Explore local activities

On the one hand, customisation is a bit limited (there's no way to override themes, etc) - on the other, for prototyping the lack of distraction on detail while you test the idea can be really helpful. And at the end of it you still have an Ink file you can use anywhere Ink is usable.

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.

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

@[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

@[email protected] @[email protected] ​While I think that medication is often used as an only treatment when it should be part of something more holistic (and that is a problem), I don't think there's too much of giving medication to boys who don't actually have adhd because that's just a pain for the 'carers' involved

@[email protected] @[email protected] ​as someone medicated for adhd, I'm going to have to speak up a moment here: several of the most common adhd medications will make the symptoms no better or actively worse if given to someone who has executive function issues (the symptoms of adhd) but caused by environmental effects like trauma, lack of sleep, etc.

@[email protected]

> unstoppable if i had one of those american automatic programmable coffee makers.

Right up until the first time it needs cleaning or refilling?

Interested in writing #visualnovels / #interactivefiction ?

We're running courses online next term at Thinkers Meetup:

• Coding Games with a Story (ages 9-14 and 14+) teach you how to write visual novels in Ink
• The Interactive Fiction Writing Club is a writing club, but specifically for 9-18 year olds writing interactive fiction

Turns out I was storing multiple (10+) gigabytes of internal data from the ventilation system including fan speeds, system humidity and temperatures, etc as it is one of the most aggressively real time systems connected to the automation.

Oops?

So I noticed yesterday that my home automation server (surprisingly useful when you have solar panels) was running out of storage space, and thought I was going to have to buy more.

Then I noticed that I'd stored every change in fan speed of the ventilation system for the past 18 months because I'd forgotten to add a retention policy.

I've been very impressed with the collaborative editing support built into CodeMirror. There's certain properties in software that still always feel magical to me, and shared code editing is very much one of them - watching changes made by other people spread around the world appearing in front of your eyes is still just awesome, even if I do know how the magic is happening behind the scenes.

bonfire.mavnn.eu/pub/objects...

Okay, this is very alpha but also insanely cool.

VisualInk now supports live collaborative script writing sessions! Whether you just want to play on the demo editor page, or you've signed up and you want to collaborate on a script owned by your account, just hit the "Copy live edit invite" button at the bottom of the screen and send the invite to a friend.

Warning: the session only persists as long as you stay on the page at the moment and doesn't warn you if it breaks. If you run your script, browse away, reload the page, etc, you'll need to send out new links. We're working on a proper release!

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] ​Had a job once where we emailed airline customers if their plane was cancelled or delayed. We had to page requests to one of the SOAP APIs because if you asked for too many customer details at once, you got back malformed xml ending with -- more --