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Daily Illuminator Archive for February 2026
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February 1, 2026:
I missed it in the moment, but the last week of January saw the invention of television, demonstrated for the first time by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird to journalists gathered in a café in Soho. There's more info on Baird's Wikipedia page, and a fun overview (including some neat pictures) on the blog of "diamond geezer."
So if anyone's running a modern-ish time travel campaign and wants an interesting temporal destination about a century ago, I suspect the next few years will offer lots of fun milestones . . .
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February 2, 2026:
According to the Hubble Reentry Tracker, the Hubble Space Telescope's decaying orbit may have it reentering our atmosphere as early as 2029. The best-case scenario has it coming back to Earth around 2040 . . .
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February 3, 2026:
Okay, it's not quite that good. But at least we'll have the option to turn it off completely . . .
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February 4, 2026:
For those who are looking for a bit of graphical atmosphere for their games, I recommend Hollywood, by Dustin Kirkland. As the name implies, it generates a Hollywood movie-style multi-paned terminal window full of flashing text and interesting-but-pretty-much-meaningless ASCII-graphical elements . . .
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February 5, 2026:
On August 19 of last year, I wrote about Fix the News, an antidote to the "doomscrolling" behavior that today's headlines encourage.
They're still out there with a weekly helping of meaningful good news. I ran across some research on why "hopescrolling" is actually, specifically, good for you . . .
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February 6, 2026:
The season of love is upon us, and we'd like to celebrate with you during the Sweet Savings Event on Warehouse 23! Now through February 15, you can save 14% on an exciting assortment of games and accessories . . .
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February 7, 2026:
Do you want to see programmable robots smaller than a grain of salt? Okay; now that I type it out, I realize that might be difficult, because that's really small . . .
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February 8, 2026:
A side effect of growing up playing GURPS is that I occasionally think and talk about my everyday life in game terms – especially when I'm talking to other gamers. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the joy and satisfaction that comes from rolling against default . . .
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February 9, 2026:
I've loved the movie-mocking TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (a.k.a. MST3K) literally my entire adult life (and a bit before). I've also been a fan of the related movie-mocking project RiffTrax, starring many of the alumni from MST3K . . .
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February 10, 2026:
A YouTube Short by Reuben Levine tells the amazing story of how the Colombian Army hid a message in a pop song via morse code. You can read more about it on Wikipedia, or just see the visualization . . .
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February 11, 2026:
Munchkin Second Edition features bold, modern art that has been fully updated by Munchkin's original artist, John Kovalic. We polled our staff to find out which card is their new favorite!
Thief . . .
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February 12, 2026:
I adore "useless" tech ideas . . . so my day was made when I stumbled across an amazingly impractical device. Behold, courtesy of the Adafruit blog: the magnetic-core-memory USB drive! . . .
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February 13, 2026:
For those who want inspiration for a mystery or other gaming mayhem – or just want to see something really flipping adorable – I present . . . a YouTube short of a cockatoo taking control of a home's voice-activated system.
-- Steven Marsh
. . .
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February 14, 2026:
I just realized that February is the 10th anniversary of one of the mundanely quirkier items we've offered at Steve Jackson Games: Munchkin Sketch Edition. For those who aren't familiar, the Sketch Edition is mechanically all the cards from the beloved core Munchkin experience ( First Edition, of course – the Second Edition was nearly a decade away, conceptually) . . .
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February 15, 2026:
I'm not sure if you all will find this as amusing as I do, but check out the first 70 seconds or so of the Wikipedia file Alcohol prohibtion US since 1880.webm, with the sound on. I haven't stopped thinking about it since I saw it, and am inspired to run a GURPS After the End or Reign of Steel adventure . . .
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February 16, 2026:
Here's a life hack I've used for a few years, and especially ramped up in the past couple of months since more of my gear has upgraded to USB-C: magnetic USB dongles. If you've ever messed with old-school MagSafe connectors on Apple laptops, the concept is familiar . . .
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February 17, 2026:
I recently found "Fighting Fire with Fire" to be an interesting read - it's tempting to push our workloads onto the various powerful and easily accessible AI chatbots out there, especially for students. What's a teacher to do? . . .
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February 18, 2026:
I'm not going to bury the lede here: The in-the-moment crowdfunding campaign of Munchkin Second Edition is ending soon on BackerKit. It's currently scheduled to wrap up sometime on Wednesday, but I believe BackerKit has a special process – the Backer Train – where the campaign keeps on going so long as folks keep buying it . . .
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February 19, 2026:
The Verge reports that the Nintendo Switch is the best-selling gaming console from Nintendo, with its 155-million units sold being enough to blast past the Nintendo DS. The Switch is in the number-two slot overall, behind the PlayStation 2 (since everyone knows that the future from now on is being able to play DVDs), but it might still catch up . . .
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February 20, 2026:
This annual report is something I've been doing for more than a decade now. Here's the last one, and links to earlier years are at the bottom . . .
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February 21, 2026:
I was pleasantly surprised by our own hidden missives here, having learned from Steve about how the option to disable AI in Firefox is coming soon. I'd actually found a similar path for myself via a project called Just the Browser . . .
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February 22, 2026:
As promised, here's the sci-fi follow up to my fantasy RPG music post from early January. This time I'll share some of the music I listen to when making plans for characters and campaigns with a high tech level . . .
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February 23, 2026:
We're catching our breath after the end of our incredibly successful Munchkin Second Edition crowdfunding campaign on BackerKit. As the dust is settling (briefly), we're looking at some of the more-interesting numbers to emerge from this campaign . . .
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February 24, 2026:
We are well into Zine Month / Zine Quest / Zinetopia . . . and I have two friends whose projects are close to funding! I'm excited about both of these projects and have personally backed them – and I thought I'd plug them here and hope that some of our lovely RPG-inclined readers will help push them over that finish line.
On Call by VJH Creations on BackerKit
You're a werewolf, and the full moon is coming up – but this month, your shift looks a little different . . .
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February 25, 2026:
If you're looking to spend a few minutes . . . ummm . . . horsing around, I can recommend gradient.horse. This site by Michail Rybakov lets you draw a horse – regardless of artistic ability – and send it into a virtual gradient world . . .
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February 26, 2026:
Friday afternoon I received a call from someone who claimed to be with the Fraud Department at my financial institution. They asked if I had just tried to make a purchase in the amount of [redacted] at the [redacted] store located in [redacted] . . .
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February 27, 2026:
Games Workshop is hosting their Warhammer Relics Official Merchandise Festival, and we at SJ Games are getting in on the fun! Through March 8, we're offering 20% off everything Munchkin Warhammer on Warehouse 23!
The classic card game enters the Mortal Realms in Munchkin Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the endless war of the grim dark future in Munchkin Warhammer 40,000.
In Munchkin Warhammer 40,000, you can join factions like the Thousand Suns or the Necrons and face off against Fabius Bile, whose Bad Stuff is . . . really, really bad . . .
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February 28, 2026:
Due entirely to my own malingering, and a bit of fugue about how many days were left in February, I am posting this appeal to my fellow SFWA members at the last moment! The nomination period for the Nebula Awards closes today . . .
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