Daily Illuminator Archive for January 2005

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January 1, 2005:
So the John Deere company is working on autonomous farm tractors and so on. Makes sense . . . read article

January 2, 2005:
Or at least we can get a really fast car. How fast? . . . read article

January 3, 2005:
Frank Kelly Freas, 11-time winner of the Hugo for Best Professional Artist, and one of the best-liked members of the professional science fiction community for many, many years, died in his sleep yesterday morning. He was born in 1922 . . . read article

January 4, 2005:
Yesterday was an interplanetary anniversary. The NASA rover Spirit has been on Mars for a full (Earth) year! . . . read article

January 5, 2005:
Since I discovered this webcomic, I've been logging in regularly to read it. A Miracle of Science is written by Jon Kilgannon and drawn by Mark Sachs . . . read article

January 6, 2005:
Blizzard has managed an MMORPG that's cool. You want it . . . read article

January 7, 2005:
The mastermind of Hero Games, Steve Long, will be in Pyramid's Chat Auditorium tonight at 7pm (Central). Sure, you could ask him about Ultimate Mystic, Hudson City: Urban Abyss, or any of the other products Hero Games published last year, or get the scoop on UNTIL Superpowers Database II, The Underworld Sourcebook, or any of the others scheduled for this year, but you know you really want to beg for hints to his Song Quotes Contest . . . read article

January 8, 2005:
The builders of Stonehenge are long gone and therefore hard to track down, but when the same thing happens in the late 70s and we still can't get a handle on it, it's embarrassing. Some guy managed to erect The Georgia Guidestones without anyone really sitting up and taking notice . . . read article

January 9, 2005:
Guardians of Order has announced some massive changes recently, and the Internet rumor mill has been working overtime. GoO's founder, Mark C. MacKinnon, along with Jesse Scoble (Creative Director) and Adam Jury (Webmaster), will be in Pyramid's Auditorium on Tuesday, January 11th at 7pm (Central) to help separate fact from fiction . . . read article

January 10, 2005:
According to Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Dec. 26 earthquake that caused the massive tsunami that devastated south Asia and east Africa also redistributed the mass of the planet enough to alter the rate of the planet's spin. By 3 millionths of a second . . . read article

January 11, 2005:
It's the beginning of a new year, which brings with it a sense of reflection. Ok, so almost everyone else did their retrospective in December, but we were busy enjoying the holiday! . . . read article

January 12, 2005:
Look at the teeny powerful Mac! We may have to get some of these around the office . . . read article

January 13, 2005:
Some planned maintenance - that was only supposed to take ten minutes - ran into some unplanned problems last night. We were offline for about two hours . . . read article

January 14, 2005:
Since the release of Munchkin, we've repeatedly heard that it was too hard to separate the two decks after a game. The faces are the same color, and the backs are the same color around the edges . . . read article

January 15, 2005:
As of Tuesday, February 1, Steve Jackson Games will formally relocate our shipping facilities to PSI of Stone Mountain, GA. PSI has been distributing books for us for a while, and doing a good job . . . read article

January 16, 2005:
The first translation of the GURPS Basic Set has arrived in our office . . . two big, pretty hardbacks . . . in Korean! These were produced by Dayspring Games, and very nice looking they are indeed . . . read article

January 17, 2005:
This is the latest release from Steve Jackson Games, now on its way to distributors everywhere and soon to be on the shelves of a game store near you: Munchkin Fu 2 - Monky Business Munchkin Fu won the Origins "Gamer's Choice Award" for the Best Card Game of 2003. How do you follow something like that? . . . read article

January 18, 2005:
Starting today, our webzines (Pyramid and JTAS) are using a new login system. When you try to access the subscriber-only areas, you'll be redirected to our new secure login form . . . read article

January 19, 2005:
NOT moving anywhere. Our online store did not go to Vegas when the shipping/warehouse functions moved there; it stayed in Austin . . . read article

January 20, 2005:
We are delighted to report that, at long last, our e23 site is up and running. Our thanks to everyone who made this possible . . . especially perl goddess Kira, the patient testers on the W23 staff, the Men In Black who beta-tested, editor Scott Haring . . . and to Phil Reed, who laid a lot of the groundwork during his time at SJ Games and whose own company, Ronin Arts, is well represented in our initial PDF offerings . . . read article

January 21, 2005:
Booz Allen Hamilton is looking for a teleport test engineer. What does the job entail? . . . read article

January 22, 2005:
Steve Jackson Games announces for release in May, 2005: GURPS Banestorm Welcome to the land of Yrth, a magical realm of incredibly varied races and monsters - including people snatched from our Earth and other worlds by the cataclysmic Banestorm! Whole villages were transported - from such diverse locales as medieval England, France, Germany, and the Far East . . . read article

January 23, 2005:
Technically it's not a robot, because it's tele-operated, but it's got a gun and it's on its way to a place where it can shoot and be shot at. Read the Yahoo story . . . read article

January 24, 2005:
For those who fondly remember this GDW classic: a new line of professionally-produced audio adventures! Not game stuff . . . fiction set in the Space: 1889 world . . . read article

January 25, 2005:
Plasma lights are neat . . . but in the past 20 years they've gone from museum pieces to dime-store novelties, getting smaller and cheaper rather than bigger and more beautiful. But here's something different . . . read article

January 26, 2005:
Just pretend this is a milk carton . . . We need contact information for Kirk Reinert, who did the cover of the last edition of GURPS Fantasy . . . read article

January 27, 2005:
Douglas Adams, creator of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, has joined the celestials . . . he has an asteroid named after him. and not just any asteroid. This particular space rock was chosen because it carried the provisional designation 2001 DA42 . . . that is: the year of his death his initials and, of course, the answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything . . . read article

January 28, 2005:
Turns out the mammals weren't the wimps we thought they were. We live-birthers have been giving lizards what-for for 130 million years . . . read article

January 29, 2005:
How do you take every GURPS world and weave them into one book? The man for the job is Ken Hite, and the book is GURPS Infinite Worlds. As for the "how," you'll just have to ask him that yourself . . . read article

January 30, 2005:
So . . . on Saturday a number of staffers, and a couple of local MIBs, came by the office, and we had a LAN party for UltraCorps . . . with a few [Not Available At Your Clearance] logging in remotely. It went pretty well . . . read article

January 31, 2005:
It's up and it's working, and a lot of you are buying downloads and giving us good comments. And we're still rolling along . . . read article

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