Accomplishment Paralysis

For the past three days, I've been working about an hour a day on a little project that I launched a few years ago and never finished. At the time, I didn't have either the technology or the knowledge to work on it successfully, but now I do: I have a reliable application server for handling and storing the data, and I have a hug jQuery knowledge base that lets me construct the RIA front-end.

In the past three days, though, I've gone through four different revisions of the whole framework: is it server-based, with a light front end, or client-based, with a full-duty front end. I'm now at the point of having two back-ends: a functional one, and a theme-oriented delivery one. I'm also working on two front-ends, one functional and one theme-oriented. (It's a little weird in that the back-ends are compositional; the front-ends are inheritance-based.)

The idea is that the back-ends (1) deliver the HTML, Javascript, CSS, and graphic assets to display the program, and (2) handle storage for the program, while the front-end components (1) handle transactions with the storage engine and (2) drive the visual interaction. I'm designing the visuals around the Palm-Pilot/iPad model, where the convenience of input is most focused on those things you'll be entering frequently. Eventually, these pages could even be standalone, the thematic part downloadble and the functional part supplanted with WebDatabase client-side storage.

I can't tell if this constant stop, go back, revise, and start over is part of the necessary development iteration process, or if I'm using analysis paralysis as a way of expressing a more fundamental problem-- accomplishment paralysis.

Because once I've finished this thing, what do I do with it? I set out to repair a fundamental problem with my personal workflow-- not knowing what to do next. (Irony is a lifestyle, you know.) One of the things I wanted to fix with this project was to create a landing page with dynamic lists. I started with very concrete objects (Contexts, Roles, Projects, Tasks -- as per my current design) and devolved to a single thing with a tree-like storage pattern. I started with concrete equivalents on the client side and have now devolved those same abstractions for the functionality, with the concreteness being encapsulated only in the functional javascript component.

In one sense, this is satisfying. I've identified where the program needs to go from being abstract to concrete. But dammit, I should be done by now.

I can't help but neurotically complex about what I do with this project when I'm finished with it. Do I put it up in a public space? Do I let other people play with it? After all, there are plenty of nice personal landing pages, but most of them are about being in contact with your social network. I want one that's about what I'm going to accomplish. Maybe other people would like it as well, but that would mean switching from creative development to business maintenance.

And I don't know that I'm cut out to be a businessman.

Has Kenneth Turan even watched Avatar: The Last Airbender?

Kenneth Turan, the usually professional movie reviewer for NPR's morning show, All Things Considered, gave his review of The Last Airbender this morning and said what has to be one of the dumbest things I've heard from him ever:

The best films for kids have always had something for adults in them. That was true when The Black Stallion came out 30 years ago, and when Toy Story 3 came out last month. So one problem with The Last Airbender is that it's pegged almost exclusively to the small-fry state of mind that earned fans for the original Nickelodeon series.

If Shyamalan aimed for the "small fry state of mind," well, that's a serious blow to the film's possibilities, but Turan shouldn't speak of the TV series without having, you know, watched it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender had plenty of "something for adults" in it. It was a smart, complicated show with a huge arc, an intertwined collection of relationships, and definitive crises involving life, death, redemption, vice, and failure. I'm not sure what Turan was getting at here, but whatever it was he surely missed out on the essential issue: Shyamalan has apparently done horrible things to Konietzko and DiMartino's original story, and the 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes gives every indication of that.

Fantasy Vs. Reality

The Fantasy:

Homosexuals do not achieve psychological satisfaction by engaging in same-sex sex. That is the reason that homosexuals are highly promiscuous compared to heterosexuals. Homosexuals can desire sex again only one or two hours after same-sex because they are not psychologically satisfied by their sex. Heterosexuals often can go for days, weeks or months before desiring sex again because they have achieved psychological satisfaction from their last physical sex act.

The reality: Awkwardness at the Human/Zorblaxian Cultural Exchange