What are word galaxies?

Word Galaxies are a concept originally thought up by Nate Oostendorp. You read in a bunch of text and then try to arrange the words in a crossword-like arrangement according to the whims of the pseudo-random number generator on your computer. They look very neat.

I downloaded Nate's code and modified it a little bit, but it was written in mostly-uncommented Perl without the use of -w or use strict;, so I had a hard time extending it for my own purposes. At the same time, I felt that I might be able to improve on his algorithm, so I wrote my own.

I have recently started using Python, and I think I'm a convert. Its sparse syntax combined with its modularity, object oriented-ness, and ease of learning have convinced me that there might be hope for the future: we might not be using C for everything forever! Therefore, I wrote my new galaxy generator in Python.

It generates very dense word galaxies. I think that they look pretty cool, though. You can download the code to make your own if you would like. Let me know if you do cool things with it! galaxy.py will make a galaxy out of all the whitespace separated word you pass into it on stdin. paragraphs.py will make one galaxy out of each newline-separated paragraph you pass in on stdin. grid.py is a 2-d extensible array. Sample output is below in all of the .gal and .html files.

 S    
 o R  
 n e  
in s  
 e p  
 tForm
Koan  
   s  
   e  

 u                              
 n        yb                    
 k        ol                    
 n m    W ui                 c  
 o a   learn.   p   f        o  
 w k f s  sd I  lg  i      c mw 
undefined:t, f  aug rl     o po 
s  s n e  o  o Inao ea     mprn 
     d kiAk  l  nra 's     pred 
      contemplatealast    Elihe 
       an   ao hdn;c u    never 
       ne   tw eetph_n  i ltan, 
        r   h LTfehiTd bt iets  
             Mastereae uh g.ei  
              oulfavoriteph  o  
              wby sensCrtot tn z
             WnfeTedetheonewhq a
             i eao F aiafdnoiu z
             tparadoxnndremusi e
            Thats  r dgsorelet n
            ho he   k._ mindeed,
            eu ee   n". ont maya
             g  k  SoTy rgr stol
             h  ,   whole.u  muo
                    ,eue  t burn
                      ss  h es e
                      hs  ,  t  
                      o      o  
                      w         

  - 
  T 
Cort
 van
  c 
  y 


Response to Koan in Sonnet Form

"The more you know, the less you understand."
So reads a favorite from the _Tao Te Ching_.
A phrase by Master Lao Tsu deftly planned
To guarantee us years of pondering.
A paradox indeed, it seems to show
Enlightenment achieved as quite a feat
For one may understand but never know
That comprehension is at last complete.
In private zazen, contemplate this koan
With wonder, stoke your inner fire's burn
The path you follow must be yours alone
If you would seek the truth, your own to learn.
We seek, though blind, the undefined: our goal;
At last to find the unknown makes us whole.

-Tracy van Cort

(c) Tracy van Cort avancort@hmc.edu
(Fuzzy and Blue on E2)

 Name                    Last modified      Size  Description
 Parent Directory                             -   
 1a.html                 18-Nov-2002 23:04  7.6K  
 galaxy.desc             18-Nov-2002 23:04  305   
 galaxy.py               15-Jul-2003 20:50  2.9K  
 galaxy.pyc              15-Jul-2003 20:50  5.7K  
 galaxy.tar              18-Nov-2002 23:04   20K  
 galgal.html             18-Nov-2002 23:04   40K  
 ginsburg.html           18-Nov-2002 23:04   15K  
 grid.py                 18-Nov-2002 23:04  936   
 grid.pyc                15-Jul-2003 20:39  1.9K  
 koan.txt                18-Nov-2002 23:04  1.0K  
 paragraphs.py           18-Nov-2002 23:04  566   
 poem.galaxy             18-Nov-2002 23:04  1.0K  
 poem.txt                18-Nov-2002 23:04  740