Ken's Blog

Today is the 14th birthday of Google Chrome. It was launched on September 2, 2008.

I have much enjoyed using Chrome during its illustrious childhood. It works very well not only on my MacBook and Android phone, but also on my Quest 2 VR headset.

And of course it’s highly compatible with all of those great Google productivity tools. But now I’m getting worried.

You know what happens when somebody turns 14. They start to get complicated.

I’m worried that Chrome might begin to show signs of adolescence. It might become moody, or manic, or oddly attracted to other Web browsers in ways that it does not yet understand.

It might suddenly fly into fits of jealousy or rage, and refuse to serve pages. Or I might find my pages suddenly all transformed to a dark theme, with everything showing up in a gothic font.

What happens if my trusty Web browser just sits in the corner of my screen all day, munching on apples and peanut butter and wearing outfits with oversized sleeves that cover its hands? And then refuses to do anything but recite lyrics by The Cure and Fall Out Boy?

Oh well, all I can do is hope for the best. Maybe Google Chrome will immediately blossom into a mature adult Web Browser, without ever going through an awkward phase.

If not, I’m open to suggestions.

Today is both the first day of September and the first day of our Fall semester at NYU. Bright and early this morning I taught my very first class of the academic year.

Autumn has arrived, as though welcoming us into the coming year, the heat of the NY summer is gone at last, and it feels like a fresh start. Ready to start the future.

And the nice thing about the future is that anything is possible. Then again, the scary thing about the future is that anything is possible.

It seems that the FBI has an 800 number — a toll-free tip line — where you can call in to give them a tip about federal crimes. I only know this because today I got a call from that number.

At first I didn’t know it was the FBI toll-free tip line. But I didn’t recognize the number, so while they were calling me I Googled it rather than pick up.

And that’s when I learned what the number is for. And who was supposedly calling me.

Which leads to the next obvious question: Why would the FBI be calling me from their toll-free tip line, the phone line that we citizens are supposed to use to give tips to them?

The answer is, they wouldn’t. Needless to say, I didn’t pick up.

Whoever it was didn’t leave a message. Which is probably a good thing. But part of me is disappointed, because it might have been interesting to know what they would have said.

When I was a little kid, I loved science fiction. My brother and I would devour the many scifi books that our uncle brought us, and still be hungry for more.

Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, these were my heroes. My little mind was filled with robots, martians, explorations of time and space, and wondrous things invented by intrepid heroes ahead of their time.

So today I would like to celebrate the birthday of Mary Shelley, the OG of science fiction, born 225 years ago today. Everything after her novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus owes a debt to that towering achievement.

It’s amazing to ponder the fact that science fiction didn’t always exist as a cultural phenomenon. This wondrous thing needed to be invented by an intrepid hero ahead of her time.

Cleaning the apartment, this was my task today
A very large and thankless chore, and now it’s underway
Throwing out old envelopes and bills I didn’t pay
In boxes full of memories. What to toss, and what can stay?
I’m not sure just what it means, but one thing I can say
It isn’t what you keep that counts — it’s what you throw away

There is one unusual superpower that I would love for to have. It’s not x-ray vision, or super strength, or flight, but I want it.

I would like to be able to have conversations with myself at different ages. Maybe a nice chat with ten year old me, or with eighty year old me.

It would probably be necessary to build rules around the use of such a super power. For example, older me shouldn’t be able to talk to younger me about future world events. That could lead to complications.

But other than that, it would be great to check in, and to learn about the ever shifting relationship between identity and time. I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned something surprising.

Today is August 27. Which can also be expressed as 8/27 — or 27/8, depending on where you live.

It’s one of the rare days of the year when the month and the day can be written as two different numbers raised to the same power. In contrast, there are quite a few dates in the year that can be written as two different numbers raised to the second power.

But only one day in the year can be written as two different numbers raised to the fourth power. But which one? I will leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Judith Durham passed away a few weeks ago. Until I heard the news, I had not stopped to think how much her voice has been an integral part of my life.

Some things you just take for granted. Like Joni said, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

But now I’m noticing that I’ve begun to listen to her every day. Sometimes I play songs from her early days with The Seekers, other times more of her more recent music.

In my way, I guess I am trying to keep her around. I hope that’s not too selfish of me.

I’ve noticed that certain literary sources contain phrases that lend themselves to becoming titles of other works. For example, countless books and plays and movies have titles borrowed from either the Bible or Shakespeare.

I’ve gotten into the habit, when I read something that really resonates with me, of examining its component phrases for potential titles. Take, for example, this famous example from the first book of LoTR:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

Where in here is the best potential book title? My first vote would be for “A Light from the Shadows”. Sure enough, two different books have that title.

But I suspect there are other potential titles here. “From the Ashes a Fire” sounds promising. “Shadows Shall Spring” is no good, because it completely loses the intent.

I wonder whether we could give any given literary passage a numerical score, based on how many great possible book titles are hidden therein. And if we did, what passage would score highest?

My bet is on the soliloquy in Act III, Scene I of Hamlet.

Last week I showed how to make agitated graph paper. The trick was to add time-varying noise to the intersection points of the grid.

But it wasn’t as much fun as it could be, because it wasn’t interactive. So this week I thought it would be nice to make a responsive agitated grid.

I made it so if you rub the grid with your mouse, it reacts by moving around. The result turns out to be not so much agitated as ticklish.

Basically, you get to tickle graph paper. Which I’m guessing not something you’ve ever experienced.

I implemented it in a very simple, so if you look at the code, you can compare with last week’s widget see what has changed. Fortunately, it only took a few lines of code to make the grid ticklish.

You can see the widget here. As usual, if you scroll down to the bottom and click on the word that you see there to see and edit the source code, if live coding tickles your fancy.