Word Cloud from Wordle

During the summer, Tacuma811 at LJ mentioned about the site, Wordle, where she made some word clouds.  I decided to check out the site and make my own word cloud, but it just wouldn’t work on my computer.  This past weekend I realized that I probably didn’t have a updated version of Java, and downloading and installing it solved the problem.

I tested out the function with different web addresses and words, only to not receive satifying results. Then then copied and pasted some of my LJ entries into the text field, and it still didn’t come out the way I wanted.  After many changes, I finally got an acceptable result.

I struggled with the layout, fonts, and colors, and ended up customizing my own palette so I could have pastel colors.  Afterwards, I had to keep having the site rearrange the layout, to make my word cloud look more organized, easy to read, and less awkward.  I finally captured a screenshot of it and pasted it into Photoshop to edit, save, and upload it.

Later, I came up with another idea.  I once again copied and pasted certain entries, then went through to delete the words I didn’t want displayed.  Most of them were articles, conjunctions, and prepositions, because I don’t think they have serve much purpose in word clouds.  I also eliminated the words that might reveal private things.  Again, I used Photoshop to crop the image, make the words clearer and easier to read, and add a border.  This is the result:

I noticed that most of the words are related to computers, internet, school, and people.  I have also added the word cloud to my profile.

Anybody is free to try out the Wordle site.