really eat into one's schedule. Looking back, I can see how the updates really slowed within the last few years.

Kyle really wants SMBHQ to be updated more frequently by someone with more time on their hands. As such, I am stepping down and MetalMan is stepping in.

I wish him the best and hope that with him (and Kyle), SMBHQ would be in good hands.

The Pains of Finding a Ticker

It occurred to me that Gage was doing such a good job keeping the new current (much better than just me), however there were no notices of his reports on the front page.

As such, this morning I set out to find a way to convert the page's RSS feed into a news ticker on the front page.

Sadly, finding a good quality script was harder than I thought. To have an on-sever script, we needed to have things like PHP and CGI, which is not really easily available on SMBHQ's server.

As such, I had to settle for a third party option. It should settle our needs for the time being (though the little ad tends to get in the way).

I also had to get rid of the events ticker (most because it wasn't loading along with the new ticker. Hopefully, I'll find a new way of linking site events.

Peachfan will be at I-CON!

For anyone who reads this and is going to I-CON at the end of this month, I will be attending! I'll be rather obvious, in my Princess Peach costume, so if you see me around, feel free to say hi! I half-expect to see someone dressed as Bowser try to kidnap me, eheh.

Headaches in web design

You may not have noticed it, but the new mailbag look has been giving me a headache.

Apparently, most browsers except for I.E., are very picky about how CSS (that's Cascading Style Sheets) are coding. So, some new features that were appearing in i.e. (which doesn't care about the quality of the code) did not appear in Firefox.

After hours of tinkering, I believe I finally have it acceptable.

The torment I have to go through just so you can have some nice looking pages....

What to expect in the coming weeks at SMBHQ

I thought I would update you on what's planned at SMBHQ in the near future:

• Very soon (maybe even later tonight) we will finally have the next edition of the mailbag. Hopefully, we will be able to get these out more often.
• Since Christmas, I have been very busy playing Yoshi's Island DS. You could probably expect a game page for the game within the next week or so.
• I'll probably start a new mini-contest for the 10th anniversary (I should point out that the memories have been very good so far -- it would be hard just to choose a few)

That's all I have planned in a nutshell. Kyle was planning a little something, but I'll keep under wraps until I know it's ready and/or still going to happen.

SMBHQ New Years Resolutions.....nearly a week late

• Create new game pages for most, if not all, of the Mario games
• Get someone reliable to run the Fan Fiction section
• Relaunch Super Mario Mysteries
• Find some way to get people to actually check out the chat room
• Come up with something halfway decent for SMBhq's 10th Anniversary (especially after missing the 9th anniversary)
  

Game....Pages....Hard

I noticed it's more difficult than I expected to put together new game pages. It's overwhelming trying to put so much information into one place.

Maybe, I should try and NOT to do all the subsections at once......

Still, you should expect the first new game page later today.

SMBHQ has a blog?!

I've gotta check SMBHQ more often. I'm not even trying for one and now I'm in two.

Over in the SSS Section, we've been updating the bios and adding Epics we lost. We should have a new match up sometime in December, I'm hoping. Otherwise... (pulls out a cattle prod) I shall have to interfer. MWAHAHAHA!!! =P Have a happy holiday, fans!