Another Word Cloud

I enjoyed making word clouds for my TMAs so I decided to have a play with a word cloud for my blog, as I said yesterday, word clouds are a good way to see what you're talking about the most (which I know, I can see from my tags but this looks prettier).

I thought it was fairly obvious that I talk about books most of all, with 'read' a very close second. I think it'll be fun to do this again in a couple of months time to see how things change over time.

A230 So Far

Back in October I started my fifth OU course, I'm working towards a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature and after this I've only got one more course to go before I graduate. The course I'm doing at the moment is A230: Reading and Studying Literature, it's been a bit of a learning curve because it's less concrete than my last couple of courses. There's a lot of analysing texts, which is starting to become good fun, but it's also a bit woolly as well, because you're not referring to the course book as much as whatever text it is you're considering.

I've recently submitted my third TMA (and after being about a week behind since the second TMA I've caught back up again and if I keep going as I am I'll be ahead soon, which I always prefer) and although I can't exactly post a copy of the entire assignment on here, I saw someone on my course on Twitter doing this and I thought it was a cool idea. By the way, for those not in the know, a TMA is a Tutor Marked Assignment, basically an essay. When you start a course you get a book of all your TMAs and it's kind of fun to read through them and give yourself a heart attack when you realise that within the next few months you'll have to be answering all those questions!



TMA 01

The first TMA involved analysing an extract from Othello. I like that the three main characters in the scene come out as the most commonly used words. You can also see 'Washington' and 'Walder' in fairly large print, those are authors of chapters in the course book and I'm slowly learning not to throw a reference back to the text book unless it's absolutely necessary, which I think is evident in the next two word clouds.

TMA 02

The second TMA involved a comparison between Candide and Oroonoko which is fairly obvious from this word cloud. Part of this essay was looking at the narrator of the text, which shows here as well. I think making a word cloud is a good way to test whether your essay is actually on target because you can see fairly quickly what the most common things you're saying are.

I managed to make slightly fewer references to the course book in this essay (that would be the 'Pacheco' down in the bottom left hand corner), which is again evident in this word cloud. I also got a much better mark for this one than on the last (I think I moved up a grade band).

TMA 03

And this is the one that I'm just waiting to find out how I got on. The focus of this one was the speaker (which is fairly obvious from this word cloud) and also the landscape (which is prominent but not quite so obvious from here) in two poems, one by Wordsworth and one by Shelley. This was a two part assignment and I think a word cloud of the second part might make 'landscape' look a little larger, but also I used more specific words for the landscape like 'lake', 'nature' and 'Ravine' which I think skewed the results a little bit. I'll have to wait to see what the tutor thinks about that.

Now we've moved onto Victorian books which I'm quite enjoying, though not quite enough to say that I'm looking forward to my next TMA, but still, I am enjoying the course. It's taken me a little while to get into it, mainly because it's been a long time since I've had to analyse texts in this way.

Honestly during the second TMA I felt a little like I was banging my head against a brick wall, but I think somewhere along the way something has clicked, though again, I'll have to wait to see what my tutor thinks of TMA03 to see if things have really sunk in. Fingers crossed!

Book of the Month: January

I didn't manage to read as many books during January as I had hoped. Normally I like to read a book every three days or so, I don't mind spending a week on a book, but when it's taking me longer than that there's usually a good reason. Sometimes that's because life is getting in the way, I might be ill or working an awkward shift, but sometimes it's because I'm just not enjoying it a great deal. I hate giving up on a book as well, especially when the end is in sight.

In January I only made it through four books (and one of those wasn't finished until February). Those were:

1. The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Eugenie Grandet - Honore de Balzac (ebook)
3. Flash and Bones - Kathy Reichs
4. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (ebook)

Of those books The Fellowship of the Ring was definitely my favourite book of the month, with Flash and Bones a very close second. The two ebooks were both taken from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list because since starting my literature course I'm very aware that there are a lot of 'classic' books out there that I've never read.

Unfortunately this is proving to be a bit of a challenge to me so far, part of this may be before I've picked books to fill slots in a reading challenge I'm taking part in, rather than picking books that actually sound like they would appeal to me. That's not to say that I didn't like the sound of the ebooks that I picked, I just didn't get into them as much as I hoping having read about them.

So what am I going to read in February?

Well, I've got several books which are being covered in my OU course; Wuthering Heights and The Sign of Four both of which I read a couple of years ago when I first decided I was going to do this course, but which I need to revisit for course work and assignments. The first time around I found Wuthering Heights to be a bit of a drag, but having started looking at the Victorians now (a period of history that fascinates me) I'm hoping that I might enjoy it a little more; The Sign of Four I'm not too worried about, I enjoyed it first time around and we've watched a couple of different versions over the last few months. My only worry about this one is that my edition is different to the one used in the course book, but I'm surviving with an older edition of Wuthering Heights (where all the page references are one page out), I'm sure I'll get by with that one too.

We also had a friend pop round with some paperwork the other week and spotted my bookcase with all the Kathy Reichs books on it and suggested I might like to read some Patricia Cornwell novels. Several people have told me this and I've thought about picking them up for ages, but I've always been a bit put off because I didn't want to start reading in the middle of a series. He lent me the first one so I've got that on my shelf to read now as well, I don't like having borrowed books hanging around too long so I'll get onto that quickly.

And there's War Horse which I bought to make up a Book People order after seeing the film. I selected it as a challenge read on HTV so need to get that out the way before the end of February. I've only read a couple of Michael Morpurgo books but I've loved what I've seen so I think this'll be a fairly quick read for me. I'll also probably move onto The Two Towers as well, I'm wanting to draw out my Tolkien reading a little this year though so I might see if I can hold off on that one til March.

As for ebooks, I've still got the A Song of Ice and Fire series which I'm about halfway through just now. I stopped in between the two volumes of one of the books which is split into two (luckily my Kindle remembers where I've left off because off hand I honestly can't remember where it was now without checking my Book Journal). I like to alternate between book-books and ebooks so I might see if I can get at least one of those books read this month as well.

Of course, now I've got more books out on display in the living room because we've moved around our furniture, I might change my mind because I've got access to a lot more books than I used to. I think the main thing will be finding time to read, not reading material.

Project 52: Week 5 - Tradition

I actually got confused about the challenge for this week and jumped ahead two weeks in the beginning, which means I have some really good ideas for when the theme is baking but I was a little bit rushed when it came to thinking of a photo for tradition.

My initial plan was to take a photo of a family tree or perhaps Mr Click's instruments because those are both things that instantly spring to mind when I think of 'tradition'. But things didn't really work out for me to actually take a photo of one of those things. I also took a few photos of my bookcase because I have a tradition of reading the Lord of the Rings books each year, but I've taken loads of photos of my books and things so I wanted something a little different.

Week 5: Tradition

In the end I decided to go for a photo of a photo (mainly because I couldn't get a decent photo of my engagement and wedding rings because I've got gross excema all over my hands). This is a framed photo which was given to us by one of the witnesses at our wedding alongside a wedding gift from our drama group.

Getting married is one of those traditional things to do, though ours was a fairly non-traditional wedding. We had a small ceremony, just family and a couple of close friends on Christmas Eve. I wore a dress I got for a Christmas dance when I was seventeen (and it fitted me better in my twenties than in my teens). We had a buffet lunch for a reception on the day and then the drama group organised a meal and party for us (including cake) later on. We also ended up spending very little and thanks to a dowry, which can be applied for providing the bride lives on the island and the wedding takes place in December, we actually ended up with more money afterwards than we spent on it - funds which got us set up in our new home two years later.

Considering our wedding was totally non-traditional, it was exactly what we wanted and I remember the day fondly (and things have just gone on getting better and better since then). It's funny because although I was certain when I was younger that I'd never get married, it was the perfect day for us. And in hindsight, it was more traditional than I thought at the time. There was a pretty dress, people in suits, we exchanged rings and used the traditional marriage vows, there was a party (or two) and cake. Turns out I might be a bit of a traditionalist after all.

Better late than never...

Just came up for my shower (possibly the last one in a while since we've got a plumber in about a leak tomorrow and I'm not sure where it's coming from), looked up at the window and saw this:




Actual snow!

While the rest of the country has been struggling through inches of the stuff my little Scottish island has just been cold, wet and windy.

Of course it's stopped now, but maybe we'll get more in the night. It'll make getting to work tomorrow interesting...

Day Zero Project: Project 365

Last year I set myself the challenge of taking a photo for every day of the year. In the past I've attempted this and normally fail a couple of months into the year. Setting it as one of my Day Zero Project tasks gave me a bit of an added boost because to stop taking photos would mean failing two projects instead of just one.

And I succeeded.

I have to admit I was a little bit surprised, I honestly was half expecting not to make it all the way through the year. I did struggle to find interesting things to take photos of; looking back there are some fairly boring and crappy photos. I don't seem to do enough to take an interesting photo each day; when you've spent best part of the day in your pyjamas, watching films, there's little to make an interesting photo out of.

That's why I decided against doing the same project again this year. I'm trying to take one really good photo following a theme. And so far it's worked to inspire me, I'm looking for creative ways to link what I've got to the theme. It means I take a different photo each day to experiment what works.

I've got a lot of favourite photos from last year but my favourite has to be:




It's a lovely photo of my Bell-rat and it kept on cropping up on Google searches. I think that's one of good things about trying to take a photo every day, you end up with lovely memories which you know you can look back on in the future.



I know that lots of my photos have been plain iPhone ones, but it's what they're pictures of that's important to me. And I'm glad I've got them posted on this blog, they're all in one place so I can see them whenever I like.

Now I've moved onto my new Project 52, which I'm still taking a photo each day but I'm just selecting the best one or the one that best represents the theme of the week. It's stretching me a little more than the plain Project 365 did.


And I'm not abandoning my photos from last year. I'll maybe weed out some of the boring ones like my feet or my dinner, but the others I'm hoping to get printed towards another of my Project Zero projects: making a photo wall.

Project 52: Week 4 - Ice

Given the weather for the UK two weeks ago was pretty much all snow and ice, I thought that ice would be a fairly simple theme to catch a photo of. Unfortunately, I live in Scotland, on a little island which was one of the only places in the country which didn't get any snow.

Actually, that's a lie, we had a little bit of snow, but it was fairly feeble and didn't even try to settle. It definitely looked pretty from my desk at work as I watched snow flurries outside, but it didn't really help much with my theme challenge. So I went back to my old standby, random words in books, things around the house (Ice Age cuddly toy anyone?) and other nifty little tricks.

In the end I found inspiration on a blog post of a friend. Over at The Really Good Times my friend posts photos of words which represent her day, one of which was snow cleverly made out of scarves, gloves and a hat. It seemed like a good way to represent ice.

Week 4: Ice

I experimented with a couple of different angles and backgrounds for the word. I think it would have looked better if I'd used a different background, the table looked better because it was darker than the carpet (the white sort of blended into the beigey-light brown of the floor). I think a better background would have been one of our dark blue bathtowels but I didn't think of that until after I'd had a shower one evening and it was all damp.

I also tried using the word 'icy' but the scarf wasn't quite long enough. I considered using more than one scarf (between us, Mr Click and I have quite a collection) but I do really like the joined up text style here.

On the whole I'm quite pleased with how this turned out; I think I found a creative way to adapt the challenge which was what I was wanting to do.