Daily Illuminator Archive for April 2007

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April 1, 2007:
Google, first as an information organizer and then, with features like Google Maps, as an information provider, has been highly trusted. Now they've put a foot very wrong . . . read article

April 2, 2007:
So . . . there I am at my local grocery store, and I see flyers everywhere featuring their happy anthropomorphic grocery bag (really). They're announcing a "Customer Appreciation Day" and talking about encouraging healthy lifestyles . . . read article

April 3, 2007:
There will be a scheduled downtime for maintenance on our router and network beginning at 10:30 PM CDT this Thursday, April 5th (Friday, 3:30 AM GMT). The expected maintenance window is approximately three hours . . . read article

April 4, 2007:
A new UltraCorps game, N-Space, is now open. It will close, and start ticking, at 10pm CST Wednesday night, and as of this writing there are 223 players in the game and 27 positions open . . . read article

April 5, 2007:
Beamed power is not a new idea. But maybe this time it will work . . . . . read article

April 6, 2007:
Alienshift takes you deep inside the illuminated mind, but it doesn't stop there. When you pop out the other end you'll find Majestic-12 and the shadow government that created it; John Titor's travels through time; and Hopi prophecy springing eternal . . . read article

April 7, 2007:
If you were bored with geometry in high school, it's because they didn't give you problems like this. Read the comments, too . . . read article

April 8, 2007:
Austin had its coldest recorded day Saturday - lowest low, lowest high. But there seems to be a lot of that going around this weekend . . . read article

April 9, 2007:
I've got two trips coming up: April 19, Jimmie Bragdon and I will leave Austin for Penguicon. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of old friends and playing with the Chaos Machine . . . read article

April 10, 2007:
I'm hoping that not too many people tried to join the current UltraCorps beta and couldn't get in. Or maybe I'm hoping that hundreds of you wanted in! . . . read article

April 11, 2007:
When first I heard about it, the project page for this wonderful steampunk keyboard was swamped, probably due to hits generated by the Gizmodo article. Things have settled down now, and you should go look . . . read article

April 12, 2007:
An update for those anxiously awaiting GURPS Martial Arts news: We carefully shaved words off the manuscript with a straight razor (held in our toes, no less) and pounded it into the layout with a flying elbow drop. Only then did we discover that it weighed in at 256 pages rather than the 240 pages of every GURPS Fourth Edition book so far . . . read article

April 13, 2007:
Ever had trouble with math? Tried to add or subtract, or maybe do taxes, but came up with a surprising and probably incorrect result? . . . read article

April 14, 2007:
So it goes. Read the excellent New York Times obituary . . . read article

April 15, 2007:
Can anybody beat November 1994? We knew that the Daily Illuminator was one of the very first weblogs - long before the word "weblog," let alone "blog" - but we didn't realize that it's apparently the longest-running one, with daily updates, all still archived, since November 1994 . . . read article

April 16, 2007:
Last week our friend, gaming buddy, and co-worker Nicholas Vacek left SJ Games, returning to his home town to deal with personal business. Fortunately, he's going to be able to continue with some of his duties on a contract basis . . . so the person answering your random mail to info@sjgames.com will still be Nicholas . . . read article

April 17, 2007:
June 9, held by and for a very elite group of gamers: our troops in Iraq and the civilian contractors who support them. It will be at Camp Adder/Tallil Airbase . . . read article

April 18, 2007:
This might truly qualify for the title of Ultimate Lego Chaingun . . . 11 rounds per second, 64-shot capacity. Sebastian Dick is to be congratulated . . . read article

April 19, 2007:
One of our goals this year - in fact, our #1 objective - was "Don't run out of Munchkin stuff." Well, guess who's out of Munchkin Cthulhu. It's been back-ordered for weeks . . . read article

April 20, 2007:
Paizo Publishing announced Thursday, on their home page, that the long-running Dragon and Dungeon magazines would be discontinued. See that page for the details . . . read article

April 21, 2007:
The titanic battle continues at Left-or-Right. No, not that titanic battle . . . you can catch that every night on CNN and Fox News . . . read article

April 22, 2007:
Sometime mid-day, Austin time, the crew and I will be boarding the big iron bird and winging off to Las Vegas for the annual GAMA Trade Show. We'll meet up with Ross Jepson, our Canadian Director of Sales (he does all our sales, but happens to be Canadian -- not that we hold that against him), and the mysterious MIB Control, aided by his key minion from the West Coast . . . read article

April 23, 2007:
Wow, what a couple of days this has been. Penguicon was very, very good . . . read article

April 24, 2007:
And now the page is up and the secret is revealed. We'll be giving copies of the Munchkin Rigged Demo to our Men in Black and to the retailers at GTS . . . read article

April 25, 2007:
Laura Balzer is the comic artist who illustrated the upcoming Pegasus game Kleine Helden (Small Heroes). At a recent convention in Hanover, one of our ever-watchful Men In Black asked her to draw her characters with the Eye in the Pyramid . . . and here's the result! . . . read article

April 26, 2007:
In the "Is It Gross, or Really Cool?" category, we have Make Your Own DNA Necklace! While I don't think it'll be the fashion trend of the season, I can see it being used to bring a bit of science into a kid's summer craft activity . . . read article

April 27, 2007:
What makes the deathbed confessions of highwayman James Allen so fascinating? It's not that it's a compelling read, it's that the book is bound in human skin . . . that of the author . . . read article

April 28, 2007:
We talked for a long time at Penguicon last weekend, and never once did he drop a hint about what he's doing this week in Something Positive. Okay, Randy, you got me . . . read article

April 29, 2007:
I expect Paul will have a comprehensive report on the GAMA Trade Show sometime next week, once he recovers. In the meantime, here are the questions I got most often . . . read article

April 30, 2007:
GTS is over and done with. All the "gotta do in time for the show" crunches are past . . . read article

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