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Processing: WordCram

WordCram

Today in Processing we won’t even show you a sketch, but we will talk about Processing, and sharing, and code.

So part of the fun of doing this “Processing Month” thing has been in sharing my exploration. Make no mistakes, I’m not an expert at Processing, not even close… I’m pretty much a newbie. That’s OK though, because I like to learn as I go.

It seems strange that it’s only been a week since I posted my Overlapping Ovals sketch, because I’ve already learned things since then, and would do it differently today. Lucky for me, a guy named Dan Bernier left a comment. And it was encouraging. And he left a link that pointed me to WordCram.org, which is described as: open-source word clouds for Processing.

So I grabbed WordCram and tested it out. (The results are in the image above.)

After installing the WordCram library, I took a look at the examples, and took the first one (firstnamesUsingWordPresets) and tweaked it just a bit, and fed it my own word list. My list consisted of the tags from this blog, and the number of times they appear. (See the file here.) I did remove any words that were only used once.

If you’re intimidated by Processing, you shouldn’t be… it’s fairly easy to get started, and there are lots of great example sketches out there. If that’s not enough, I hear that some guys in Milwaukee are planning a Processing class to help get other folks up to speed. :)

Stay Tuned!

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Another Fail

Disqus Fail

I know I’m in a small minority, but I actually like having things under my control. My web site, and even my comments… and if they fail, well, they fail. Everything fails at some point, but I guess I feel more comfortable knowing that when things fail there is at least some chance I can do something to fix it. Reboot the database server, reboot the web server.. something. When a cloud(ish) service fails, I just feel totally helpless. Like some kitten in a silly photo.

Kittens in a Bowl on a Scale

And while it’s fun to look at silly photos of kittens if you’re not the kitten, it may not be as much fun if you are the kitten.

(And yes, I am aware of the irony in this post, life is an ironic thing, or so I’m told.)