Does Your Blog Wordle Up?
My multi-talented, java-enabled yet Windows-empowered friend Alik Levin of www.practicethis.com (among other blogs) subjected my blog to the machinations of www.wordle.net. Wordle creates "word clouds".
Another friend, Bob "Roudy Bob" Roudebush, Windows MVP & mild-mannered Director of Solutions Engineering at Double-Take by day, elsewise nocturnal denizen of the Internet, recently cited Wordle as well.
Stand back! We may be on the verge of critical mass...
Word Clouds
So what's Wordle? From the Wordle home page:
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
The Wordle gallery for this java app is fascinating, where I found Wordle's transmogrifications for text ranging from Genesis to the classic boilerplate Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...
Alik's Thesis: Wordle is a Measure of Focus
Alik's intriguing thesis is that Wordle can be used to visually demonstrate the focus—or lack thereof—of a web site or blog.
Wordling My Blog
Is he right? As a biochemist in a former life & in my current role as a high-performance engineer, I love to experiment.
My blog's description is:
Jimmy May, Aspiring Geek: SQL Server Performance, Best Practices, & Productivity
News you can use on implementation of the elusive sqlservr.exe /faster switch, personal effectiveness, etc.
Here's what Wordle did with my blog:
The conclusion:
Archimedes invents electricity.
In spite of my undisciplined digressions, ADD moments, gratuitous-sounding yet sincere characterizations, & off-topic rants, I've apparently been able to finagle my way back to my central themes.
<ADD>Speaking of ADD moments, my therapist will be thrilled to learn that I've been validated by a software application.</ADD>
Wordling a White Paper
Here's a Wordle of the latest-&-greatest draft of the white paper I've written for SQL CAT with Denny Lee on disk partition alignment.
Again, Eureka! (Don't hold your breath, but stay tuned for the DPA white paper...)
Other Wordles
Alik Wordled other blogs:
A Toy? Or More?
Is Wordle just a toy, or can it be an effective tool to analyze the focus of one's work?
Wordle's transmogrification of my blog & white paper validates Alik's thesis.
How does your blog Wordle up?
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Alik Levin & Roudy Bob.
Administrivia
Jimmy May, MCDBA, MCSE, MCITP: DBA + DB Dev
Senior Performance Consultant: SQL Server
A.C.E.: Assessment, Consulting, & Engineering Services
http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay
"If it is fast and ugly, they will use it and curse you; if it is slow, they will not use it." —Computer science professor, billionaire, & entrepreneur David Cheriton
This post was written with the PracticeThis.com plugin for Windows Live Writer
Jimmy May is a Principal Engineer for SQL Server in the Microsoft Assessment. Consulting, & Engineering (A.C.E.) team & is assigned to Team Lee. He is the Visionary-in-Chief of SQL Server Pros & was formerly the Senior Database Architect for one of the world’s largest, SQL Server high-throughput OLTP VLDBs. He is a founder & on the executive committees of both the Indiana Windows User Group (www.iwug.net) & Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (www.indypass.org). He is a recipient of the MS IT Gold Star award, is collaborating with the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (SQL CAT) on a series of SQL best practices papers, & is a member of the Microsoft Oracle Center of Excellence. Jimmy lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his lovely new bride, Phyllis, & Fannie May the Wonder Dog. Contact him at jimmymay@microsoft.com. Visit his SQL Server performance & personal productivity blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay.
“In the late 90’s I made a conscious decision to become a geek, & started working with SQL Server in 1999. Since then it’s been quite a ride—going from the Help Desk to DBA to Architect to entrepreneur to Microsoft Principal Engineer & consultant.”
