Random scandom with Flickriver

I feel like I just turned 85. My doctor told me I probably have chronic Lyme's disease. Sound bad? Not compared to the alternatives. Still, I feel like shit.

Between the exhaustion & self-pity I have been reduced to googling myself (thus an obit writer would begin his research). I found a Flickriver in my name. A flickrivr is a software toy invented by Alex Sirota that provides new ways to view & explore pictures on the popular Flickr photo-sharing site (I'm a member; I wrote about 'the Flickr photograph' here).

Sirota's flickrivers offer an elegant & user-friendly interface with all pictures in a continuous stream & showcased dramatically on black. Most of the functions are available on the main Flickr site, but one was new to me. By clicking a button I could look at a random display of my photos. I found this mesmerizing.


"Family in fog, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 2006," Tim Connor. All rights reserved

This is the 1st "random" picture that displayed for me. There are several definitions of random in my Webster's dictionary, but the most appropriate, given the mathematical nature of the programming that produced this set would probably be this one: "...being or relating to a set or to an element of a set each of whose elements has equal probability of occurrence." There are 2,610 photos in my Flickr archive, taken over a span of 32 years.

Here are the next nine that displayed:

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9)

Subject: 1) madonna statue 2) ice cream stand 3) man walking in street 4) shadow self-portrait 5) kayak going over waterfall 6) front yard with whirlygigs 7) country cemetery 8) detail of my [paper] collage 9) Lit apartment windows, dusk

Place: 1) Brooklyn 2) Maine 3) China 4) Brooklyn 5) Vermont 6) Brooklyn 7) Vermont 8) Manhattan 9) Brooklyn

Time: 1) 2005 2) 2006 3) 2000 4) 2006 5) 2005 6) 2006 7) 2005 8) 2008 9) 2005

A fair question (after having scrolled much more extensively down my "random" river of images) will be : Does an alternative definition from Websters also apply? To wit: Random -- lacking a definite plan, purpose or pattern.