Tom Granger

@tomgranger

Maker of random things, co-maker of one person, Google Arts & Culture engineer. I like pixels. he/him.

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Tom Granger@tomgranger· 9d

Delaying the appearance of choices might encourage reading the turn's text first. But then the animation draws the eye. Thoughts on timings?

Tom Granger@tomgranger· 10d

Here's a full demo. It's close to being ready but there's One More Thing I need to get done...

Tom Granger@tomgranger· 10d

Interactive fiction ereader update! Eenk now supports images (both inlined in the story, and as cover/thumbnail). All from a standard ink file that the IDE compiles in one click and can transfer to the device via USB :)

E-reader in sleep mode, showing a fullscreen cover I made for inkle's The Intercept interactive story.

E-reader showing the beginning of inkle's The Intercept interactive story showcasing new features: a custom header image is inlined and the same font as in the original Unity version of the game is used.

The Xteink X4 e-reader showing library/menu page of the eenk firmware. We can see a single item in the list, which is The Intercept story. The item contains some metadata (title, author, file size) as well as a custom thumbnail image.

A close up of my computer's display, showing a window of eenky, the custom IDE for eenk, opened on the ink file for The Intercept. At the top we can see the special metadata header used to define these custom images and fonts while keeping the source file 100% valid ink. Images inlined within the story flow rely on the #IMAGE tag exactly like the js web export from Inky, meaning that a single ink file can be exported to either web or eenk binary.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· 16d

It's settled, I'm going brutalist. I'm glad I built a simulator (for the IDE) because that sort of layout work would be way more tedious if I had to flash and boot the device every 5 minutes. This will hopefully give some character and consistency to eenk :)

A photo of the Xteink X4 e-reader running the eenk firmware. A story is being interrupted by a dialogue asking for confirmation before quitting. It's now redesigned with bold uppercase type, thick borders and flat shadows.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· 21d

eenk, my interactive fiction firmware for Xteink e-reader, is making progress🙂 I've added custom font support (at device level and story level). The IDE is shaping up. I'm working on documentation, update process, polish. It's getting there! Does anyone have a cool ink story it could ship with?

A screenshot of the eenky IDE specially designed to create (and compile) stories for the eenk firmware. It's a fork of inkle's Inky editor with complete frontend rewrite.

A picture showing the xteink eenk reader playing an ink story with a futuristic looking custom font. It's the same story as in the IDE screenshot.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· 21d

Holy cow this ram stick now costs more than my current laptop. I really want to support Framework but that's tough.

Screenshot from an email from Framework, the text reads as follows:

Update on your Framework Laptop 13 Pro pre-order

We have an unfortunate update around LPCAMM2 that impacts your Framework Laptop 13 Pro pre-order:

We’ve had to update your memory configuration from 64GB to 32GB, and have lowered the price on your pre-order as a result.

Another screenshot, from the Framework website, showing the new price of the 64GB LPCAMM2: 1790 eur

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Jul 13

Alan Grant was cool and all but it's this gent in his customized PJs that made the most lasting impression on me back then. RIP.

A still of Sam Neill from the trailer of John Carpenter‘s In the Mouth of Madness recent 4K remaster by Arrow Video

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Jul 10

🎶 Da da da daaaaa 🎶 🪎

A founders edition SuperStation One and its SuperDock, in gorgeous Net Yaroze black, held up high against a sunny, heatwavey sky.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Jun 24

Ok progress - a skeleton UI (menus, dialogs, battery indicator, file browser, etc) - a desktop IDE (forked from Inky) with built in ePaper simulator to write and compile stories - improvements to the story player itself (metadata, save/resume, handling large stories up to ~5Mb) I'm calling it eenk!

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Jun 20

Ok let's do it then. Step 1 : build a new ink editor ???

A custom text editor based on inkle's Inky showing the source script of The Intercept, with an eink display simulator running on the side.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Jun 15

Hear me out: Playdate for interactive fiction. Turns out it's possible to fit @inkle.co's ink engine on the 50€ Xteink X4 e-reader of internet fame. Who's in?

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Apr 29

PS: it works with proper archaeologists as well.

A screenshot of the Selfig app suggesting a LEGO minifigure match for Aliya Elasra from Heaven's Vault.

The matched LEGO parts are:

Head: 6100203 — Head #1580
Headwear / Hair: 6550351 — HOOD FOR CLOAK
Torso: 6554504 — Torso #7699
Legs: 6343796 — Legs #2096
Accessory 1: 6268828 — KNAPSACK
Accessory 2: 6269999 — SEXTANT

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Apr 28

So I threw a second braincell at that project and found that we just need 1 or 2 Gemini calls. Not seven, Claude. Not seven. It is quite fun tho 🙂

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Apr 27

Just found out that LEGO.com has a new minifigure configurator. It's cool but a bit tedious. I thought "they should allow uploading a photo". Then I remembered we live in the future, and I was able to basically one-shot the thing in Antigravity in under 2 hours. The app uses Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Apr 21

3) Added a UI language selector courtesy of Gemini because why not. Can't personally vouch for all of these translations though, but pull requests are most welcome :)

A screenshot of the new language selector in the settings panel, showing a choice of English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese and Chinese.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Apr 21

2) I'm Feeling Lucky mode A quick way to pick something interesting. If you don't like the first draw, you can orient the next suggestion with a few choice options.

A screenshot of the new Feeling Lucky mode, suggesting a random game and providing refinement options: "Shorter", "Different" (to change the game genre), or "Cheaper".

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Apr 21

A couple of feature updates on How Long To Clear (t0mg.github.io/howlong) : 1) GOG support! It still relies on your Steam wishlist, but now also attempts to find the title on GOG to compares prices! Useful to spot sales. And I added a new chart in the Insights panel, of course.

A screenshot of a game card showing the new GOG price next to the Steam price. Looks like Loretta is on sale on GOG!

A pie chart comparing Steam ang GOG prices... GOG is often cheaper!

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Apr 16

Also includes stats for nerds, obviously.

Various wishlist stats and a handful of graphs such as duration and price distribution, wishlist additions per year and popular game genres.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Apr 16

Hey have you ever wished to be able to sort your Steam wishlist by time to beat, to help you decide what to play next? Me too, so I made this little web app with Antigravity. Check it out! t0mg.github.io/howlong/

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Mar 14

Abby! I think you'll love this new collection curated by CC11 that I just found in my mailbox. Let's get to work. @inkle.co

inkle's Game Narrative Kaleidoscope book held in front of a screen showing inkle's TR-49 game.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Feb 27

Note: the frame is actually a color display, as not demonstrated in the above video. Note 2: owls are not particularly colorful due to their predatory nature so I had to swap species.

The digital frame displaying a photo of a random blue peacock I took a while ago, in an effort to demonstrate that the display is indeed color.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Feb 27

My digital art frame project is complete! Kind of like 8 months or so ago, but now with the added feature of not even crashing anymore! I'll try to expand the middle part of this project video a little and share the code and project files as well 🦉

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Feb 15

Love is the enemy of slop. A nice, candid write-up for a cool project by @cannoneyed.bsky.social Coding agents are mostly fit for solo work right now, but they do bring so much opportunity to solo devs with the ability to summon tools and build creative pipelines. cannoneyed.com/projects/iso...

Slop vs. Art

If you can push a button and get content, then that content is a commodity. Its value is next to zero.

Counterintuitively, that's my biggest reason to be optimistic about Al and creativity. When hard parts become easy, the differentiator becomes love.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Feb 13

Advantages of working from home. I pre-ordered this on Laced back in July and it arrived yesterday, just the perfect amount of delay to enjoy diving back in. Thanks for those LPs who came after. #expedition33

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Dec 23

I also learnt that the ill fated Amiga CD32 was announced in that very Science Museum (and that it was "popular in Europe", for some definition of popular I suppose).

An Amiga CD32 exhibited at the Science Museum in London. The game in it was Zool.

A text above it reads: "The release of this console was announced in the Science Museum on 16 July 1993. By adding external hardware, such as a keyboard and floppy disk drive, owners could turn the console into a home computer. Although it was popular in Europe, sales weren't enough to save Commodore from bankruptcy in 1994."

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Dec 23

Monkey Island (🐒🏝️ for short) randomly spotted today in a London museum... ...Twice !?! - 🐒🏝️ 2 Special Edition is playable in the Power Up exhibition at The Science Museum - 🐒🏝️ 1 is part of the very serious Pirates exhibition at the National Maritime Museum (right next to Sid Meier's own Pirates!)

Amiga box of the original Monkey Island game, 2 floppy disks and the Dial-A-Pirate disk on display at the Pirates exhibition of the National Maritime Museum in London. I also have all of these at home, which is sadly not the case for the rest of the artifacts shown in this pretty cool exhibition.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Nov 26

Introducing : Tinytron 📺 A TV Combi desk toy with a 1.69" display that plays videos from a microSD or a remote computer over WiFi. Project costs under 30€ and can be built in less than an hour, 3D print included! ⚡ So... who are you going to gift one to? 🤗 Files & docs: t0mg.github.io/tinytron

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Nov 25

My next pet project is hiding on my desk. Can you spot it? Wrong answers only.

Random items scattered on a desk: a box of gums, a roll of tape, a pen, a miniature TV/VCR combo.

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Oct 1

I asked Gemini to decrypt the redacted tagline in @mrsambarlow.bsky.social's Project D (store.steampowered.com/app/2640200/...). The response is obviously hallucinated (there is no such text in P.T.) but I'm very puzzled by how eerily specific it feels given that I gave zero context. Kinda spooky!

A screenshot from a Gemini chat.

My prompt:
Find what was redacted based on the character counts in the below paragraph.

Something bad ███ ████████ ██ █████ ███ ███ ███ █████ ███████ ██████ ████. Some doors ████ ████ ███ ██████████. Some doors ████ ████ ██████████. ███ ███ ███ home?

Gemini's response:
Based on the character counts, the redacted paragraph is from the radio broadcast in the horror video game P.T. (the playable teaser for the cancelled game Silent Hills).
Here is the full text:
"Something bad has happened to Frank and his new family friends inside this home. Some doors will not be unlockable. Some doors will stay permanently. Are you two home?"

Tom Granger@tomgranger· Aug 25

Ok but give it the ability to talk the ant out of its plans.