Some Things Are Extremely Neat

In the last day or two commenters to this blog have turned me on to a few things that I just have to blog about.  They're extremely neat.

The first is Wordle, from nagoonberry.   It makes word clouds from text.  Just to see it work, I pasted in the text from my blog entry, "Why I'm an Engineer."  I haven't read anything on the site in detail, but I'm assuming that text size has something to do with how often words are used.  Here's the result.

It's a little disturbing to me that "worked" and "wanted" are so big.  I've mentioned before that so much of my life has been marked by wanting and seeking, and that I'd like to be more about being than wanting.  This word picture is like seeing myself in a mirror - and not loving what I see.  It reminds me of some Christmas stories where the hero gets to see how he is viewed by others, or listening to yourself on tape for the first time.  Also disturbing.  I have some thoughts about this and have been percolating a post about archetypes and journeys, but the thoughts aren't complete yet. More later on this.

But back to Wordle.  It's extremely neat.

The next neat thing is a link from Sweet Bee Cottage: http://knockoffwood.blogspot.com/ .  I could spend hours on this site.  It shows how to make things - and the illustrations make it all look easy.  I looked at the site last night, and almost got right up and pulled out the power tools.  Not really - but the thought crossed my mind!

Also extremely neat.

I'm really loving being stretched in new ways and learning these cool new things!