I wandered lonely as a word cloud…

I discovered Wordle today, and though I really ought to be doing much more important things I have been playing with it. Wordle describes itself as a ‘toy’ for generating word clouds. You can drop in text, provide a link to your blog or put in a link to a del.icio.us page. Word clouds are then generated, and you can then select the font, colors, and layout. I put the url for cyberloom in, and then kept hitting the randomize button watching my categories cloud transform every which way.

Wordle - Silentina Movie font

Wordle - Superclarendon font

Wordle - Coolvetica font

Wordle - Tank Lite font

Blog category clouds help to add different sizes to the text in Wordle. To see how Wordle handles other text I tried out a couple of quotes. Below is an Andre Malraux quote, ‘The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.’

Andre Malraux quote in Boopee font

“Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose.” Alan Moore

Alan Moore quote - Gunplay font

You can print out your random text clouds or submit them to the Wordle Gallery. For this post I used my keyboard ‘Print Screen’ button to copy the word clouds, then I trimmed the edges in Photoshop.

I will now go and fling myself between the ‘profusion of matter and of the stars’ and do something more purposeful with my existence…

Wordsworth quote in Berylium font