Message in The Cloud

Feb 2009

Way back in February 2009 I posted a Word Cloud generated using the website Wordle. The Cloud gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text or site. In my case I entered the URL of this blog and created a cloud that visualised my word usage up to that point. My blog was only a few months old and not suprisingly words like First, Painting, Model, Games and Gaming were prominent. This was very much in line with the initial concept of BLMA to promote and showcase my painting.

Out of curiosity I decided to revisit the Wordle site and generate a new cloud that would analyse my blog after two years of activity. I was initially suprised by the results but given the shift in my gaming and painting interests over the last 24 months I supose I shouldn't have been. Wordle doesn't make it clear if more recent items are given greater prominence but it seems likely that there is some weighting towards newer posts. I'm guessing it only draws from those posts that are currently visible on the front page and doesn't scan through all the archived material. This would explain why words like Platoon, Squad, Panzer and Tank feature so prominently.

Jan 2011

This all adds up of course to a big distraction from painting and gaming, and should therefore be labeled as yet another Bad Habit. But its an interesting analytical tool none-the-less and one I think I'll use each year to see how things are changing with this blog.