TagCrowd: visualising writing

Tag clouds have emerged as a great way to visualise what some text is _really_ about — whether it be a political speech or anything else. Now TagCrowd (still in alpha) allows you to create tag clouds from any arbitrary text.

Here’s a tag cloud of my post Stay alert, ye nameless, toiling animals:

created at TagCrowd.com

After the hunt

Photograph of the remains of a noisy miner (bird) after being eaten by Artemis the cat

I decided not to publish a high-resolution version of this photograph. This morning one of our cats, Artemis, proudly brought us a Noisy Miner chick which she’d just hunted. After she’d played with it a while I decided to grab my phone to photograph her victory. But by the time I’d done that, this is all that remained.

Good heavens, I’m blogging about the pets!

I think I’d better migrate to Cincinnati immediately.

That said, it’s interesting that she left the claws. I don’t like eating chicken’s feet either.

Why so visual?

Why have so many of my recent posts been about visual arts and popular culture? How does this fit in with my planned “creative days off” next week? “Once Saturn moves to stronger orbit on and after 19 April, your getaway plans will fall into place,” says one horoscope. “Keep searching for the right solution. Saturn will stay in strong orbit until 19 December, so you have time.” Today is 19 April. I feel good, for some reason.