iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

PS: the (still fairly simple) epub reader has also been improved with this firmware update to handle beefier books, and now provides table of contents access for quick random jumps, as some kaleidoscopic books sometimes require. It's quite snappy, even ok X4!

A photo of an Xteink X4Pro e-reader running the eenk custom firmware in epub reader mode, showing the new Table of Contents modal dialog. The book underneath is called the Game Narrative Kaleidoscope, and you should check it out.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Eenky, the story editor, has also received an update today. v2.0.4 brings a bit of polish in the side bar, and improvements to the auto-runner that now shows detailed stats about checkpoints or chapters reached, if you use these (you should, even if just for debugging). github.com/t0mg/eenky/r...

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

New Interactive Fiction piece. Authored by @jon.inkle.co. Written specifically for eenk. Coming tomorrow. Warm up your ports.

An Xteink X4 e-reader displaying the cover of an unpublished interactive fiction by Jon Ingold: PSYPHON. The background is lit in cyan and magenta. The e-reader is held up against a retro-futuristic looking device.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

When creating this short, I swear after 2 hours I still couldn't find a free, quick way to create captions. So I summoned one with ViBe CoDe. Took 9 mn. Introducing Boom! CHLACA (cheap & lazy captions). It's fast, works locally, and it's up for grabs on GitHub (Windows only). github.com/t0mg/CHLACA

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

More eenk! 2026 inkJam winner "Love is Like Sinking Into a Pinpoint Black Hole" by @anthonyeichenlaub.com is now available on eenk! Get ready for a ride. t0mg.github.io/eenk/stories... Also, the incomparable @jon.inkle.co might have written a new story specifically tailored for eenk.. stay plugged.

Playing "Love is Like Sinking Into a Pinpoint Black Hole" by Anthony Eichenlaub on an X4Pro e-reader running the eenk firmware. On a train. With a cup of average tasting coffee.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Hey Victor, Jon was right of course. There's this project I made called Eenk that plays ink on e-readers, and I'd be delighted to see your story run on it. Project info: t0mg.github.io/eenk/ - install the eenky IDE and just load up your ink in it! Or DM if needed and I can help out.

Playing "Love is Like Sinking Into a Pinpoint Black Hole" by Anthony Weichenlaub on an X4Pro e-reader running the eenk firmware. On a train. With a cup of average tasting coffee.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Some news on this! The eenk custom firmware project is live at t0mg.github.io/eenk 🎉 Flash eenk on compatible devices and download eenky IDE pre-releases for Windows & Mac! PS: here's X4 Pro support with touch and backlight! Also it has 20x more RAM so the ink runtime takes advantage of that too.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

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

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

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

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

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

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

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

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

🎶 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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

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!

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

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?

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

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

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

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 🙂

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

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".

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

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!

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

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/

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

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 🦉

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

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

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

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."

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

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

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

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.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

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?"

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

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

Still from the 1995 movie City of Lost Children, showing Irvin, a brain in a vat fitted with extremely steampunk looking input/output interfaces.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Made a lil puzzle treasure chest for an event. An Arduino monitors 8 reed switches under the lid, triggered by the 🧩s (plywood top + MDF mid layer to hold a magnet + iron-on edge banding). When placed in the expected order a tiny servo unlatches the box! Nobody noticed the Easter egg tune though 😛

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Vampire Weekend showing some C64 love on stage ❤️ @wearecommodore.bsky.social

The stage of Rock en Seine music festival in Paris, with Vampire Weekend performing in front of a giant display showing the 1993 Drive Composer C64 program.

The stage of Rock en Seine music festival in Paris, with Vampire Weekend performing in front of a giant display showing the Sidplayer software from All about the Commodore 64 volume 2.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Saw a couple of digital art frame crowdfunding projects using those new Spectra6 e-ink displays lately, and I figured I'd give it a DIY shot. Will drop the whole project on GitHub soon!

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

I really, really really want to love Blue Prince like the rest of the planet does but I'm 1.5h in and struggling at it. Do I need to adjust my expectations that there will indeed be a lot of grinding and wasted runs because of the roguelike mechanic ?

Day 2 in Blue Prince, and the map shows there's no way to progress past row 2 out of 9 because the room draw never provided an option to continue up north, so the run is blocked. No new room discovered either, just a waste of time hence the frustration.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Yeah, this is my jam. Got sucked right into Type Help until I reached that screen. If you liked @dukope.bsky.social's Return of the Obra Dinn or @mrsambarlow.bsky.social's games, you're in for a free treat. Any idea how to support the dev? william-rous.itch.io/type-help

A satisfying screenshot crop that reads:
"The End
Created by William Rous"

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

A final twist that I could never have seen coming. One with rubber chickens."

Hundreds of rubber poultry, big and small, scattered across a rocky plain, under a dramatically kitsch sky with galaxy-like twirling red and green lights (or clouds?).

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

"What is this cursed language? What is this place? Feeling inexplicably urged I pressed a button. The one that was glowing red. The machine started humming, louder and louder! And then there was a deafening bang, and something unfathomable happened in the room, that I cannot describe with words."

This is still a laboratory room of some kind but a large toroidal shape is emerging from a corner. At its center a warm light is glowing with both greenish and red hues.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

"Fascinating. I feel like I'm drawn to this machine. What does the plaque say?"

Close-up of a metallic plaque screwed on the rusty machine, the torchlight pointed at it. The text reads "CACHR BOLABER A NEAS PST SYGIA STRIEPUIS CAZY BILLYSMETAT, IST N..."

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

"Let's get a closer look at this machine. It looks like it's still on somehow?"

A close up on a mid 20th century style industrial machine, with gauges and buttons. One single dial is lit up, and a red light is glowing. It's quite pretty.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

"Ok let's move on to the back of the facility, where according to this map, the technical equipment is located. I want to see what they were working on. Besides it's dark outside now and I'm getting cold."

Inside a dark room with cables, shelves and crates, a torchlight points at a large and mysterious contraption.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

From there I tried to search the room for a map and Gemini struggled to but I eventually got this.

Isometric view of the "ASTANCTUE & OUTPOST", showing a number of living quarters, technical looking rooms and beds with orange sheets scattered randomly.

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Tom Granger @tomgranger.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

"Ok let's leave the airlock behind us, we are entering the lobby now if I understand correctly."

A decrepit room with metallic walls and ceilings, a couple of doors. The back wall is missing entirely, showing an Antarctica landscape.

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