From having created the Hugging Facebook 2.0 Tagging games, I thought I’d share the graphics to be used as avatars and buddy icons. Unfortunately, not all the graphics were big enough to be used as avatars and buddy icons, although I did set a high standard to make them 256 pixels squared rather than the smaller 128 or 96 pixels squared that many applications ask for. That way, it’d save some people some tech hassles, disappointments and so on.
To get the icons, please:
Click on an image to see it full size.
Right click and choose Download or download in whatever ways your browser does.
Upload to where you want to use it, whether on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Bebo, WordPress, Blogspot, other blogs or other places.
Click the Back button on your browser to come back to here or click the thumbnails below the picture to move on to the next picture.
I listen to a lot of music, but a lot of older music. That’s because there’s not a lot of new music played on the radio that excites me. Most actually annoy me so much I can’t stand leaving it on for long. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t great music these days. It’s just a lot harder to come by, it seems. However, I am sometimes shocked by how “out of it” I am not to have heard about certain musicians who have been very successful and who makes, performs and/or sings great music. Well, I had one of those moments tonight with Georgian-born British singer Ketevan “Katie” Melua and her music.
I routinely listen to the many channels of the Internet radio site Iceberg Radio, varying them based on how I’m feeling. But a lot of the stuff I listen to there are old stuff. I just happened to have decided to put it on the Love Song Radio channel tonight (under Adult Contemporary, then Love Songs) and was cleaning house when Katie’s The Closest Thing to Crazy came on.
Stopped me dead in my tracks, the soft and basic nature of the song, then the voice, then the concept chorus because by the time I got my thoughts together on all that other stuff I was hearing, the song had it the chorus.
This is the closest thing to crazy that I have ever been
Never mind the rest of it for now, though it’s beautiful. I just liked the concept of how she spun that old concept of being crazy in love as coming close to that edge rather than just the old going overboard mindlessly. She is aware of all of what’s going on, but can’t help it, it seems, and I loved that helpless sense of losing control conveyed. And then the rest of the chorus:
This is the closest thing to crazy I have ever been
Feeling twenty-two, acting seventeen,
This is the nearest thing to crazy I have ever known,
I was never crazy on my own…
And now I know that there’s a link between the two,
Being close to craziness and being close to you. (Full lyrics, video with lyrics)
Basically, in half a song, one chorus, one line, she had me!
Research after I returned to reality show that the song was written by British based songwriter, musician, producer and Deputy Chairman of the British Phonographic Industry (2009), Mike Batt, in 1995. However, his version of it on MySpace (Track 1) just doesn’t have the same impact on me, even if it’s nice. It was Katie’s performance abilities that gave the song its magic to me to put it over good to great. Poor guy, but I can empathize, having heard other people sing my songs better. The one song I have on MySpace, beautifully sung by Lis Soderberg, is the perfect example.
Wow! Talk about missing the boat! It’s like the sailboat left, gone several times around the world and came back and I hadn’t known!
But you know, I’m not going to entirely take the blame on this one. None of my friends ever said anything about Katie’s music. Many of them are musicians and/or are pretty into the latest music, but not a word of Katie’s music has ever been mentioned. And as for the Halifax (Nova Scotia) radio stations, when they ever played her music I don’t know but I’ve never heard it. For all the modern crap they play, you’d think they’d recognize a modern gem to play more often when they could!
Ah, ’tis the joy of discovery, and what led me to look her up on YouTube to learn more about her. There, I found some fabulous videos of her and her music, some of which have had over 3 million views. Yep, she’s pretty famous, all right, and I’m just a hermit in this case!
So is anybody reading this not heard of Katie Melua? Tell me if so, or just take a stab at telling me how much I need to “get out” more or something!
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LOVE the lyrics on this one! Katie seems to like correlation and causality lyrics!
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And another lovely song among many, which I’m having trouble stopping myself from including them all!
If you follow the Facebook picture tagging memes I’ve been created, you would see I’m evolving them into what I call Facebook 2.0 versions (or action tagging memes). It is named after the Web 2.0 concept, where it’s not just fun and games but result in real life actions. The latest one just requires hugging and appears below, in two versions of two levels of difficulty. But some logistics first… here’s how to get these picture memes or where you can find others if you were looking for them and I had them.
Click on the picture to get it at full size.
Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
Before I get on with the hugging tagging meme, please be aware that hugging could be sexual assault if the person hugged does not want to be hugged by you! If you are not sure they might be OK, do NOT hug them, and don’t use this as an excuse to do so!
Now that we’re ready, for the first and simple hug tagging meme version, you go out and hug a bunch of friends on a hugging spree. After each one, you tag one of the hugging pictures on the poster. You could do it the other way to tag them all first, then go hug them. However, I think it’s better if you hug them first because it’s a surprise. Otherwise, there’s going to be expectations.
You could turn this into a game by having a bunch of friends upload the picture and race to get the poster filled after a certain time you set, like starting next Monday morning. Given the nice nature of hugs, you could do that every week!
Hugging Spree
Pass-a-Hug
The second version requires a little more patience and coordination. What you have to do is start the chain reaction by hugging someone you have as a Facebook friend and tag him or her in the upper left hand corner. The poster has instructions included. The person hugged then goes to hug someone else and tags the icon below that, and so on as the arrows show in the poster.
People who are involved are, in essence, passing a hug along. At the end of the chain, the last person tagged on the poster has to hug you to close the circle. Get it?
