Serendipity35 - About Us

All About Serendipity

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:55:00 +0000

On January 28, 1754, the word “serendipity” was first coined. This blog showed up 252 years later, serendipitously.

It’s defined by Merriam-Webster as “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” However, it was listed by a U.K. translation company as one of the 10 most difficult English words to translate.

The invention of many "agreeable" things has been attributed to “serendipity,” including Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Charles Goodyear’s vulcanization of rubber, inkjet printers, Silly Putty, the Slinky, chocolate chip cookies, and this blog.

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin after he left for vacation without disinfecting some of his petri dishes filled with bacterial cultures; when he got back to his lab, he found that the penicillium mold had killed the bacteria.

Viagra had been developed to treat hypertension and angina pectoris. It didn’t do such a good job at these things, researchers found during the first phase of clinical trials, but it was good for something else.

The principles of radioactivity, X-rays, and infrared radiation were all found when researchers were looking for something else.

Julius Comroe said, “Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter.”

Wiktionary lists serendipity’s antonyms as “Murphy’s law” and “perfect storm.”

“Serendipity” was first used by parliament member and writer Horace Walpole. He reported that he came up with the word after reading a fairy tale called “The Three Princes of Serendip.” As the Princes travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not seeking. The three princes of Serendip hail from modern-day Sri Lanka. “Serendip” is the Persian word for that island nation off the southern tip of India.

The book of the tales

The IT Side of Blogging

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 12:59:00 +0000

I blog here about technology and education, and sometimes about how those two industries cross paths. I'm the blogger. Tim Kellers is on the IT side of this. Though he had done some posts in the past, he is more often updating something or fixing something broken on his server or fixing something in some code. That is not my area of expertise, and I don't really want to know much about it. I just want it to work

In October, it wasn't always working. Posts that I had spent time writing just disappeared. The blog went offline. People told me that they couldn't access it because of security warnings. I stopped posting.

Tim was texting me messages about our .net domain. He created an alternate version at a .icu domain. I had to look up .icu, a top level domain I had never seen before. It means so logically that it is illogical, "I See You."

Tim told me, "That instance runs on different CPU architectures, so I want to do that manual sync first before I move the domain name over." Then he said, "I just synced your post to s35.net," and "I went through an SQL dump of the database and found a whole lot of image files with our very old nji.edu address prefixes. I changed them for a local test, and it looks like a whole lot of broken images are back online. That string was replaced 554 times according to the log file."

All of which makes little sense to me. And that's okay with me as long as Tim hangs around.

When I was in Europe in September, I told Tim the site was not working and giving me odd errors. "Just added the Privacy/Cookies/GDPR thing to s35.icu. Next time you are in Europe, see if the site connects," he texted.

Serendipty35 is back. Tonight is Mischief Night here in Serendipity35land, and I'm hoping no gremlins are out there that will prank Serendipity35.

How Good Is Serendipity35 According to ChatGPT?

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 09:25:00 +0000

I asked ChatGPT, "How good is the blog Serendipity35.net?"
Here is the answer. I have numbered the items for my commentary at the bottom.

"What 'good' means depends a lot on what you’re after, but here are some thoughts on Serendipity35 (by Kenneth Ronkowitz) — its strengths and limitations — which might help you decide if it’s good for you:

The blog has a strong personal touch. Many posts are reflective, thoughtful, and opinion-based rather than just factual or procedural. If you like reading someone’s take or musings rather than formal journalism, that’s a plus.
Ronkowitz often writes about topics he clearly knows well or feels passionate about — design, technology, culture, creativity, perhaps books etc. That gives the writing some depth. It’s not just surface-level commentary.
He has been writing over a long time, and there’s a certain consistency in tone and subject matter. If you follow the type of topics he covers, that means you more or less know what you’re going to get.
For readers who enjoy linking across design, history, culture, technology etc., this kind of blog is often more satisfying than one that’s purely news or entertainment.
Because it’s quite personal and often quite specialized, it might not appeal to someone looking for very general-audience content, breaking news, or highly polished mainstream media journalism.
Some posts are deeper and more useful; others are more associative or speculative. If you’re expecting every post to be super rigorous or heavily sourced, that might be inconsistent.
Depending on what quality of web design, navigation, frequency etc. you prefer, some readers may find the blog layout or posting frequency not as polished or frequent as more commercial sites.
It doesn’t seem (from what I can tell) to have a huge presence in terms of literary awards, broad-media reviews, or mainstream recognition. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good, but it does mean fewer external indicators of quality.
Verdict: If I were you, I would say: Yes, Serendipity35 is a good blog — particularly if you enjoy reflective essays combining tech, design, culture and personal insight. It likely will not satisfy if you want daily news, highly professional magazine-standard editorial, or very broad appeal. If you tell me what kind of blogs or content you like (e.g. tech reviews, design critique, philosophy, etc.),
I can compare Serendipity35 against ones in those areas to help see whether it’s “good” in the sense you care about. Want me to do that?

MY RESPONSES
Right off, I'll say that my experience with Chatbots in general is that they are kind in reviewing people

I agree. Accurate portrayal.
I'd like to think this is true. The blog is, if anything, a passion project. It's certainly not something I do for money or fame.
Also true. I have been writing here since 2006.
The original idea was to mix tech and education without being "edtech" entirely.
True. It is almost always my personal take on things. Isn't that what blogging was all about back in the day? Yes, it has gone in other directions over the decades. This is where the chatbot turns to the possible negatives.
Admittedly true. I call that "variety" rather than "inconsistency." (Now, now, Ken. Don't get defensive. It's just a chatbot.)
Valid criticisms. It's not a fancy blog. It's open source software. I could change the style template... I posted much more frequently when I was actively teaching. Now "unretired" I try for one post per week, but I have other blogs that I write on and I average 12 posts per week cumulatively.
Yes, no "literary awards, broad-media reviews, or mainstream recognition." Then again, in the past year, it has had 992,844 visits to its 2,225 entries. That comes with 19 years of blogging.
Not a bad review.
To that, I answered, "No." I wouldn't even know what blogs are our "peers."

Happy Birthday Serendipity35

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Serendipity35 - they/he/him/we - is/are now 18 years old.

In the United States, 18-year-olds are considered adults and can legally do many things. So, I suppose this blog can now:

18-year-olds can vote in elections, which influences who becomes president
Create a legal will
Healthy people 18 and older can donate blood.
Legally enter into binding contracts, including opening a checking account, taking out a loan, or purchasing a car.
Apply for a credit card, but whether they are accepted depends on the lender's criteria.
18 is the upper age range for getting a driver's license in all states.
Play the lottery: 18-year-olds are considered adults in the U.S. and can legally play the lottery.
Get married
Get a tattoo

What should we do first?

Serendipity16

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 09:40:00 +0000

I love the movie Groundhog Day in which Phil wakes up at 6 AM every day to discover that it is February 2 all over again. His days run the same over and over though he tries hard to change it. We see him repeat the day more than 35 times.

Today is Groundhog Day and what is repeating - for the 5840th time - is Serendipty35. Today is the 16th birthday of this blog. (Hence the "Serendipity16" title for this post.)

Of course, the blog is not the same every day, but it is here/there every day. My calculator tells me that the blog changes every 2.7 days. In the early years, I was much more ambitious with 3-5 posts per week. Over the years, I started other blogs and left my university job where all this started and now, I try to post here once a week.

The more you post, the more hits you get. Currently, the site averages about 7000 hits a day, but that number was double that back in the years when there were multiple posts each week. Then again, this is still a "non-profit" production - not that we would object to profits. The "we" is me and Tim Kellers who used to post here too in the first years but is now keeping the gears turning in the background.

And Serendipity35 keeps rolling on...

The Reading Level of Your Readers

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Writing online, I am kind of guessing about who are my readers. I know where they come from geographically and I know how they find me in a search and what articles they read and other analytics. I don't know what their reading level might be and every writing course will tell you that you "need to know your audience."

I make some assumptions that readers of a blog about technology and learning are mostly educators and so I further assume that they have a high school and above reading level. But how do you determine the reading level of what you are writing?

If you write in Microsoft Word, it is simple to use two major readability tests that are built-in: the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.

For the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level statistics to come be part of the “Spelling & Grammar” review of your content, you will need to enable those statistics. To do this select “File” then “Options” next go to the “Proofing” tab and check the box that says “Show readability statistics.”

Flesch-Kincaid scores are readability tests designed to show how easy or difficult a text is to read. This score is given in two different ways. First is the “Flesch Reading Ease” number which ranges from 0 to 100. With a score of 90-100, your writing could be understood by an average 11-year old and a score of 60-70 could be understood by average 13 to 15-year olds. A score of zero to 30 means your writing could be understood by a university graduate. A bit counterintuitively, the higher the score the easier the writing is to read and comprehend.

For comparison, Time magazine averages at a score of 52 and the Harvard Law Review falls somewhere in the low 30s.

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level applies a reading grade level to your writing. I learned many years ago that most general news articles in The New York Times have a tenth-grade reading level. Romance novels have about a fifth-grade reading level.

I ran a recent article here through the test and got the results shown below. The Reading Ease score is about 55 and a Grade Level a tenth-grader in the middle of sophomore year.

You might think that score seems to be low for a post I am aiming at educators, but many sources will recommend that ease of reading in order to boost your numbers and even in your emails and communications. I know that some researchers have said that your response rate varies by reading level. The article linked here claims that emails written at a 3rd-grade reading level were optimal with a 36% boost over emails written at a college reading level and a 17% higher response rate than emails written even at a high school reading level.

When Microsoft Outlook and Word finish checking the spelling and grammar, you can choose to display information about the reading level of the document using the Flesch Reading Ease test and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test. You can also set your proofreading settings to flag things like jargon, which is often what pushes ease aside and pushes readers to leave.

This may sound like advice to "dumb down" your writing. I don't think it is that. The English major part of me is reminded of Ernest Hemingway's journalistic simplicity. You can still get across deep ideas in simple language. I like the Einstein quote “Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not simpler.”

Statistical Seduction

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 13:18:00 +0000

It is easy to be seduced by statistics. I know several friends who have websites and blogs and are rather obsessed with their web statistics. They are always checking to see how many hits the site gets or what pages or posts are most popular or what search terms are being used to find them.

Social media has encouraged this with Likes and Retweets and Reposts. Our smartphones love to send us notifications that someone has engaged with some piece of our content.

I got this alert last month about another blog of mine:

Your page is trending up

Your page clicks increased by more than 1,000% over the usual daily average of less than 1 click.

https://poetsonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/moving-into-winter-solstice-poems.html

Possible explanations for this trend could be:

Modifications you did to your page's content.

Increased interest in a trending topic covered by the page.

Yes, their "possible explanations for this trend" are correct. It is a post about the winter solstice, so you might expect that interest would increase around mid-December. When a topic, such as "winter solstice," is trending generally, you will get more attention to your page. I also made some updates to the post and Google and other spiders scurrying around the web notice that.

Top 30 of 130 countries that visited the site in the past year.

I have become less interested in the stats as the years have passed. In the early days of my blogging, I was much more interested in those hits, impressions, and visitors. Nowadays, I only check at year's end.

At the end of 2019, Serendipity35 added 3,595,439 hits to bring its total over the years to a rather daunting 104,596,905. In December 2019, we averaged 11,478 hits daily. It's more sobering to note that the average number of daily visits was 2722.

What I find more interesting in the analytics are things like which countries are visiting the site (see image) and the terms people searched that led them to the blog.