This Is What I Look Like

This is what I – or, more accurately, my blog – looks like:

This is an image of my blog.  The words I most commonly use (“Wikipedia” appears in my blog quite a bit, evidently) created using a pretty cool little word cloud generator called “Wordle”.  It takes a bit of text you can enter into a text field, or it takes a blog URL or feed.  Then it crunches it up and spits this out.  Obviously, it only does the posts it can see, not all posts of all time or this would look radically different, but it still makes a nifty little word cloud, which you can customize by changing fonts, colors and layouts.  Loads of fun for the whole reading-age family.

It’s also an extremely useful bit of writer’s help.  If you enter a chunk of writing you’ve done into the input field and let Wordle crunch it, you’ll have a great visual representation of how many times you’ve used which words.  I don’t know about you, but repetition is something I lose track of when I’m writing, and having a visual cue like this would help a lot.  It shows me all the most common words and by relative size (more uses makes the text bigger) I can see which words I’m over-using.

What do you look like?  How ‘bout your writing?  You can either save the Wordle cloud to their gallery, to be used by any/everyone on the ‘Net, or you can take a screenshot and use it however you want.

So … what do you look like?

-JDT-

All original content copyright DarcKnyt, 2009
ALL rights reserved

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Friday Nothingness

Image via Wikipedia

Whisper sweet nothings to me.

‘Cause that’s what I got for today.  Nothin’.

For the most part, things are status quo.  Nothing’s changed for better or worse in our situation.  That’s not great, but it could be worse.  If there are any major developments, I’ll let you know.

Another friend of mine lost his job today.  The really sickening part of his whole deal, though, is that it’s “family” who fired him.  Specifically, his brother-in-law.  My friend’s mother convinced him to go to work for her company, and promised increases in pay, and 40% ownership of the company, over the next several years.  Instead, he’s gotten a consistent round of pay-cuts and today, while his sister was away in Florida, the brother-in-law pulled the trigger, said they couldn’t keep him onboard any longer, and that’s that.  Based on all the promises he got from his mother, he has, in the last couple of years, bought a house pretty far in the sticks, found out he’s got high blood pressure and had to begin a medication regimen to treat it, and started school again online.  He’s losing his health benefits and like so, so many of us, he can’t afford the COBRA option; he’s also losing about $3600 a year in car expenses.  And all that debt – the mortgage especially – is hovering right over his head.  If you’re the praying kind, please remember my friend in your prayers.  I know he’d appreciate it.

Meanwhile I find two kinds of job openings: Those which pay sufficiently for me to make a living, and those for which I am qualified.  Never the twain shall meet, either.  Never.  I’m still pluggin’, but it ain’t lookin’ good.  Good ol’ Hopey McChange – with all that hope and change going around, I’m sure things’re gonna flip real soon here.  (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please forgive the ramblings of a part-time madman.)

The kids are great.  Thanks for asking.  I’m loving this time.  Really, I am.  It means so much to be with them for so much of the day.

Well, I go nothin’, like I said.  Maybe I’ll post again later if something interesting strikes the neuralnetwork and a synapse or two closes.  Don’t hold your breath, though.

Any plans for the weekend?  Shout out, holla back, and all that crap.

Have a good weekend if I don’t talk to you before.

God bless each and every one o’ you lugs,
-JDT-

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