Wordle.net is a free web service that creates word clouds from text that you input. Just like with the oh-so-trendy tag clouds, the size of the individual words change depending on the frequency of the word in the inputted text. There are also multiple configuration options for the alignment of the words, the font to use, and what color scheme to apply.

With the help of that service, I’ve created a Blast from the past themed wallpaper that I figured I’d share here in case anyone is interested. It’s made using a combination of Wordle, Gimp and Photoshop. It’s completely free, and it’s under the Creative Commons license, so you can do pretty much whatever you want with it.

All I did was to input this blog’s URL to have wordle fetch and process the text on the website. Then I change some of the options and had it re-generated a couple of times until I was happy with the placement and colors. Then I went into Gimp and moved some of the words around to form a speech bubble instead of just some random cloud. After that I started up Virtualbox and opened the image in Photoshop to add some texture and lighting to it.