The thoughts, opinions and experiences of John Andrew Ledwith • jaledwith.com
A couple weeks ago my now-former roommate Joe got married. Like most couples Joe and his bride Mandi had wedding pictures taken on the big day, and like most twenty-first century couples those photos hit Facebook not long after. My friend Scott and I have been having a lot of fun with one of those pictures. Here’s the original shot, taken by Krista Stone, depicting Joe jumping for joy.
I just want to be clear on where I stand regarding this very important issue.
Image used with permission. You can get it at imwithcoco.com. Artwork by Mike Mitchell. Join the Facebook page.
I really enjoy creating my annual soundtrack. It’s fun to consider the music I’ve been listening to over the course of an entire year and decide what songs best express the seasons I’ve been through. This marks the third such soundtrack I’ve made. (Have a look at the ones from 2007 and 2008.)
I have a few rules when picking the songs for my soundtrack. First, I limit myself to twelve songs, which is somewhat of an arbitrary number. Second, I limit myself to one song per artist. Third, I use both quantitative and qualitative data to make my decision. The quantitative data is how many times I played the song (I use my Last.fm account to keep these stats). The qualitative data is how the song impacted me personally. Finally, I can’t repeat a song from a previous soundtrack. Something else to keep in mind is that these songs weren’t necessarily released in 2009; they are songs that impacted me in 2009.
Now it is my pleasure to unveil this year’s soundtrack.
Does anyone else dislike Facebook’s “Reconnect” feature? It’s on the home page, under the box that suggests people or pages you might want to connect with. Suggesting a first-time connection with someone is actually somewhat helpful. But suggesting I contact a friend I’ve been out of contact with for a while because some Facebook algorithm thought it’d be nice? That’s nearly useless. And because I can never leave well enough alone I found a way to block the bothersome nag.
