Coding is a lot more fun when you don't have to keep jumping around to check you've used exactly the right names for things. Which means we're constantly trying to up our game with the VisualInk editor to make the suggestions it gives as fast, context aware, and accurate as possible. Today we've rolled out intelligent suggestions for asset names and divert targets as you type!

#interactivefiction #visualnovel

Scovilles per large adult son

Used Theremin

Like new. Never been touched

@[email protected] ​of course, this is the same school of pedantry that will try and tell you that you're using the 'wrong' names for types of swords as if there's a central historical authority rather than each author going 'I'm gonna call these ones long because I feel like it'.

@[email protected] ​If you ask the wrong type of pedant, they'll tell you (for even more confusion) that it's only a whetstone if you use oil on it, otherwise it's a water stone. "don't oil up that water stone, and especially don't get the whetstone wet!"

Interested in quickly prototyping your #ink based #interactivefiction or #visualnovel? We're starting to look a pretty decent choice, with collaborative editing sessions and (if you're logged in) instant shareable "play" links.

visualink.mavnn.eu/

That feeling when you realise tab didn't complete the filename you thought and that you've just tried to open a 30gb file on a USB drive in vi over an ssh connection.

Animals with misleading names

I suspect that people making physical components with care and precision that they know will never be seen, and will be noticed only in the absence of problems coming from them, most have a similar experience. You feel pride in the job well done, but it is also somewhat anti-climatic when you look at the finished product.

There's this weird moment in refactoring code, when after hours/days of redesign, changes, and testing you bask in the glow of a job well done and all the improvements you've made... before running the code and seeing absolutely nothing different in how it functions from the outside because that's what refactoring means.

I think I've nearly taken enough stimulants to be able to catch up some sleep #adhd #insomnia

Today in "Don't Trust AI to Tell You Facts": How several different "AI" programs messed up the simple fact of to whom I dedicated a book, and what that means for how much you should trust "AI" to tell you the truth about things (spoiler: not much at all):

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/13/ai-a-dedicated-fact-failing-machine-or-yet-another-reason-not-to-trust-it-for-anything/

The ADHD experience of setting an object on a surface and it clipping through the universe's bounding box and disappearing.

One reassuring thing about debugging very large amounts of autogenerated code is that the fourteen thousand errors I'm seeing here are actually just one error.

Probably.

I think.

I hope.

Three bugs appear.

“Ah, with my senior software developer senses I detect these are in fact not three separate bugs, but a single bug manifesting in different ways. A greener developer would have fallen into this trap and spent all day chasing shadows!”

*7 hours of struggling*

They are three separate bugs.

@[email protected] @[email protected] ​see also: a greener developer would assume that this is obviously a bug in the compiler because the behaviour is so inexplicable, but my senior software developer humility teaches me it is surely my mistake

Here at VisualInk we love writing the narrative side of visual novels in Ink, a programming language specifically designed to help manage the complexity of branching narrative without getting overly technical.

But it does miss one feature that is really useful in visual novels: tracking ordered "stacks" of values. So we added it.

Blog post here: blog.mavnn.co.uk/2025/12/12/...

#interactivefiction #fsharp

Some (most?) days teaching students to code is uplifting, feels worthwhile, and gives everybody involved a sense of satisfaction.

Other days you discover one of your students hasn't been able to press "enter" for the last 2 lessons because they rethemed their keyboard and the theme turned the enter key into an image of a teapot.

@[email protected] ​

looks at track record of leaving things ready the night before

Well! I'm glad that works for other people. No jealousy here at all 😀

Apparently 2025 is the year that has Weird Al singing 'killing in the name of'. Not a parody, not with sanitised lyrics. Just straight up 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me'.

That's... not something I ever expected to see.

io.mwl.io/@mwl/115698737174829