iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

For this weekend, Extwee moves to 2.4.0 (github.com/videlais/ext...). This updates does many behind-the-scenes things (Babel update, GitHub runner updates, etc.), but also found an issue with JSON encoding. And, yes, the update does mention a potential TypeScript, 3.0 version.

github.com

Release v2.4.0 (September 2026) · videlais/extwee

What started as an overdue maintenance update for September 2026 shifted into needing to update to Babel 8, which then triggered other updates across GitHub runners and actions. As part of reviewin...

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

It's not ready for the public yet, but I've also been playing around with code syntax highlighting and CodeMirror buttons for Snowman 2.X, which the attached screenshot shows. The code is (currently) available in this branch (github.com/videlais/sno...). Target is 2.1.6 and next Twine release.

Screenshot showing the passage editor in Twine using Snowman 2.1.5 with two additional buttons on a new, added toolbar. A button is clicked labelled "Styles" showing tools for adding emphasis, strong emphasis, header 1, and header 2.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I'm behind in several monthly projects and hope to update them to "August 2026" (honestly, probably "September") versions across this week. What I was able to work on today was Snowman, which was updated to 2.1.5. This fixes an earlier regression problem. github.com/videlais/sno...

github.com

Release v2.1.5 + Documentation updated for 2.X branch · videlais/snowman

This minor version fixes a regression issue around the use of template code, <% /* code */ %>, where the use of Underscore templates could disable the parsing of additional markdown code in the sam...

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Snowman has been updated to 2.1.4, fixing an issue with hyphens in passage names. github.com/videlais/sno...

github.com

Release v2.1.4 · videlais/snowman

Fixes #1167 and updates dependencies. Full Changelog: v2.1.3...v2.1.4

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Go get it! (www.sup.org/books/litera...) So cool!

sup.org

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United Videogame Workers-CWA @videogameworkers.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

The timing of this kind of press is intentional. How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds? Don’t fall for it.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The @eliterature.bsky.social conference (ELO 2026) is currently running and the online exhibition launched a few hours ago. I served as a co-chair along with @lskains.bsky.social. #elo2026. projects.cah.ucf.edu/mediaartsexh...

projects.cah.ucf.edu

ELO 2026 Online Exhibition

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Toward the end of this article is the most important point: assuming a change to HTTP verbs happens, the ecosystem has had twenty years of the current ones. That's major system changes across the board, from server software to client-side frameworks. www.theregister.com/devops/2026/...

theregister.com

HTTP gets a QUERY method so complex searches can stop pretending to be POST

New verb carries request content while remaining safe, idempotent, and cacheable

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

There's a new minor version of Snowman fixing an issue reported by HiEv on GitHub about link parsing (github.com/videlais/sno...). No timeline on Twine rollout yet, but I'll get that going next and then an update to story format archive as well.

github.com

Release v2.1.3 · videlais/snowman

Fixes issue #1158 and does some smaller cleanup in the GitHub runners and workflows. Node engine version is now locked to >= 20 because of end-of-life of Node 18 in 2025. Full Changelog: v2.1.2...v...

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

After 50+ hours of train travel in the last two weeks, I'm finally catching back up on monthly software updates. Extwee 2.3.18 (github.com/videlais/ext...) Quis 1.4.1 (github.com/videlais/qui...) CM-Packer 1.1.2 (github.com/videlais/cm-...) Simple-QBN 1.5.5 (github.com/videlais/sim...)

github.com

Release v1.5.5 (June 2026) · videlais/simple-qbn

Maintenance release for June 2026 with some documentation additions for works from 1930 to 1970. Full Changelog: v1.5.4...v1.5.5

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

What's buried in this, and I've heard in other places, is a look at the use of tokens as an efficiency measurement. Starting with a base bucket of stokens per person, measuring workers based on tokens-used compared to work output. Prompt crafting. thenewstack.io/cursor-origi...

thenewstack.io

Cursor, GitLab and Zed agree GitHub is breaking. They disagree on how to rebuild it.

Cursor's Origin, GitLab's Project Switch and Zed's DeltaDB are racing to rebuild code hosting for AI agents as GitHub buckles under the load.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Catching back up on monthly/infrequent updates: SFA/SFA-GET (github.com/videlais/sto...) -- Added Chapbook 2.3.1 (from April 2026) SimpleQBN (github.com/videlais/sim...) -- Deps update

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Online ink Editor (OiE) has also been updated to 1.0.2 (github.com/videlais/onl...). Depending on how the summer goes, I'd like to explore how to maybe use CloudFlare or another hosting platform for using permalinks for saving/hosting public ink projects.

github.com

Release v1.0.2 (May 2026) · videlais/online-ink-editor

This is a new, minor monthly update of the Online ink Editor (OiE). There is slightly better code coverage and an update in how

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

After multiple hours today in working through how GitHub Actions can create release assets, I've now updated CM-Packer to a new, minor version. The new binary releases are part of a "pre-release" version (github.com/videlais/cm-...). Next minor version will use the new binary build approach.

github.com

Release v1.1.3-rc.2 (May 2026) Binary Release · videlais/cm-packer

Yet more testing of binary releases. Full Changelog: v1.1.3-rc.1...v1.1.3-rc.2

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

As we continue to finish internal goals towards the publishing of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 5, we are updating everyone on our work. For this blog post, May 2026, we highlight metadata such as publication status and creator nationality. eliterature.github.io/elc5-info/bl...

eliterature.github.io

May 2026 Update

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks submissions for Volume 5 of the Electronic Literature Collection.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

I completely missed my mid-April deadline of new updates across my projects, so I'm trying to catch back up over this weekend. Extwee was updated to 2.3.17 github.com/videlais/ext... I'm also playing around with binary builds again, which might go into beta testing as part of next minor update.

github.com

Release v2.3.17 (May 2026) · videlais/extwee

This minor update covers work for 2.3.16 and 2.3.17 to better align both NPM and GitHub versions. Primarily, this update focuses on dependency updates while also fixing a long-standing minor annoya...

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

We need extra assistance as part of reviewing for Electronic Literature Collection 5 (github.com/eliterature/...). Please contact us (elcvol5@gmail.com) if you can read any of the following languages + willing to provide a short review of a work: Swedish Korean Gujarati Norwegian Catalan Tamil

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I'm quite behind in monthly updates on things but hope to tackle most of them through the weekend. (And then update again mid-April 2026). Extwee: github.com/videlais/ext... Story Grammar: github.com/videlais/sto...

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Yarn Spinner 🔜 #MIGW26 @yarnspinner.dev · 27/03/2026

Yarn Spinner for Unity v3.2 is out now! It includes a few features, some nice quality-of-life improvements, a huge update to the VSCode extension, and a bunch of plumbing work in preparation for the much larger upcoming v3.3 🎉 yarnspinner.dev/blog/yarn-sp...

yarnspinner.dev

Yarn Spinner for Unity 3.2 is OUT NOW | Yarn Spinner

Version 3.2 of Yarn Spinner for Unity is out now! This release brings mostly small bugfixes and quality-of-life improvements, ahead of our larger upcoming 3.3 release where the entire underlying virtu...

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Did you know the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 5 now has a blog? As we we hit milestones, we will be doing short posts to update what is happening and our next goals. February 2026 Update: eliterature.github.io/elc5-info/bl...

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Élika Ortega @elikaortega.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Last couple of days to submit to the ELC Vol 5. @eliterature.bsky.social Deadline Jan 31st!

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

There's still a few days left to submit something for the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 5! We recently updated the FAQ to include a spreadsheet form to email us for submission as well! eliterature.github.io/elc5-info/fa...

eliterature.github.io

Frequently Asked Questions

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks submissions for Volume 5 of the Electronic Literature Collection.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

I'm still recovering from being sick for going on a week, so things are slow right now. I'm working through updating dependencies for most of my software projects today and will be publishing minor project (monthly) updates soon.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

My helpful niece remembered how I explained that I often don't run the heat in my apartment even when it is really cold outside last year. (I do run it if the temperature is below zero degrees F.) This year, she sewed a "heating pad" for me that I can use at the computer under my wrists.

A home-made "heating pad" of sewed cloth containing elements to heat up in a microwave.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

I'm mostly saving this for me, but I did write about the infamous "You are not expected to understand this" UNIX comment in my dissertation using critical code studies and static analysis. www.theregister.com/2025/12/23/u...

theregister.com

UNIX V4 tape successfully recovered

: Crucial early evolutionary step found, imaged, and ... amazingly ... works

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

I love this stuff. I have no use for it, will probably never use it, but will continue to be delighted by really tiny compilers for languages (that probably shouldn't be on embedded devices). www.phoronix.com/news/Micro-Q...

phoronix.com

Micro QuickJS Engine Compiles & Runs JavaScript With As Little As 10kB Of RAM

Very talented open-source developer Fabrice Bellard who already is well known for his work on QEMU, the Tiny C Compiler, and FFmpeg, has another accomplishment: Micro QuickJS

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Oh, hey. New Lua version! Many years ago, I got into Lua and was even thinking of potentially teaching it, but the ecosystem wasn't quite there for low-end student users. I'm interested to see what's improved. www.phoronix.com/news/Lua-5.5...

phoronix.com

Lua 5.5 Released With Declarations For Global Variables, Garbage Collection Improvements

Five years after releasing Lua 5.4, Lua 5.5 debuted today as the newest version of this lightweight and embeddable scripting language.

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Reposted by Dan Cox

Élika Ortega @elikaortega.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

☃️☃️ Good news everyone! ☃️☃️ The Electronic Literature Collection call for submissions has been extended to **January 31st.** That means you can enjoy the holidays *and* still have time to submit your work. Questions? Email us at elcvol5 [at] gmail [dot] com

eliterature.github.io

Call for Submissions

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks submissions for Volume 5 of the Electronic Literature Collection.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

The deadline for Electronic Literature Collection 5 has been extended from 6 January 2026 to 31 January 2026! eliterature.github.io/elc5-info/

eliterature.github.io

Call for Submissions

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks submissions for Volume 5 of the Electronic Literature Collection.

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Anastasia Salter @anasalter.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

The submissions portal for our next @eliterature.bsky.social conference, which will be fully online including performances and a hypertext electronic literature exhibition, is now open at stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2026/ - please submit an abstract by January 15th to join us!

ELO 26: (un)supervised - graphic by PD Edgar

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

The call for proposals is posted for the Electronic Literature Organization 2026 conference. It will be hosted fully online July 15-18, 2026 by a team based at the University of Central Florida with collaborators around the world. (Submissions will open soon!) projects.cah.ucf.edu/elo2026/cfp....

projects.cah.ucf.edu

Call for Proposals - ELO 2026

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

After a few days of slow work, I have resolve all 41 new monthly dependabot notifications. Extwee has had its December 2025 maintenance release, and now I'm slowly working through my other projects for their own.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

New month + updated dependencies= new minor Extwee version. v2.3.12: github.com/videlais/ext... I'm trying to use a CHANGELOG.md approach to tracking things. Extwee was the first, but I'll be updating other projects with the same file.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

I'm still behind on this! I think I fixed everything, and added Play Wright automated testing against the Twine Cookbook, but then I got a longer holiday break and worked on some other projects and course prep for spring. I hope to return to this early next week and verify everything.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

We also added a FAQ recently! eliterature.github.io/elc5-info/fa... There's now more clarity on if works can be nominated or submitted by others. Short answer: yes! Longer answer: with permission or ability to contact authors to verify.

eliterature.github.io

Frequently Asked Questions

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks submissions for Volume 5 of the Electronic Literature Collection.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

I'm behind on a PR to Twine because I'm trying to track down a CI action issue on the main branch of Snowman. The automated testing broke a few days ago and I'm still trying to fix it between various meetings and other events this week. I may just have to split off some failing tests for now.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

We also also open to possible sub-collections from existing communities, labs, artists, and other collectives across works from tools, services, and platforms not previously included in a ELC volume. Please e-mail us to start that conversation, as we to also include robust metadata on all entries!

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

We've now added a FAQ for the Electronic Literature Collection 5 call for submissions (eliterature.github.io/elc5-info/fa...). We want people to submit all kinds of exciting and intriguing things, but we are also asking if people could limit their submissions to three per single author or group.

eliterature.github.io

Frequently Asked Questions

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) seeks submissions for Volume 5 of the Electronic Literature Collection.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

The issue should now be fixed in the minor update to 2.1.2 (github.com/videlais/sno...). I also added extensive regression testing against the Twine Cookbook to try to prevent me accidentally breaking things again. I'm planning a Twine PR for tomorrow (17 Nov) once I clear some other TODO items.

github.com

Release v2.1.2 · videlais/snowman

Fixes an issue with renderToElement() and other functionality based on combination of Underscore and EJS parsing (accidental double-escaping) (#1112) as well as adds another 180+ tests against the ...

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

I'm actively working on the issue, and trying to fix the testing that didn't catch it, tonight. The hope is to have a new minor update within the next few hours and then preparing a PR for Twine itself tomorrow.

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

I came across the built-in crypto functionality in Node tonight decided to test built-in UUID generation versus the NPM package of the same name - much faster using built-in (C++ native versus JavaScript implementation). Updated Extwee with the drop-in replacement. github.com/videlais/ext...

github.com

Release v2.3.8 · videlais/extwee

This minor update removes the uuid package and replaces usage in Node with crypto.randomUUID() and, in web builds, browser-based crypto of the same name, Crypto API: randomUUID(). While it may impa...

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Dan Cox @videlais.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

An issue was found with the current version of Snowman 2.1.1 today (12 Nov). I'm working on a fix, and an update to my testing to catch issues like it, but it won't be available for a few days and then in Twine a few days after that.

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