A Few Interesting Links

I recently came across some interesting blog/website links to share with you. I can't recall where I found two of them, so if those two came from any of your blogs/websites, I apologize for not being able to credit you:

1. On Indexed Jessica Hagy cleverly converts all kinds of ideas and concepts into graphs and charts. Humorous and good for a daily laugh. This has become so popular she has produced a book, which you can buy from any of several popular online booksellers through links on her website. The book's description on Amazon.com states:

A unique, hilarious take on the modern world

Jessica Hagy is a different kind of thinker. She has an astonishing talent for visualizing relationships, capturing in pictures what is difficult for most of us to express in words.

At indexed.blogspot.com, she posts charts, graphs, and Venn diagrams drawn on index cards that reveal in a simple and intuitive way the large and small truths of modern life.

Praised throughout the blogosphere as "brilliant," "incredibly creative," and "comic genius," Jessica turns her incisive, deadpan sense of humor on everything from office politics to relationships to religion.

With new material along with some of Jessica's greatest hits, this utterly unique book will thrill readers who demand humor that makes them both laugh and think.

2. Contrarywise is a website featuring literary tattoos--tattoos based on books, poems, lyrics, and many other things. The site is simple: a photo of each tattoo, with a blurb underneath setting out the exact language used in the tattoo, and usually an explanation of why the person chose it. Some of the tattoos are copies of illustrations from books rather than quotations, such as the rocking-horse fly by Victorian illustrator John Tenniel from the 1871 first edition of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

It's fascinating to see the quotations people choose to wear on their bodies. I'm not into tattooing myself, but if I were to get one it would be a quotation from a book. For example, an excellent one recently posted is a quotation from Gandhi: "My life is my message."

3. On The Ninth Muse, my friend roz m has a link to Wordle, which she says "makes a word cloud that visualizes the word frequency in a passage you copy to the wordle site. You can experiment with different layouts, colors, and fonts until you find the image that makes you most content. This seems like a good tool to use in writing; it could allow you to see what the dominant words (and the ideas linked to them) are in a chapter or scene." Clever idea. Thanks, Roz, for the link and for your description of it. (Unfortunately, I wasn't able to experiment with it on my aging and cranky home computer, but I plan to try it on my office computer next week.)