I’ve been incredibly frustrated over the past week. I’m trying to develop a new events service. Not a typical “post your kid’s birthday” events service, this is geared toward filmmakers and musicians and artists looking to promote their gigs and shows online.

Unfortunately it’s making me feel like crap because as I’m slowly designing the layout and developing features I’m realizing that I’m encountering the cardinal sin of Web 2.0 - I’m developing features, not products.

This is not a good feeling. Having what you think is a killer idea and then realizing “oh gee, someone else basically got their first.” I speak, of course, of Upcoming and Eventful, the original databases for events. I write down features (for example: pictures for artists/venues. I don’t want to host, why not tie it into flickr or zooomr? oh wait, upcoming does that.) and I realize that, gee, they’ve gotten their first.

I know that the mission behind my concept is different: promote arts and culture, whereas Upcoming/Eventful are just their to help you organize your social calendar. But the mission doesn’t matter when you have nearly identical featuresets. And sure, I come up with the occasional neat feature (oh gee whiz, let’s allow people to review events!) and then twenty minutes later realize “wait, no one would actually do/use that.”

So now I’m at a point where I need to develop a web app. Livelocity failed. This appears to be on the brink of failure (unless I get out of this slump and/or get a big idea fast). I have interest on the dev side, a neat design and a cool name…. now I just need the product.

And for whatever reason, I just can’t get the idea juice flowing.

And it gets me incredibly frustrated.

I’m importing some Edvard Grieg today and I’m experimenting with the import settings on iTunes to maximise quality.

I started with 256kbps MP3 but wasn’t happy so I switched over to 256kbps AAC (I debated pushing it to 320kbps but I don’t know if I’ll hear a change). I plan on going back through and re-importing my Wagner, Messiaen, and a few other composers. Classical music is just too awesome to be enjoyed at 128kbps MP3!

Anyone else have any experience with iTunes and classical music? Any equalizer settings I should try? Currently I’m listening at flat and I’m content with it but if there is a change that would enhance the audio I’m glad to try.

I like this graph, courtesy of Salary.com:

Rostropovich dies; had ties to region

As my regional newspaper reports, Rostropovich, the “ebullient master cellist” with a touch of political force in him, has died. Details are in the linked article.

I knew where he lived in the area though and I had seen his house several times. Perhaps I should clarify: it was actually what appeared to be his house; I couldn’t be too sure from the gates that blocked off entry.

One of my good friends’ fathers did work for the United States Census and got the chance to get on the property and raved about how amazing it was. “It’s like a castle,” he’d say. A castle in my back yard… pretty neat. Unfortunately the property was underused and all but ignored; Rostropovich never visited and nothing could be done with the site except leave it on the chance that he shows up. I ought to find it in Google Earth… plus I’m curious about who lives there now. It was sold in 2005, someone must be using it.

I just spent the past half hour booting and rebooting my Mac. Why? Because NeoOffice crashes and locks up the whole computer when I try to place text in columns (not table columns, regular text columns) within a table cell.

I know you may be thinking “now why the heck do you need that? It’s a table, split the cell and go from there!” but see table columns aren’t fluid like text columns: with a text column set I can easily flow text through. With a table column I have to split my text in an even spot. Annoying. And for any intermediate level page design I need to be able to easily layout my page. So I’m going old school HTML 4.0 and using Tables (without the HTML itself!)

I don’t know why NeoOffice can’t do this, but it frustrates me for two reasons:

1.) MS Word can do it. MS Word NINETY SEVEN!

2.) It locks up the program. So when I go to end the program, everything goes stupid on me. It isn’t listed in Force Quit. It isn’t listed in the terminal when I go into ps aux. Stupid stupid stupid.

GRAHLKSDHGlaksdh

/end rant.

I’m gonna try pages next and see how that goes, I may also try MS Office (though it’d be stupid to buy now since 08 for macs is coming). Fun.

My brother’s picture got in our local paper for the Battle of the Bands. Pretty sweet.