iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Seems like Big-Chip might be back with some new chipmusic at some point.

Gameboy running nanoloop sitting on a table with headphones.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Mage Knight is a big ass game, and I will never tire of it.

A game of mage knight sprawling over an entire kitchen table.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

That being said I do think this is the most concise gameplay flow chart I ever wrote.

A flow chart with two boxes: "check goals" and "adventure", that form a loop.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

I am going to make some absolute nonsense with these two. How handy that the MS20 Mini has a midi input.

Machine drum and ms20 mini sitting on my desk.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

What if I made some music just using nothing but my Machinedrum? Is that something interesting? I should.

A machinedrum sitting in the corner of my desk. It is a silver drum machine covered in dark grey buttons and dials. There is a coaster made from old PCB sat on it for some reason.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Pick a Bond from photos you already have on your phone.

Mike Maxwell from A1 Magic Multimedia. He is sitting on a tall stool against a backdrop of a large marble gas fireplace with a large pot plant next to it. He is wearing light blue trousers and a black turtle neck, over which he is wearing a red blazer. He has thick brown combed back hair in a side parting and a fabulous moustache. He is leaning slightly forward onto one knee holding a large black hard bound book.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Charity shop £1. I am expecting every poem in this to be an absolute banger because its the anthology of "great" British poetry, not "average" or "acceptable enough" British poetry. I know nothing about poetry. I have read one book of poetry in my life which was Spike Milligan when I was 7.

My hand holding a two volume set of the oxford anthology of great British poetry.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Check out this lovely little Dianthus!

Flower with dark purple petal that have a white edge to them.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

There is going to be quite a bit of doom and gloom today, so I will be semi regularly posting pictures from my garden this year to cleanse the timelines a little. Starting g with these lovely daffodils that spring up in march. Little bit of joy in dark times.

A bunch of cream daffodils with yellow cones growing in my garden.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Desperately trying to fit all the sleeved lost legions stuff back I to the mage knight box.

The mage knight box insert stuffed full of deck boxes with very little free space left in it.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Tonights game is Rome Fate of an Empire. To be honest I don't give two hoots about Rome as a theme, but mage knight inspired civilization builder was too good of an offer to pass up on.

A whole lot of cards covering a tabletop.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Inspired me to check which edit we had, and it appears we have the earlier text.

Shot of books shelf close up showing a copy of Frankenstein, the 1818 text.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Also these cards are functionally identical but worded completely differently. And they are called resource tokens, not ingredients or food tokens. This is annoying because it is the kind of shit I do and don't notice until it is too late, and now I am seeing it in not my thing.

Two cards.

Meecras salt - cook a recipe with one fewer ingredient. Do not pay the command cost.

Alzarrian cook book - cook 1 recipe for 1 fewer food token (and do not play the command cost)

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

The fact that the "Sick Bay" in sleeping gods is "infirm" on the ship health table because "Sick Bay" would not fit annoys me. The fact that infirmary would not fit so they abbreviated it to "infirm" makes it worse.

A photo of a section of the sleeping gods ship board showing the location named "Sick Bay". Also shown is the title row of the damage tracking table with the location labeled as " infirm"

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Just playing with the concept of click passes this morning and arrived at this, which is something I suspect I will not find published anywhere else.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

I was just trying out a little thing and not until I watched it after do I realise that it looks like I hide it in my beard, which is absurd. But also now I need to grow my beard out to see if hiding things in it is possible. #magic #coinMagic

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

It is the simplest things. Just melted one of the kids minds with this simple thing.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

I have this 25mm hole cutter I use as a fidget while I am at my desk.

A chunky metal hole cutter on a desk. It has a metal cup through whit a large screw is pushed. On the other end of the screw is a round cutting head. In the background some electrical probes and a bench power supply are visible.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Eldest was outraged because this old Zelda game lost his save. Time to change the battery! It is incredible how long these things last. This is the original battery I just pulled out, and it was working some time earlier this year. I can't imagine any tech being this reliable now, or repairable.

A Gameboy cartridge open on my desk. The old battery has been unsoldered and a replacement fitted.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

I have to say, I do like Hero Quest, but this is absolutely the worst rule to be in a game ever.

The rule from hero quest from the searching for traps section reads.

there are some traps in a room that have been placed directly on the other side of a door. Beware! The first hero to enter the room through that door will encounter the trap and suffer damage. Note: as a hero you cannot search for these traps by looking through the door. You must be into the room to search for any traps in it.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Got a copy of Void Shift by @binarystar.games in my hands today. A little solo card game for one player. Looking forward to taking this for a spin soon.

My hand holding a cassette box in a slip case. It is black with a few white lines going across it horizontally and has "Void Shift" in big letters at the top and "Binary Star Games" in smaller text in the bottom right corner.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

It has taken me a month to get the knackered of holding coins exactly like this. Those in the know on coin magic will know exactly what I am up to. For some reason this has taken me ages to get down when really it seems so simple l. The fun starts now.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

This is such a very good game. I took a couple of years off it because I just played it a ton over the last 7 years, and had kind of played it out. Heard it mentioned at the start of the week and felt an urge to play it again and am glad I did. Lots of fun, is Nemo's War.

The nemo's war game set up on my table covered in dice and bits. It looks like an old war table with a map in the middle.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

As you can see from the output of the build of the website the jam has hand 190 games submitted to it in the last 5 years. If we get 10 this year we will have hit 200! That's pretty amazing.

A terminal output from building the mfgj website. The last like says it has 190 games total. Last year we got 25 games

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Month of my life. Months. Anyway, magic.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Why do I feel like Goldie Lookin Chain are hanging out on my kids play road.

Two cartoon men on a children's play road. Both are wearing track suits and a matching cap. One is in a blue tracksuit and is leaning trying to look cool. The other one is in red is sitting on a hand rail and is making hand signs.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Everyone: spirit island is really hard! Me: wins first time?

A game of spirit island that I have won set up on my table.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

I have been drawing my own custom lenormand cards.

A hand drawn lenormand card on a page. It is an ink drawing of a ruined tower.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

I really love this little version of Agricola. Even more so that my eldest is able to play it with me.

Photo of the Agricola all creatures big and small board game. The farm fields are covered in little meeple horses, cows, pigs and sheep.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

A new genre of autumnal #magic drops.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

I have not painted a miniature in years and really fancy picking the hobby back up again. I think I have a bunch of unbuilt minis in the garage. This is the last mini I painted.

A genestealer miniature. It has bone white arms and a purple carapace. It is standing on a pipe sticking out of muddy ground.

The same miniature as before, but from the rear.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

I am currently reading this book I saw in the library, and while I think nearly everything Dahl wrote is trash, whenever someone puts together a collection of ghost stories I can not help myself. It turns out the one book by Dahl I can enjoy is a book where he picks other peoples works to showcase.

Ronald Dahl's book of Ghost Stories. The cover is the head of a big black took on a white background.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

About 2 years ago I started writing a ttrpg all about wizard magic, and it led me down a path of learning this sort of nonsense, and I think eventually when the thing is done it will be better for it because I abandoned wizard magic. There are actually relatively few magical effects.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

This dropped on my desk today and now I guess I have to find time to play it.

My hand holding the box for the Robinson Crusoe game.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Today is kids versions of games that I think are actually more fun than the grown up version.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

I have finished binding a book. It is not perfect, but works. I learned a lot. Mostly I learned that I will jot have the spoons to self bind my next games unless it is a very small run indeed.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

And that is now the signatures sewn, ready for glueing the spine and covering.

All the signatures and cover slips of the aforementioned book stitched together with white thread.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

And I now trimmed the stuff to size too. Not perfect, but will make a cromulent enough book once bound.

A cutting mat with a coaster taped to it as a stop and a signature against st it ready to trim.

All the signatures and the cover together and trimmed. There are a few unevenly cut places, but it is good enough for what I need.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Cut some grey board to size for the covers and then wrapped it in some spare thin card stock I had so that it can be attached to the book. The purple won't actually be seen in the finished book, which is a shame, but without it you can't attach the cover.

Some sections of thick grey card that have had thin purple card wrapped around them.

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James Chip @james-chip.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

I built this really simple book press from an old bit of kitchen table top and some threaded M6 bar that I had sitting in the garage. I am the kind of person that just has these things sitting about, which is always handy. I can also use this as a flower press, which is nice!

A book press made from two squares of wooden table top held together by a length of threaded bar in each corner. They have been screwed shut and are trapping a folded sheet of paper between them.

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