Funny that the names of God would almost cause me to lose my salvation; that is, if it was actually losable.
For her posting yesterday at Inspired Bliss, Lisa (Put It On The List) needed a graphic to go along with her text; I thought the perfect thing would be a Wordle, so I created one using many of the different names for God found in scripture.
If you aren’t familiar with Wordle, you must click this link and have a look–it’s a nifty little gizmo that creates word clouds from a submitted word bank or even by scanning a URL to extract words. Color, font and style are at your discretion, and if you’ve got time to kill, you can murder the better part of an hour or two or three.
Here’s the one I created:
My "issues" started when I realized I couldn’t simply right-click the image and save to disk. Straight from the Wordle FAQs page, "Wordle is a Java applet, and Java applets are not permitted
to write anything to your disk. So, while the applet could
generate a jpeg, it wouldn’t be able to give it to you!"
If I’m not mistaken, I just heard the Soup Nazi bellow "NO SOUP FOR YOU!".
It went on to explain you were welcome to take a screen shot, so I did. FYI, Wordle does provide html to embed a thumbnail of your creation, but a hundred words on a postage stamp are pretty difficult to read.
This is about the time my frustration began simmering. A screen shot does you no good if you don’t have the companion software to crop it! I did my darndest to jam Cinderella’s step-sister’s foot into the glass slipper, because I am certain (as was she) that I could make it work.
- I tried Paint, but I could never find the cropping tool.
- I tried uploading the screen shot to Word, and it just laughed at me.
- I even tried to import it to my
joke of aphoto editor, but since it wasn’t a photo, it slammed the door in my face and laughed at me.
I offered a $1,000 bounty for anyone who could explain it to me, I also:
- searched blogs with the keywords "embed Wordles"
- culled Blogging Basics‘ archives
- downloaded Skitch only to realize it was for Mac users only (infidels!)
- tweeted a pathetic cry for help
…but when all was said and done, while I HAD figured out what to do, without the proper tools, it didn’t matter.
Several kind people commented help on the bounty post, mostly telling me what I already knew (save Melissa, who offered quite the creative–albeit convoluted–solution, and given the time I devoted to this, I’m surprised it’s not something I tried).
At the eleventh hour (not quite literally but mind-numbingly close), Daisy the Blissfully Domestic designer swooped in and saved my day; capturing the screen herself and photoshopping it for me. She’s my new hero.
In summary, to embed a Wordle:
- Capture a screen shot ("PrtSc" key, which on my pc is the "Fn" key with the "Ins" key).
- Paste it into your editor (Control "v").
- Crop it, save it, and voila! You’ve got yourself a jpeg.
If you’re like me though and don’t have no stinkin’ software to do the job for you, read Edublogger’s VERY THOROUGH and much more professional post about embedding Wordles (includes links to online screen capture tools).
Just goes to show you, while you can "build a house" without a "hammer", it’s much easier with one…!
(p.s. If you create a Wordle be sure to leave your link in comments, k?)
Picasa (from Google) is a great photo editor that can fix jpegs. I’ve never tried it with Wordle, but it would be worth a shot!
Chelsey @ Brown Eyed Basics
There’s also a free Photoshop-like software called Gimp. It’s available at gimp.org, but I’ve never tried it so I can’t vouch for it. But still, it’s free…
http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/207179/Names_of_God
Very cool! I may have to try one myself.
(I hit “post” too soon – I wasn’t finished with my comment!)
Your Worldle brings to mind the song “Lord You’re Holy” – one of my absolute FAVORITES! I get goose bumps when I hear it…
Whew! Glad that got all worked out. Now you can start your DWTS training to burn off all that frustration. 😀
sounds like a lot of work…sorry I wasn’t more help
(hugs)
There have been times I’ve wanted to throw my laptop through the wall!)
Honestly, this is why I haven’t taken the jump and started blogging. I’m afraid I’ll lost my salvation. LOL!!! Ok, so I’m just afraid I won’t have the technological know how to actually DO it. So I will just go around and comment on everyone ELSES blogs instead. ;D
NOW I know what a Wordle is. I saw your Tweet, but didn’t have a clue what it was and how to imbed one.
Here’s a short tutorial on using paint for editing a screen shot.
do 1 & 2 as you said above
3. click view, zoom, custom, 50%
4. see the little squares on the edges & corners? on the right & bottom you can move them easily to where you need them – just do a rough crop
5. click image, flip/rotate, flip horizontal – do more rough cropping
6. click image, flip/rotate, flip horizontal – now it’s back to normal
7. click image, flip/rotate, flip vertical – do more rough cropping
8. click image, flip/rotate, flip vertical – now it’s back to normal
9. click view, zoom, custom, 100%
10. now do any close cropping you want and just go the steps above to get each side.
Really if you can find something better than paint it’s best, but why mess with something you’re used to for just a little thing like this?
good luck!
I’m going to try it! Thanks for figuring it out for the rest of us!
Glad you liked my post on The Edublogger on how to Embed a Wordle. Those Wordles have been really tricky for lots of people who have struggled with the screenshot. But the good news is you got your Wordle and gained some new skills in the process,
I’m gonna sing one more chorus of “IrfanView is your friend” here… http://www.irfanview.com
It’s freeware, and it’s super easy to use. I can edit a dozen photos in five minutes:
1. Drag the file onto the IrfanView icon to open it (no, i’m not on a Mac). 2. Ctrl-r to resize (you can resize to a % of the original size or to a # of pixels; you can keep the original height/width ratio or not). 3. Mouse select by click-drag-click, then Ctrl-y to crop. 4. s to “save as.”
Your tutorial is complete. Enjoy!
I would like to apologise for not offering to do it for you. I just thought seeing as you are so amazing and there were so many comments you would have it sorted :).
Its kinda like trying to apply very cool spiritual principles: without the holy spirit to shape and apply them you’re up wordle creek without a photo editor 🙂 lol
oh, and I am very fond of my wordle:
http://bundymum.blogspot.com/2008/08/words.html
🙂
Brilliant! this is so smart and absolutely useful!
it is truly amazing and very good! thanks for sharing!
Escoofield –
http://alotofit.com
Have fun!
It took me a while because Typepad was freaking out, but I finally got it:
http://momintransition.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/09/a-what.html
Oh – but there’s an EASIER way!!! (Do you really want to know now?)
Lisa said it. IRFANVIEW. I don’t know what I would do without it. It is free, and so easy to use. It makes it easy to crop and resize, even in bulk. When I do a screenshot I paste it to Paint, then save it, open in Irfanview to crop, resize and save as a Jpeg. Works like a charm!
your wordle isn’t there now, but i had issues saving mine. and ended up using paint to shrink it. there’s a weird little snipping tool with my dell that i used to screen shot it! 🙂
You’re right about Wordles eating time . . . how fun! but now it’s time to get dinner ready 🙂
I actually HAVE a “PrtScn” button but nothing happens – any other suggestions?
Wordle.net suggests a screen capture process in their FAQ at:
http://www.wordle.net/faq#large
Note – their suggested process includes a method to only capture one window and not the entire screen.
Several Windows PC folks just print the Wordle they make online to a file by using one of the free download PDF tools like, CutePDF Writer.
You just make your wordle at wordle.net, then click the print button in lower left corner of the wordle. When given an option to pick your printer, select CutePDF Writer as the printer. The software will “print” your wordle to a PDF file.
If you want to post it inside your blog, you will need to use some imaging software (like photoshop), to open the pdf and save it as a gif, jpg, or png image or use a screen capture program, like the one suggested by wordle.net.
The advantage of moving it to pdf format first is the ability to adjust the size of your PDF image (pdf is a vector graphic and changes size very nicely without pixelating) before you screen capture it.
Those running on a mac can click on the print button at the bottom of the online wordle, the directly safe it as a pdf file, open that file in Preview, and save it in countless different formats of their choice.
I also noticed your wordle of several names used for God seemed to breakup some of the multi-word names (like Heavenly Father). To keep words together as a phrase, put a tilde (swirly foreign symbol to the left of the 1 on my keyboard) between them.
Good Luck
You aint got no pancake mix lady!
As a beginner photographer, this is great news, but i still fear the whole “people taking credit for other peoples pictures” mess. Yes i know about watermarking, but i feel as thought there should be some kind of security.