I think 3D printing is kind of cool and amazing for prototyping or small runs of bespoke parts. But I never got how it could possibly compete with injection molding or a dozen other more straightforward processes. At scale, anyway. Wish we could admit when tech is niche. Cool, but niche.

Did I want to know that Safari and Chrome/Firefox disagree about what happens when you apply “filter: invert(100%)” to an SVG <g> element? No, but here we are.

Looking at Infocom's “Learning ZIL" document in context. blog.zarfhome.com/2026/02/1989...

Our volunteer Hélène Lupa wrote a blog post about the history of NarraScope! Did you know NarraScope started in 2019? And in 2023 there were NarraScope Pogs? narrascope.org/blog/post/20... .

Just a few weeks until IFTF lands at @officialgdc.bsky.social. We'll be set up in the Indie Arcade at GDC Commons, so please stop by, say hello, and try out the GDC Festival of Gaming Twine Adventure project! Looking forward to seeing you there!

If you want to know what the future of the game industry is, look at iicon, the ESA's new industry event. Lots of talk about cross-industry synergy, e-commerce, and leveraging IP. Nothing about game development

Dug into this absolutely wild thing happening to Finji. The deeper I read into their increasingly baffling conversations with TikTok "support" the more I felt like I was on something. www.ign.com/articles/tun...

I played a bunch of the Titanium Court demo last night and I can report that all the narrative gimcrackery was received with great glee -- top-notch stage business -- and all of the actual gameplay was an airless slog and I don't really want to play any more of it.

I am nervous about CloudFlare's free-tier bot-blocking service, which is rapidly becoming a requirement to host *any* kind of free forum/wiki/service on the web.

Bundle of Holding: Downcrawl-Skycrawl Downcrawl and Skycrawl, twin toolkits from designer Aaron A. Reed that help you create spontaneous tabletop roleplaying adventures in the Deep, Deep Down and the Azure Etern. bundleofholding.com/presents/Dow... #ttrpg

Admin note: all the Visible Zorker repos have been moved under github.com/orgs/visible... . No change to ownership or licensing; I've just reorganized the github URLs.

Status: Visible Zork 3 is now in progress. Patreon supporters will see it on March 1st. Unless you're in the "see it right away" tier, in which case you'll be getting a link shortly.

I'm gonna be at GDC again! Helping out IFTF! Here's my plans. And also some thoughts about GDC's plans. What is this event trying to turn into? blog.zarfhome.com/2026/02/gdc-...

Hang on, there's a Notepad security exploit which is *unrelated* to the Notepad++ security exploit? How am I supposed to keep track

There's a thing where spammers now use LLM tools in increasingly sophisticated ways, but it's easy to spot because you get dozens of similar ones. E.g. writers getting “join our recommendation club" scams.

More on Zork bugs. (I may be blogging a lot of these…) blog.zarfhome.com/2026/02/when...

While this absolutely sucks, we are going to see a lot more places implementing universal global age verification over this next year, because the number of states and countries legally requiring it has gotten to the point no one can keep up anymore.

“To fight a troll”: notes on the combat mechanics of Zork 1. blog.zarfhome.com/2026/02/to-f...

I tried Mio (recent metroidvania platformer). It's very pretty, but too fighty for me to make much progress. Oh well.

New project in my office: the Beacon. blog.zarfhome.com/2026/02/the-... An LED strip running a homebrew pattern language. Uses the Pixelblaze LED controller, but I didn’t like the Pixelblaze pattern language so I came up with my own.

These are the games I grew up with. So nifty to see what the code is doing behind the big curtains as I type "open mailbox"

one of the coolest things i found via bluesky, check this out if you have any interest in programming or zork

Yelling "you're not my real Pope" at your real Pope: extremely frowned upon by the church, and a second period of Finding Out is about to commence

Check this sh*t out

Website procedural note: I now have a landing page for the Visible Zorker collection. eblong.com/infocom/visi/ Still just has Zork 1 and Zork 2, but now there's a list to grow.

ALL SUBMISSIONS close end of day tomorrow Saturday January 31st. Submit! And take note: there will be no deadline extensions this year.

Announcing the IFTF x GDC Scholarship Program. We have a small number of passes to distribute amongst our community, so if you are interested, please visit this thread on IntFiction.org for details: intfiction.org/t/iftf-x-gdc...

Zarf's Visible Zorker was so cool, glad to see he's giving ALL the Infocom games the same treatment. Support his new Patreon if you can for this non-trivial media archaeological work!

Order check: Deadline was before Zork 3 and Starcross. Whoops! blog.zarfhome.com/2026/01/chro...

Replay for the morning crowd: I have launched a Patreon to do Visible Zork 3, followed by all the rest of the Infocom games. One per month. There's an associated Discord for game discussion as we run through them. blog.zarfhome.com/2026/01/the-... www.patreon.com/VisibleZorker

Here we go... Announcing the Visible Zorker Project and Patreon! Remember how I did Visible Zork 1 and 2? I'm going to do Zork 3, and then continue through Infocom's entire canon -- in chronological order, one per month. blog.zarfhome.com/2026/01/the-...

@nova-box.com Yes? Email contact info at zarfhome.com ?

This is not helping me figure out the grammar stuff for Visible Zorker. (Steve Meretzky writing ZIL documentation circa 1989. "Stu" is Stu Galley.)

my new website, mothership.blog, is launching this monday!! it's going to be super fun and you will all enjoy reading it. we are independent and worker-owned and can't stay alive without subscribers, though, and we are currently running a lifetime 15% off deal that you should realllly be grabbing ->

Orbiting slowly in the dark in TR-49. Occasionally I manage to stumble across a page.

We are aware that the Intfiction forums are currently down and are working on a fix. Thank you for the notifications!

I suddenly remember that in kindergarten, the difference between glue and paste was extremely important.

@hoonofthe.day oh no www.delish.com/food-news/a6...

IGF nominations are up, and that means it's time for my eclectic review post. blog.zarfhome.com/2026/01/2026... - Arctic Awakening - Promise Mascot Agency - The Haunting of Joni Evers - Carceri - Prší - Kid Cosmo - and Roger - Jane (Some other IGF games are already reviewed; see links in post.)

Take-Two stock is down 4.26% this afternoon because of rumors that GTA6 will be delayed based on a podcast in which I did not say that GTA6 would be delayed

Check out my funtime project from the holiday break! blog.zarfhome.com/2026/01/the-... Will I continue on to Zork 3? Watch this space!

NarraScope call for proposals is open! We're at the University at Albany, June 12-14. Now accepting: - Talks - The Showcase (games) - The Experience (new this year!) blog.zarfhome.com/2026/01/narr... narrascope.org

Narrascope 2026 open call: The Experience Bridging the Physical and Digital Worlds through Narrative Seeking projects in the realms of augmented/mixed reality, interactive installations, haunts, escape rooms, live performances that leverage tech, and more. narrascope.org/experience/

📣 NarraScope 2026 submissions are open! This year NarraScope will feature three different areas for submission: our classic talks, the second year of our game Showcase, and the debut of The Experience. 🧵(1/4)

NarraScope submissions are open, and you have a month to get your talks, games, etc. in! Don't sleep on it!

Okay, I will preface this with the GIGANTIC disclaimer that I promise I know how this looks, and I *swear* this is not personally motivated: If you have an old #LiveJournal account, and it has things you still care about in it, download it or import it to Dreamwidth SOON. Details:

Last post of the year! It’s reviews. Short ones. - Despelote - Many Nights a Whisper - Keeper blog.zarfhome.com/2025/12/ador...

Regulating AI would be really hard, especially if you don’t want to make it so the big guys are fine and no one else can compete. Anything that would do any good would have shell of a time passing. So I’ve been trying to think of ideas, mostly as I reread and reread the NIST AI RMF.