tj_cool

Information
Screen name	tj_cool
Member no.	152102
Joined	7 Jan 2009
Gender	Male
Member Group	Supervisors
Wiki Group	Sysops
Flashcart	SC DSTWO
Codes in	Java, PHP, C(++)
Wiki Contribs	3,179

tj_cool is a (staff) member of GBAtemp. He registered to the site to get to know more about the Wii hacking scene.

History

Like many people, I stumbled on the site while trying to find out more about how to softmod his Nintendo Wii Console. Using one of the guides on the site, I eventually managed to perform the then difficult steps, like downgrading, patching various system titles, etc. I kept browsing the forums out of interest, and eventually got to know enough about the "scene" that I decided I should help other people out too. So on January 7th, 2009, I registered my account.

I remained active on the site by helping out other members, and by improving documentation of various hacking methods. After the "USB Loader era" of Wii hacking began, I could often be found in the USB Loader GX thread, answering questions. After a while, I also decided to rewrite the "Readmii", which essentially became the first guide I wrote for Wii hacking.

After spending a good amount of time on the Wii hacking forums, many people started writing their own guides on how to softmod a Wii. I noticed however that none of these guides really explained what exactly their steps were truly doing. This led to people blindly following guides, often doing steps that were both unneeded and dangerous. As a result, I decided to create a guide by myself. This guide became to be known as the Complete Softmod Guide, since I wanted it to be "complete" with information of what the steps were doing. The initial version of the guide was a simple Google Docs document, inspired by the GX Readmii, but it later switched to Google Sites; and was expanded greatly.

Due to my activity and helpful posts in the Wii section I was eventually approached on IRC by Ace Gunman, one of the former site Admins, asking if I would be interested in a Moderator position on the site. Though I was not entirely sure I could handle being a moderator on such a large site, I decided to accept the position because the Wii section could definitely use more active moderators. The promotion went through on May 2nd, 2010, a little over a year after I joined the site.

After becoming a staff member, my posting speed decreased grealty, as I had to focus more on moderating the Wii section. Due to the large amount of activity in this section at the time, this was definitely not an easy task! I can remember various occasions on which I got angry PMs about members disagreeing with my decisions. I guess this is to be expected when moderating a large forum. I remained active as a staffer and was eventually promoted again in February 2011. To my surprise, I skipped the Global Moderator rank entirely and went straight to Supervisor; where I've been ever since.

In time my role as a staff member started to greatly change. The Wii section started to become somewhat less active, and there were enough new Moderators to handle it. Since I am a programmer, and Narin, the previous main developer of the site left, I was asked by Costello to help maintain the underlying code of the site. Over the years I have helped program site features and even got us to update the site to a newer IPB version. Unfortunatly, a while after, on the site's 10th anniversary, we were hacked, and the site had to be taken down. As a result, we made the heavy decision of abandoning the entire codebase based on IPB and purchased a XenForo license. Since then, I've basically become the main technical maintainer of the site. These days, my role is mostly to fix site bugs in the code, and to develop most of our custom site features.

Wiki Contributions

My edits started out very simple, with creating this page (though still way less detailed than it is now). I got more interested in the MediaWiki software by editing this wiki, and became fairly good with the syntax.

I kept making more edits on the wiki, and was eventually made a Sysop by Costello because I was active, and the wiki needed one. This happened before I became a staff member on the actual forums. At the moment, I'm still the only active Sysop, thus probably the best person to contact for Wiki problems.

I made use of the Sysop rights to update some of the older protected pages, and to delete most of the other old pages. I keep track of everything I do in my Wiki Updates page.

Gaming Consoles

• Gameboy Color (Purple) - The first handheld I got as a child.
• Nintendo DS lite (Cobalt Blue)
• Nintendo DSi (Black)
• Nintendo 3DS (Blue)

• Nintendo Gamecube (Silver) - First console I bought.
• Nintendo Wii (White) - Actually my brother's.

• Laptop with Steam on it

Trivia

• He has been in the Supervisors group longer than he has been in any other group combined.
• His most contributed to section on the site is Wii - Hacking, with over 3000 posts.
• His 2 original DS Lites got stolen, together with the Flashcart
• His best subjects at school were mathematics (which he had 8 hours a week!) and programming.
• The first time he posted in the EOF, he thought he was still in the Wii section (eventhough he edited it out before anyone saw it) :P