Tag clouds and how I like to read them.
You may not even notice them. They’re in the side columns of most blogs, and they’re known as “tag clouds.” What they’re meant to do is give you a basic idea of what the blog author writes about. Each post has tags assigned to it. And in the cloud, the tags get bigger or smaller depending on how often they’re used. Many tags won’t make the cloud at all. (For instance, this blog as over 1200 tags, but only 45 make it into my cloud.)
Sometimes I like to just take a look at the tag cloud of people I know who maintain blogs and see how good of a representation it is of the person I know.
Let’s take a look at mine, first.
It’s not bad in terms of giving you a basic idea of what I’m up to. Lyric mentioned today that her name is too small – she doesn’t like how Ollie’s and Darby’s are larger. We have california and the east coast represented, along with the things that do seem to weigh on my mind like my career, my struggle (and it’s twin brother “struggles”), my finances, and representation. Screenwriting is the largest word, because I do end up writing about that a lot. UCLA is also large, which makes sense because I greatly appreciated my experience in that fine film school. Topanga makes a large experience because – good or bad – the place definitely makes an impression. There’s the little trio of frustrating, funny, and god – which oddly I believe belong together, honestly. Then we have wisdom, which I strive to have and listen to, and family, which is also very important to me. Along with time, which I’m always trying to find more of. I’m happy to see hiking make an appearance, too. And since I develop iPhone apps, it makes sense that it shows up as well. I’d say it’s a pretty good snapshot. I think I wish maybe some sports got in there, and probably more family and friends by name – but honestly many times when I’m talking about family or friends I don’t mention them by name because I’m not always sure what people want me to say about them online. So I’m more generalized much of the time.
Oh, and some day it would be great to add a tag called “Oscar-winning.” But that can wait.
Let’s move onto my daughter’s tag cloud.
Lyric’s tag cloud is simpler, which I think is right, considering she’s 10. I actually love that she has a fairly uncomplicated life. Things can and will get much more complicated later, so let’s keep it simple now. And honestly, her tag cloud makes me glad because it reads like a list of people who love her very much interspersed with words like “Christmas” and “fun”! She was surprised to see that the word “Ollie” was so large. That guy just really makes an impression, I guess. And I would like to point out that while “mommy” is larger than either “dad” or “daddy” – if she would settle on one title for me the combined power of that one title might even supersede mommy all together.
As I’ve mentioned before, my sister is currently navigating her own personal hell with both strength and grace, so her tags are especially interesting as HUMOR and GOD still dominate the landscape along with theater/tour and thoughts/life. And if you read her posts, you see that she does rely heavily on both humor and God to make it through the day, so it’s nic to see that in her cloud. And then there’s the tag that at one time was so simple and easy, but now it’s not so. I’m not going to write it, I’ll just let you figure it out. (And no, it’s not JAPAN.) But really it always seems odd to me that this tag isn’t somehow split into two tags. The “before summer of 09″ and “after summer of 09″ tag. Because that tag used to be associated with head over heals commitment and affection, love and lovely writings that Jessica would write weekly if not daily. And now it’s a tag attached to such pain and heartache. Just one small word. And yet, I know that as Jessica continues to live this new life that’s been given to (forced upon) her, she’ll continue to write about new things – wonderful, unforeseen things, and slowly that tag will get smaller and smaller – just like many of the other tags that are still in her cloud but not much of her everyday life anymore. Like Japan. That one is getting smaller. And even “A Chorus Line,” because she’s not in that show anymore. Eventually all those tags will shrink and shrink and probably fall out of the tag cloud all together. But the fun thing to think of is…. what new tags will come and replace them? (By the way, I had to lobby long and hard to get mentioned by name enough to actually make it into Jessica’s tag cloud. And now that I’m there, I really don’t want to lose my place! Still annoys me that “toyko” and “Christian” are larger than me!) 
Let’s take a gander at my writing partner’s…
Hey everyone, meet Doc Pedrolie. He’s my writing partner on all television endeavors, all graphic novels, and most features. He’s an all around awesome guy, and the first UCLA classmate I met out here in California. one of the nicest people I’ve ever known, and now a dear friend to our whole family. He hasn’t been keeping his blog for long, so the tags aren’t completely representative of all his many varied interests. (Seriously, Doc is one of those guys who you mention something like, “You know, I’ve been kind of getting into Bluegrass lately,” and he can then carry on an informed discussion for an hour about the nuances of Bluegrass, sharing recommendations, anecdotes and little known facts. You can throw just about anything at him and he’ll know stuff. And he doesn’t make it up, either, like I do.
Now first off, I have to commend Doc because his tag cloud actually mentioned my blog by name. Huzzah for that. And thank you. Past that, you can see that Imagination and Inspiration are begging to be seen, and that’s only right because Doc works on those things. He doesn’t wait for them to walk into the room. He hunts them down and captures them nightly. Los Angeles, this city of dreams, is well represented, along with UCLA and Bruin Scribes. Doc is nothing if not loyal. I like that “Unexpected Gift” shows up as a fairly large tag, because isn’t that what we’re all hoping for – and aren’t all the best things in life normally the unexpected gifts. The expected gifts, yes, they’re nice…. but you expected them. It’s the unexpected ones that will blow you away and exceed even your wildest imagination. Doc’s a big baseball fan, so that explains all the baseball related tags. And he’s from Chicago – and while he’ll probably never go back, there’s a part of his heart that is still there now.
And lastly, my good friend since childhood, Christian.
Christian is aptly named. He’s one of those great guys that – in a world where so many people make you ashamed to share the “Christian” label along with them – makes you proud to apply it if it applies to him too. Seriously, he’s a good guy. One of those touchstones kind of guys who would probably really shake you and your belief that there can be good in this messed up world if he went off the deep end (no pressure, Christian!)
Christian’s a pastor, so it should maybe come as no surprise to see God and Jesus and Bible and youth ministry so largely represented. But then again, the reason he’s a very good pastor is because he doesn’t care about these things because it’s his career, it’s his career because he cares about these things. But one thing I love about Christian’s tag cloud is that KIDS is huge. And fighting it for prominence (along with God) is GRIEF. Now I’d say in a fight, I’d put my money on God and KIDS to ultimately win out versus Grief, and that’s exactly what Christian has lived. Remember how I said that love hurts so much sometimes? Well, Christian knows. He’s earned a certain amount of wisdom in that whole area that, quite frankly, I hope to never have to earn myself. It’s his story to tell, so I’ll let you go to his blog to read it, but let’s just say that when Christian talks about suffering and love and all that, you’d be wise to listen.
I love that “creek” shows up in his tag cloud. I wish creek would show up in mine, or waterfalls, or woods, or something like that. But I do have to wonder what’s wrong with him that “dentist” shows up too. Is he just obsessed with his teeth or something? And, of course, as is the general theme these days for many of us, money holds a pretty big spot. But here’s another one I want in my tag cloud – MUSIC. I need more music.
I am NOT so happy to see that the ONLY non family member who shows up by name is Joe. That just doesn’t seem fair to me.
But soccer being that large, well that just seems right. Because the one place Christian is allowed to not act like his name all the time is on the soccer field.
So there you have it. The blogs I read regularly, and my take on their tag cloud. Probably weren’t expecting that, huh?
(And Tiffany, if you had a tag cloud, I would have read it for you!)
Wow, that was much longer than expected.
Nice how modern tools allow us to slice and dice and rearrange information, even about our friends.
Dude, I can ignore a lot of typos on this blog. But “unexpected girls” literally had me laughing out loud. Freudian slip?
Hahahah I had no idea. I’ve fixed it now. And yes, there will always be typos. Some of them slowly get corrected. Some of them stand forever. But surely if they are funny and can give someone a laugh then ignore them no longer.
Come to think of it, both Lyric and Darby were unexpected girls – at least to their respective parents. So I do love unexpected girls too.
And by the way, unexpected girl isn’t much of a typo. As in, “l” and “t” are no where near each other on the keyboard. No clue what happened there.
If you like tag clouds you will love
http://wordle.net
Wordle creates word clouds based on any content you copy in. It can also pull in the actual RSS feed from a Web site. I use it in the educational setting in lots of ways with students in analyzing their own writing, making predictions, and comparing stories.
Nice tip, I’ll be adding that to my bookmarks.
And notice how you don’t even mention that you’re in Christian’s tag cloud. Sometimes the best gloating is no gloating at all.
The funny part of that is I am a tag for a post on Christian’s blog that I never even knew about! I didn’t comment about it because I wanted to see what post the tag was tied to. It is basically a post about how I gave him instructions to sync his calendar with Google and he couldn’t get it to work, but then I never emailed him back. So it doesn’t paint me in the best light.
Although, I know it works and I would hope by now you both got your Google Calendar synced. If not, let me know.
What? You got into his cloud with one mention?? Which means that I haven’t even been mentioned once. Well goodness, that’s not right. Christian forget all the nice things I said about you.
Well you are mentioned in 3 of the last 30 posts. So that is not bad. I only have one mention overall. I searched the RSS feed to get that stat. And actually Jessica is not listed as a tag, but it is one of the top 150 words used in the past 30 posts. That stat comes from Wordle.
“that stat comes from the wordle” is a hilarious sentence. I’m sorry, it is!!
And I’m honored that my name is such a top word–but why am I not tagged, darn it????
You’re not tagged because Christian tags manually and he didn’t see fit to tag you, even though he wrote about you. I’m getting him to get the auto tagging plugin so that won’t be a problem.
Peaj, I’m glad you caught that too. It cracked me up.
I am very happy to see that I made Lyric’s cloud (a fairly impressive showing I might add).
yep, you and Linds definitely muscled your way in there! I was hesitant to mention people by name in my analysis because I think other people are going to wonder why they aren’t there at all and I didn’t want to start that! People you just have to lobby like I lobbied Jessica.
ew. please don’t mention how you “lobbied Jessica” in public. Or at all.
I loved this! I felt like I was getting my palms read or something…And “No, it’s NOT Japan” made me laugh out loud. You know Japan used to be soooo simple and lovely for me; now not so much!! haha. This was a great idea for a post, Jase. And I am quite honored to be in Lyric’s cloud tag as well. And don’t worry, Jase, I don’t foresee you dropping out of mine. Ever!
Japan used to be about daily love and now it’s a source of pain.
Oh Japan…. how could you?
Japan really did turn out to act like quite a douchebag to me, huh?
So true, that country…. Who knew?
Haha, well, this made me want one! So I added it. It’s strange looking at the things you spend so much time tagging… I’m kind of surprised “unemployment” isn’t in the center of my tag circle, haha. And apparently I have a lot of “THOUGHTS” – uh… time to reign that tag in! It’s fun though, oh Reader of Clouds. (Yes, that would be your cyber-medicine-man name) and an interesting way to peek into people.
Tiffany, add a plugin called “Auto Tags” and then you don’t have to add any yourself, it reads what you write and adds them for you. Much better! And I’ll have to take a look at yours now, let me break out the peyote first.
Erm, I know what plug-ins are, and in theory how they work, but I don’t know how to use one on my blog – maybe because I’m a totally free and auto-themed Wordpressian, vs. operating on my own/using FTP and all that… If there’s an easy way to do it though, I’d love a tip.
And go easy on the peyote… I hear that stuff can really mess you up
Hmmm… not sure what the free dashboard looks like. Is there a section in the left nav that says “Plugins” and a link that says “Find new” or “install new” or something like that? If there is, go there and search for “Auto Tags” and then click on that and says “Install” and it should be rather automated. If you’re having a hard time you could shoot me your login and I’d take a look around for you.
Ooh, yeah I don’t have any of those options. We’re streamlined here on the bottom
I’ll send you my info, just in case I’m missing it.
what is this nerdspeak dialect you use?
This post is wonderful! I feel quite honored to make the roll call, as well as having such kind and considerate things said about me.
(Thank the Lord, I met you all first at that BBQ! Los Angeles would just not be the same!) It’s really neat to gander at the tag clouds as reflections of their respective author. I love that view of them, Jason. They become a kind of living document of memory, thought, reflection, and passing fancy!
What kind of gift/curse would it be if you could see a tag cloud floating above every person’s head – of what they thought and cared about? It’d be a good way of sorting the dangerous from the healthy people… but you might find out some things you didn’t want to know about people who you actually love!
This was an excellent post. I was just wondering a few days ago about those tag clouds and what makes which words appear. And, for the record, I’m glad that there aren’t tag clouds above our heads; that is an interesting scenario to imagine, though.
yeah, I’d have to vote a nay on the tag cloads floating above our heads, too. I already barely have any secrets left as it is!!!
It would be funny to try to guess what other people’s tag clouds would be though, you have to admit.
Fine, since I HAVE to: admitted,
Haha – this is really funny and insightful. Very cool post Jason. When I read tag clouds, sometimes I like to read them in order, like they are a sentence, and see if they make sense. I think mine is funny when it says (with increasing prominences) family…friends…God…GRIEF!!!!! I don’t know why, that just made me laugh when I read it.
Also, I think I need to re-work how tags are done in my blog. I still have them as self assigned, so I just pick like two or three each time. You and Jess have widgets that pick 20-30 each time right? I think if I had that, then you would be more aptly represented
Yes, auto tags. Install it!!!
And I like the reading it in order too, that’s a lot of fun. What about writing a song with them? On the spot? That’d be cool too.
A song would be pretty cool! There’s a similar sort of approach to a song on The Replacements’ album, Hootenany. The song’s called Lovelines and it features the singer, over a kind of punkish vamp, reading random lines and ads from the personal ads of that week’s City Pages (the Minneapolis Free/Arts Weekly.) It’s really funny, because he reacts a bit to what he’s reading. There’s a few demo versions with him reading from different pages and columns of ads in each one.