@[email protected] @[email protected] I have family members who have applied for (and in some cases received) naturalization to seven different nationalities. The US applications were the most time consuming and expensive by an enormous margin. Not because the actual requirements were more restrictive (all four US applications were eventually successful, while some of the others were not), but because of the process.

One more session to go on the current round of #interactivefiction writing courses, and the older teens have asked for the final session to be a deep dive into expanding a conversation because they felt it didn't have enough narrative depth.

So that's pretty awesome. And now I get to have a play with dialogue rather than the very different process which is #writing examples of functionality which are interesting but small enough to not obscure the thing being taught.

Obviously, if you try it and it's horribly broken in some way do let me know 😅

Managed to scrape together enough energy to move my blog from github pages to a repurposed Pi sitting in my home office. Because, well, reasons (gestures at world).

Took the opportunity to move it from .co.uk to .eu at the same time given I haven't lived in the UK for years. blog.mavnn.eu/

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Organic, vegan, golden cables. No pesticides used or animal parts included in this cable!​

@[email protected] @[email protected] lots of phone reminders and a pill box marked with days of the week. Auto repeating reminders help me actually take the meds, the pill box helps me not take them twice. Or three time​s.

@[email protected] I think you've got an unfortunate typo in this post (assuming you like them? 😅) ​

@[email protected] @[email protected] just the level of trust and attention to detail you like to see in people offering checks notes assurance services!​

If you're interested in the course but don't want to give your email away, just follow this account and I'll post when public tickets become available. Just be aware that by that stage time of day and dates will already be set.

Hello people who enjoy #writing! I've had some interest in a 5 week online course for adult non-coders to try their hand at #interactivefiction - i.e. stories that include branching narrative based on the readers' choices. The course would cover some of the mechanics, but also advice on structuring interactive plots with managable complexity, looking at emotional hooks that work better or worse when readers have active agency, using interactive fiction tools to capture options to show editors and beta-readers in non-interactive works, and some examples of expanding existing writing into an interactive experience.

If you like this idea, I'm putting together a mailing list of potential course members who are keen enough they'd like to have a voice in the scheduling of the course. Send me your email via DM or email me at [email protected] and I'll let you know when there are updates on the course and nothing else; this is not a general purpose "get spammed by Michael" email list. Costs will likely run at around 55 GBP per person.

On a totally related note, if you're looking to get into coding or fine tune your skills I'm currently able to take on a few more people/small groups teaching web programming (frontend and backend), basic game development with #godot, or narrative game creation for non-coders. I've got enough experience with the UK school system I can also help you present evidence to the local authority for home educators.

I've started doing some mentoring with general coding skills as well as the online VisualInk courses, so to avoid any privacy concerns (waves at current world situation) we now have a private code server where mentees can share their code (using #forgejo).

Given I now have the server, it also makes sense to start moving the rest of my open source code there. The first public repository? VisualInk itself: code.mavnn.eu/mavnn/VisualInk

@[email protected] I'd be more worried by them specifying natural potatoes. Unnatural potato​ crisps sound like something from, well, a @[email protected] novel.

@[email protected] @[email protected] does "reminding myself sternly not to build a project management tool every ten minutes" count? I'm not even completely joking.

More helpfully, org mode in emacs hits the best balance point so far for personal projects, but it is still very hit and miss how successfully I use it​

@[email protected] @[email protected] ​it's a really deep rabbit hole - rgb is actually a terrible way of representing colours even at the basic level of being able to try and define all visible colours (see colour spaces en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_...) and that's before you even get to things like how different pigments change in different ambient light vs how projected colours are perceived in different brightness of light or how the texture of your paper changes the apparent ink colour...

@[email protected] @[email protected] it also (confusingly) depends on who is quoting you how. If you see a post from someone on an instance that doesn't support quoting who has pasted a link to your post manually, you might just be seeing your instances preview of the link with the same ui - but because it's not a quote I don't think it triggers any notifications. ​

Things that should have been an #adhd tip off, part 3478: realising most people probably don't habitually check their sponge is wet as they leave the shower because of how often they forget to wash themselves inbetween the 'getting wet' and 'getting dry' parts of showering

@[email protected] @[email protected] ah, that moment when you're grateful to have had something clarified so perfectly, while also being deeply upset by your newly deepened understanding of certain part events... ​

@[email protected] I have yes - like ​@[email protected] I was commenting on them that I wouldn't be able to give the information they wanted even if I decided it was worth doing so.

It's just... so far I was kind of assuming pride and stupidity, the idea that America is so important everybody will put up with the crap and be grateful for it. But this is tipping me towards "I don't care how stupid you are, surely you wouldn't do this unless people not coming was the point, not just a side effect"

@[email protected] Are they... deliberately trying to keep people away? This almost feels like an attempt to isolate the US on purpose rather than just offending everybody and assuming you're so important it won't matter. Which I suppose could be the next step in an authoritarian take over, but it seems at odds with the vast narcissism displayed so far.