Larry Kenny -- Project portfolio

Kanji Chain

Kanji Chain is a Japanese word game, the objective of which is to form a chain of words linked by shared kanji. I was introduced to the game in its two-player form and thought it might be fun to see how it plays against a timer and an all-knowing computer. It can be pretty fun and a good way to study, though it's also a good way to remind yourself how much you still have to learn...

MeaningInMusic

MeaningInMusic is an online project I started to explore the way music can convey meaning. The site features user-submitted twenty-second compositions that aim to capture the essence of some specific idea. The project is still very young and experimental, so I don't know how well it will turn out, but I invite eveyrone to check it out and participate if it catches your interest.

Random Image Generator

This little Java experiment can be found here.

The applet generates a completely random image. So in theory, you could see the future, yourself, beautiful artwork, or the most accurate pixel representation possible of the face of God.

Of course, in practice, the odds of a truly random image looking like anything except TV static are more or less zero. So, to make this more interesting, the app runs some random filters over the random static to introduce random variations that give some form to the image, making it more interesting to humans. I recommend viewing the images in the dark while listening to music. Under the right conditions, your brain can come up with some pretty weird stuff out of the chaos.

Do note that images can vary wildly in how long they take to load, depending on how many iterations of filters are run (which of course is determined randomly). If you find the images are loading too slowly, try making smaller images, by changing the values of x and y in the URL. (This could also be useful for full-screen trippy visuals.)

A quick google reveals that this idea already occurred a while ago to Milcho Penchev (and surely many other people), though the version you will find there does not apply any "interestingness-increasing algorithms" to the random static (though it is probably coded better).