So here’s the list of my top 25 songs of 2009, in order of the number of times I played the full track on my computer, iPod, or iPhone:

1. Joel Plaskett Emergency – Nowhere With You
2. Flogging Molly – What’s Left of the Flag
3. Hi-Standard – Wait for the Sun
4. Portal – Still Alive
5. Leonard Cohen – Waiting For The Miracle
6. Enter the Haggis – One Last Drink
7. Great Big Sea – The Night Pat Murphy Died
8. Jonathan Coulton – Mr. Fancy Pants
9. The Salads – Get Loose
10. Styrofoam and Sarah Shannon – I Found Love
11. Jonathan Coulton – The Future Soon
12. Finnegan’s Lads – Dirty Old Town
13. Da Vinci’s Notebook – The Gates
14. Semisonic – Closing Time
15. Jonathan Coulton – Code Monkey
16. Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie – The System Administrator Song
17. Dean Elliott & His Big Band – Lonesome Road
18. Corb Lund Band – The Truck Got Stuck
19. The Tossers – Altercations
20. John Coltrane – Giant Steps
21. Dropkick Murphys – The Dirty Glass
22. Patti Smith – Gloria
23. Tenacious D – The Metal
24. Rancid – Roots Radicals
25. Flogging Molly – Rebels of the Sacred Heart

Of course, the math geek in me just screams at the idea of using raw play count data that doesn’t take into account when any of these songs actually became available to me. For example, I bought Enter the Haggis in November, and they made it to #6. I bought Jonathan Coulton’s album in March, and he appears three times (four if you count “Still Alive”). And yet, bands like Flogging Molly and Corb Lund, oft-stated “favourite” bands of mine of which I own many albums, only appear once or twice. Some of these tracks I don’t own at all, but have appeared often enough as “recommendations” on my last.fm station that they make the list!

Hmm… I wonder how hard it would be to build an algorithm that could level out the initial enthusiastic repetition of a new album or song, consider the time of year it was added to the overall library, and assign an appropriate weighting as compared to those that have been in rotation for more than 12 (24? more?) months. I wonder how clear the pattern would be if I could go back and track plays of a new song from purchase, peak, trough, to plateau. What kind of timeline does there need to be for a song to stabilize into regular rotation, or just be forgotten until it gets picked up by a random shuffle and brought back into play? How much of an effect does placing the song into a playlist have versus leaving it in the overall library?

How much time can I waste discussing pattern analysis of my music listening habits before I get back to work?

That one I think I can answer.

1. Flogging Molly
2. Gogol Bordello
3. Great Big Sea
4. Dean Gray (Green Day mashup DJ)
5. Corb Lund
6. Captain Tractor
7. The Free Design
8. Blink-182
9. Death Cab for Cutie
10. Jack Johnson
11. The Flaming Lips
12. Dropkick Murphys
13. Rancid
14. Feist
15. Dungeons & Dragons podcasts

My Top Tracks (according to Last.fm):

1. Big Audio Dynamite – Rush
2. Great Big Sea – The Night Pat Murphy Died
3. Webb Wilder & The Nashvegaans – One Taste Of The Bait
4. The Flaming Lips – Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
5. Scissor Sisters – I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’
6. Gogol Bordello – Sally
7. Trace Adkins – Honky Tonk Badonkadonk
8. Flogging Molly – What’s Left of the Flag
9. Ian Tyson – This is My Sky
10. Tenacious D – The Metal
11. Dean Gray – Boulevard of Broken Songs
12. Montgomery Gentry – Gone
13. Flogging Molly – Sentimental Johnny
14. Dean Gray – Dr. Who on Holiday
15. John Michael Montgomery – Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident)

Movies I saw that were released in 2008 (not necessarily the best, just some of the more memorable; in no order):

• WALL-E
• The Dark Knight
• Kung-Fu Panda
• Iron Man
• Cloverfield
• Quantum of Solace
• Mamma Mia
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Horton Hears A Who
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
• The Incredible Hulk
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• The Forbidden Kingdom
• Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
• Semi-Pro
• The Ruins
• Be Kind, Rewind
• Futurama – The Beast With A Billion Backs
• Tropic Thunder

(If I tried to remember ALL the movies I watched last year, it would take me until the end of ‘09!  The most watched movie of the year was a tie between WALL-E and Shoot ‘Em Up, 3 times each.)

Some of the best stuff I read in 2008:

• The Happiest Days of Our Lives, by Wil Wheaton
• World War Z, by Max Brooks
• Crooked Little Vein, by Warren Ellis
• The Gunslinger Born (The Dark Tower Graphic Novel)
• G33k Mafia, by Rick Dakan
• Godel, Escher, and Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter
• Y, The Last Man, series
• Transmetropolitan, series
• The Boys, series
• Planet Hulk/World War Hulk, series
• Punisher MAX, series (Garth Ennis’ run)
• Wanted, series
• Wizard’s First Rule, by Terry Goodkind
• Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
• Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card
• Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, core books and supplements

Teh awesomist tubes on teh internets:

• Wil Wheaton dot Net: In Exile
• The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century
• Lifehacker
• xkcd
• Garfield minus Garfield
• Least I Could Do
• Questionable Content
• Penny Arcade
• Tcritic – Daily T-Shirt Blog
• io9
• Boing Boing
• Ain’t It Cool News
• Horror Movie A Day
• PostSecret

Favourite Online Video of 2008:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Favourite Video Game of 2008:

Tie: Guitar Hero III and Portal

October 20… can’t wait!

\m/

Courtesy of Topless Robot’s The Best 11 Songs From Geek-Movie Sountracks

Batman, meet Prince’s dirty mind. Prince’s dirty mind, meet Batman. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to talk about! Man, try to imagine modern-day Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan turning over the soundtrack for their ponderous Batman Begins to, I dunno, OutKast and you’ll have some idea of how freaking crazy it is that this song and video ever even happened. Torn between his brother-in-mononymhood Batman and his fellow purple enthusiast the Joker, Prince created a hybrid character called Gemini, who presides over a berserk interpretive dance involving women in batsuits, a parade of Vicki Vales led by a woman in a shirt reading “ALL THIS AND BRAINS TOO ” (an homage to Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns!), cheeky references to the ’60s TV-show theme that still have over-serious Bat-fans sputtering with fury, collage-style lyrics culled from all of Prince’s other Batman soundtrack songs, and a fucking vicious guitar solo. The end result is a ballsy slab of industrial-dance-funk-rock-madness that proves superhero soundtrack music doesn’t have to be kid-tested and mother-approved.