Nice implementation, but Pinterest works well from a UX perspective because it's visually oriented and scanning scattered visuals works. Scanning scattered text, however, is harder than scanning a list :-(

Definitely time well spent learning JavaScript though so it will be cool to see it improve.

thanks, good point. i will be adding visuals, continuing my JavaScript learning spree. any recommendations on using js to take snap shots?

But.. I'm not sure it's going to work out too well. You'd probably do better off using a service like http://webthumb.bluga.net/home but it gets complicated quickly (although it's been a cpl years since I looked into this so things may have come along).