Zoom clouds and group geekery

The first Pittsburgh BlogIN this Sunday was lovely. Attendees included Mark from Small Streams, Liz from woolgathering, Mike from Grabass, Venky from Venky's Musings, Mark from Rauterkus, Sri from Shaman (who had the forethought to bring a camera!), new bloggers Z and Linn (not pictured), and of course Cindy from My Brilliant Mistakes, who put it all together.

The highlight for me was getting to thumb through Liz's sketchbook, with all the ink drawings and watercolor paintings she posts daily on her blog. I wasn't the only one who found it distinctly odd to have the physical book in my hands. Either Mike or Cindy pointed out that it was a bit like seeing a celebrity in person; suddenly they have texture and size.

Mike and Cindy and I also spent some time talking about upcoming tweaks to pghbloggers.org. We've been wanting to add a tag cloud, so I've been tinkering with that tonight. I have a first pass, courtesy of ZoomClouds; the cloud is sourced from the RSS feed for all pghbloggers blog posts.

Unfortunately, due to Blogger idiosyncracies, I can't embed it here (d'oh!), but you can see it if you click here.