Web Developer's Lament

This one's for all the web developers out there...

I'm on a "working vacation" for a couple weeks up in Belfast, ME, staying in a house on the bay.  Somehow working from here doesn't feel quite as much like work as it does when I work from my usual office location.  However, events have conspired to make it feel as much like work as it possibly could - namely, a client has been doing their best to make sure that no piece of code I write this week is ever actually done, due to the specifications changing daily, not unlike clouds shifting in a summer breeze.

So I wrote this song to explain how I feel.  [This isn't all about this particular project, but that was a good starting point.]

This is a live recording made down by the water.




Lyrics:
They changed the specs again
Just when I was nearly finished
Said the client changed their mind
I don't know if I can take this

They changed the specs again
I've already written so much code
And the thought of starting over
Makes my sanity erode

Chorus:
Why won't they just let me finish?
Why can't I just be done?
Why won't they just let me finish?
Is this their idea of fun?

They changed the specs again
Pushed the launch up by 2 weeks
They've added a shopping cart
God, my knees are feeling weak

They changed the specs again
To match the new designs
They want it to just "work like Google"
Lord, I'm losing my mind

[Chorus]

I give up, I give up.
I give up, I give up.

Let's add some features, I give up.
Let's build a CMS from scratch, I give up.
Let's refactor every function, I give up.
Let's start calling ourselves agile, I give up.
Let's have a status meeting, I give up.
Let's adopt a framework, I give up.
Let's add members' only area, I give up.
Let's change databases, I give up.
Let's review my timesheet, I give up.
Let's never document anything, I give up.
Let's outsource to India  

I Wrote A New Song!

Summertime doesn't just mean Mother Nature training a red-hot death laser on us with no end in sight, it also heralds the return of 50/90, which is the summertime cousin of FAWM.  Basically it's a web-based community who are taking on the challenge of writing 50 songs in 90 days.  Yes, it's crazy.  So crazy, in fact, that I have never attempted it, but I do try and write a few songs each summer, in large part because I find that in the absence of a deadline of some sort, my songwriting tends to grind to an unglamorous halt.

Well, now that the heat and air quality have made going outside quite possibly the last thing I will ever do, I spent some time over the past week or so hiding indoors working on a new song.  I've had the background music for this one rattling around my head for months, and finally decided to do something with it.  The melody line was inspired by 2 things:  1) I recently received this awesome Rode microphone (my first condenser mic!) as a birthday present and needed something with a lot of soaring high notes to justify it, and 2) my wife nudging me to "write something that shows off [my] voice."  I don't know if this satisfies #2, but I tried.  As usual with my songs when I'm just starting one of these songwriting cycles, the lyrics are more or less about getting off your ass and doing something creative, etc.

The song is called "Set You Free."  Enjoy!

Friday Playlist: "Revolver," Revolved

Well, 50/90 has come to a close, and while I didn't write 50 songs this summer (mostly because I was busy finding a new apartment and then moving into it), I did get a few done and I was pretty happy with some of them.  And I thought that was that...until last week, when I logged onto the site, and noticed a link in the header labelled "Rocktober."  So of course I clicked on it (wouldn't you?), and was delighted to discover that the fun wasn't over yet.  On that site, the month of October is devoted to recording covers - your own version of an existing song by either "an established artist," or of a song by another 50/90 member.  Very cool.

Poking around the forums, I came across this thread, where some members had put out a call to the community to cover the classic Beatles album "Revolver" in its entirety.  So of course I started playing around on my keyboard immediately.  I decided to go with "And Your Bird Can Sing," one of my favorite 2-minute ditties on the album - and one where the upbeat arrangement and vocal melody almost mask John Lennon's trademark sneer and the somewhat nasty, Dylan-esque lyrics.  The original features some nice guitar work from Paul & George, playing some sweet harmonies up and down the E major scale.  My version features electronic sounds filling in for those two, as well as a bunch of other stuff I thought sounded cool.

You can hear my version below, and I would really encourage you to check out the "Revolver" songs done by others on the site as well - some of them are really incredible.  There's even a version of "Yellow Submarine" that will make you re-think one of the Beatles' weakest efforts.  Check it out!

Grab The Crossbow!

Picture by flickr user Christopher Hawkins

I'm taking a brief hiatus from my hiatus to share with you my latest track from The 50/90 Challenge (the longer version of FAWM), "Reap."  In my younger days, I was a bit of a metal-head, and I would have taken a song like this very, very seriously.  Nowadays I don't dust off my old Metallica CDs very often, but when I do, they take me down memory lane.  It was a ton of fun to revisit this genre, and I was very fortunate to have a collaborator who was every bit as into this as I was.  I'm speaking, of course, of my longtime musical collabator and good friend John (aka Das Binky).

We visited John & his lovely family at their home in Madison, WI last weekend.  I brought with me a little guitar riff in Em that had been bouncing around my head.  Together, we turned it into a metal masterpiece.  The original idea was that it was about a guy who was "paranoid" and by the end he was facing down a horrible mob (possibly of supernatural monsters, we're intentionally unclear on that point).  This was the most fun I've had making a song in a long time.

John did all the guitar & bass parts and joined in for the vocals on the chorus (as well as screaming the word "BLOOD!" with me in the second verse).  He also did the vast majority of the production work, making it sound way better than it has any business sounding.  I played the keyboard parts and did the singing (I had no idea my voice could go that high).  We co-wrote the lyrics.

Click here to listen to "Reap" on the 50/90 site, or just hit the play button below.  Have fun, and remember:  grab the crossbow!