I’ve been bothered by my latest project. Without going into detail, it’s a web-based programming project that leverages MySQL and PHP. I know how to design and code, but I’ve hit a wall of… I don’t want to say creativity, more like, philosophy. There’s a problem, and it may not be a problem at all, that I simply don’t have a solution to. Hopefully, it’s just a matter of time.

I wish I could discuss the project here more, but I’m well aware it breaks a lot of license agreements. The goal is to make something cool to show off to people and impress them with my ability to make a finished product. It is not intended for a wide release, but I won’t rule it out entirely. I also want to use and rely on it myself, and making it web-accessible is a major plus.

Usually, when a programmer makes an app, it works great, but looks like shit. Don’t ask an artist to make an app. Just don’t. I must not be an artist, but I know I’m not a programmer. Ame tells me I’m a designer at heart, but nobody wants just an “idea man.” Sometimes I advertise myself as a “jack of all trades,” and keep to myself the rest of the phrase: “master of none.”  I fully expect the more intelligent people to whom I give that line to breathe in what I say and internally mumble my own omission in unison.

Perhaps I need a new slogan that still says, “hey this guy can do an awful lot of things pretty damn well. He can put out fires, and even build water towers.” A horrible analogy, but hey, I’m flying by the seat of my pants here.

So that’s me talking about the app, and around the app, but like I said, I wish I could go into more detail about what the app actually is. More on the snag though: it’s like I don’t know how to think about the problem at hand. The least bad solution I can come up with is to put the problem aside and keep working on the things I do know how to solve. That thought keeps me less discouraged, and that may just be the pick-me-up I need to continue. Something else encouraging is I have a couple friends that know how to think like I need to think, and they’re quite approachable, even if they have to dumb things down to my level.

When I fret about the fact I can’t solve a problem, especially an important one (not just struggling with a particularly difficult Sudoku), I question my whole ability as a human to function in society. In some ways I need to chill out and relax, but I take so few things seriously, that I fear my entire motivation to do anything would collapse. I get so caught up in the problem though, that I get cranky and depressed, worst of all distracted and inattentive – and that’s never a good thing, especially when it negatively effects into other areas of life.

By the time this post goes live, hopefully I’ll be back in the swing of things, and banging away on the project.

As a general rule, I don’t really care for lyrics in the music I listen to. I want to focus on the sound and feeling of the instruments and get caught up in the flow. Too often, lyrics get in the way for whatever reason and it really docks my appreciation of the song. It’s probably related to the odd habit I have of playing back in my head what I hear with delayed by a few milliseconds. As I write this, this is probably the root of a bigger auditory processing problem.

The plus side to this though, if I can’t understand the person singing or the language they’re singing in, then it detracts much, much less. If I can manage to get some Italian opera or J-Rock, I can just sit back and enjoy. Some languages “sing” better than others, and others are horrid. My favorite language to listen to when it is sung is Russian. Chinese is the worst language though, spoken or sung. Gross.

But I digress… far too much and often! I have a high threshold for lyrics, both in singing quality and how poetic it is to me. Both are subjective, so fuck you. The reason this whole rant comes to being is the Eagles’ song Hotel California. So very many people hate this song. I wish I could get in their heads and ask what it is about it that makes them hate it, but we’re on the Internet! Why ask when you can wildly speculate!

The lyrics. They are quite vague and most of the phrases have at least two surface meanings. It can be frustrating on a number of levels. One could be put off by the fact that the song makes no sense, or it’s a dream, or it’s a flying space hotel, or it’s actually Hell, or that we were all just punk’d like Lord Byron punk’d us all by making something that seemed insightful, when really he was just fucking with us.

The main riff. You know the one. You’ve heard Hotel Californiaa few times in your day. “Familiarity breeds contempt,” someone once said and countless others have quoted him on it. If you don’t love it, you’ll hate it. It’s repetitive

Me, I like both the lyrics and the riff. The riff is really cool and simple, and I personally like trying to dissect the words as it plays as well as liking the whole punk’d angle. I just use Hotel California because it really is a divisive song. most other songs are complete shit though. The lyrics are poorly written or don’t make grammatical sense. I have a pretty good tolerance for that offense because I can’ go around as a pot calling all those kettles black.

Off the top of my head is The Red Hot Chilipeppers’ By the Way:

Standing in line
To see the show tonight
And there’s a light on
Heavy glow
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there… waiting for

Waiting for what motherfucker!? Just finish your damn sentence. It’s worse that it appears in music because an unfinished phrase just grates on a person.

All this negativity though, let’s end positively, my favorite tracks are heavy on drums and guitars with tons of rhythm and adrenaline. There are always exceptions, but a first question, kind of a personal commentary on “yeah, but can you dance to it?” is “yeah, but can you frag to it?” Anything I can frag to, I can activity() to. Insert any verb in there, and I can do it to fraggin’ music. Death and Speed Metal come so close, but they have lyrics. The potential for failure is there.

What I think it boils down to is I just don’t get that excited for poetry. Ame’s gonna hate me for this, but I think it’s boring. Anyone can do it, but so very few can do it well. I think that’s the point here though – anyone can write lyrics for a song, but not all of them can be great. So why take the gamble and fuck up an otherwise decent track if your skills suck? Oh right, that’s the record labels. When was the last time a song was released without words? They happen, but very rarely, and it’s almost always something from Carlos Santana. You can’t frag to his stuff, but it’s always a lot of fun.

More changes here; notice the new(-ish) Meebo Me! widget on the sidebar there. I’d say I wrote it myself, but it’s based heavily on the Xbox Live! Gamertag widget. I just changed some values around and voila! it worked… not on the first try, but that goes with any piece of software. I’m always hesitant when something I write appears to work the first time out the gate.  It’s like, “okay, what’s broken?” Like a house or car that is up for sale way below the market.

[Scene: Suspiciously Fantastic Apartment.]
Fry: Well, I give up. What’s the catch?
Landlord #3: Oh, no catch. Although we are technically in New Jersey.
[Scene: Planet Express: Lounge. Fry, Bender and Leela sit around the table.]
Fry: Not one place even remotely liveable.