Apple released “Liquid Glass” which looks a lot like a revival of UI fashion from two decades. Everything is transparent. But I doubt Apple has the courage to bring back wobbly windows. No matter, I hardly move my windows around anyway, but what does move is the text inside. So why not wobbly letters? Wobbletters. Definitely in the category of felt cute might delete later.

My original idea was to add a little spin to each letter as it scrolls. Like the letters are hanging on a backboard, and as it bounces up and down, momentum is transferred to the letters. Didn’t quite make it that far, but maybe next time.

To start, I just wanted to check I could shift the vertices around a bit. The same wobble for every vertex, no distortion.

        var wobblex, wobbley float32
        if smoothAmt != 0.0 {
            wobblex = (rand.Float32() -0.5) / 50.0
            wobbley = (rand.Float32() -0.5) / 50.0
        }
        for k := 0; k < 6; k++ {
                base := &baseverts[x+k]
                base.adj[0] += wobblex
                base.adj[1] += smoothAmt + wobbley
        }

This ended up looking much cooler than I thought. Like a faceted glass privacy screen. Apple should totally add this now. It fits with the glass theme. The sequel to liquid glass, solid glass!

Unfortunately, this renders the text unreadable while scrolling.

Video is at 30 fps, but the illusion is more complete at 90 fps. You no longer see individual letters, just transient edges as they pass by.

Accidentally rebooted after installing this, so I guess it’s wacky week for a while.