marramgrass

Google seems to be taking over the world.

In preparation for the UK arrival of the iPhone, and all it’s flat-rate data ever-connectedness, I’ve been putting all the blogs and things I read into Google Reader. I haven’t decided yet whether I will actually nab an iPhone this time round (it really isn’t cheap), but it has spurred me to give Reader another shot.

I’m not a big fan of the whole web apps thing that’s going on. I much prefer ‘real’ software running on my computer, rather than all the to-ing and fro-ing to the web server. I use Gmail, but mostly access it through Thunderbird. I do appreciate some of the niceness of it, though.

Back when Google Reader was first made public, I played with it, but didn’t get along with the interface. They’ve revamped it, and it’s much handier – even if it doesn’t always play 100% nice with my browser of choice (Opera). Handier enough that I plan to run with it for a while and see what I make of it.

I’ll let you know.

I was just pootling around on the web, as you do – you know, following random links and ending up in random places – when I discovered that Robert Jordan died last weekend.

For a few years now I’ve been reading and re-reading his Wheel Of Time series of novels. They’ve caught a lot of criticism for losing focus a little, but I’ve mostly enjoyed them.

Jordan had been ill for a year and a half or so, and was quite frank on his blog about the illness. Unfortunately it beat him.

It’s a shame that he died just as he was working on the last book (volume twelve) of his epic series, having put so many years into it. I hope he left enough in the way of notes that the right individual could at least draw the series to something like its intended close, both to honour the work he put into it, and to provide closure for all the folks like me who want to know how it ends…

I’ll try anything once…

Following on from Andrew, I thought I’d try out this BlogRush thing that seems to be getting a lot of exposure.

We’ll see how it pans out.

It’d be nice if you could style their widget a bit – as it is it’s a bit on the massive side, which is why I’ve shoved it right down to the bottom of the sidebar there.

Traffic is not my aim, here, but it does make me feel popular and validated :-/

Cat In A Bottle. Not as bad as it sounds.

I did laugh.

I was moved to consider my perfect acoustic playlist of the moment. (Please note, of the moment.)

1. “Love Is…” by Martyn Joseph (Whoever It Was That Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home)
2. “Cannonball” by Damien Rice (O)
3. “Where The Angels Sleep” by Bebo Norman (Ten Thousand Days)
4. “Superman’s Song” by Crash Test Dummies (The Ghosts That Haunt Me)
5. “Whiskey Lullaby” by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss(Mud On The Tires)
6. “Pacing The Cage” by Bruck Cockburn (The Charity Of Night)
7. “More Than Words” by Extreme (Pornografitti)
8. “Girl In The War” by Josh Ritter (The Animal Years)
9. “Orangeville” by Brian Houston (35 Summers)
10. “Be Lifted” by David Crowder Band (B Collision)

Bebo Norman is super live, but his records normally leave me cold. I enjoy this cut, though. “Whiskey Lullaby” is one of my guilty pleasures – if pressed I have to admit a slight country leaning somewhere inside me. Blame Brian Houston. Which leads us to “Orangeville”, but the hidden track off 35 Summers rather than the version on Good News Junkie. “More Than Words” really does have to feature. A little cliched, but I rediscovered it again recently. There’s one or two that didn’t make the cut, but I wanted to hold it to ten…

Just like the rest of the UK, one of the more controversial social issues right now is the growing migrant community, in particular from Eastern Europe.

Me, I don’t subscribe to the “dirty foreigners taking our jobs” view, nor indeed the variations along the lines of “they should learn more English and be more like us” or “just send ‘em all home.” The more the merrier, I say. It’s not like we’re in a famine or a drought, here, and we stand to be greatly enriched as a society.

I’m slightly sad to detect the little hints of prejudice that do still manage to creep into my mind, though. Example one: behind a car with a Polish reg on the motorway, I find myself watching out for dodgy driving. But then, I do that when I’m behind an Irish reg, too, so maybe I’m just a driving snob. Example two: the window cleaner came to our house the other day, and he has a Polish guy working with him. Why did I have to fight down the little bit of unease I had? Totally unjustified.

It was that window cleaner who got me thinking about this, though. While his colleague, who didn’t appear to have much English going by the interactions I saw between the two of them, was doing most of the work – climbing the ladder, cleaning the windows, cleaning the small forest out of our guttering – the window cleaner stood in the front garden chatting to me while he watched. He talked plenty about his Polish colleague. None if it was too nasty, although some wasn’t 100% nice, either, but the tone and the flippancy – especially with the other guy maybe twenty feet away – left me wondering if he’d have spoken in quite the same manner if he thought the subject of his gossiping could understand what he was saying.

I felt very uncomfortable with this. Did I say anything? No, I just smiled and nodded. What’s that about? When they left, I did make a point of thanking the one who I’d seen do most of the work. He looked a little taken aback. Working round here (in the heart of almost-countryside middle-class land) I wasn’t terribly surprised.

How come I’m thinking so much about this? How come it’s such a big deal to so many people, whatever side of the line they’re coming from?

Moving to a new country isn’t an easy thing. I found it tough enough going to Scotland, and I knew people there and spoke the language. Actually, I’ve found it tough enough returning to Northern Ireland, and this is home.

The notion of community runs right through the Gospel, and it’s one of open and welcoming community – all the more challenging since human community by its nature tends towards being a bounded and exclusive thing. If we’re trying to discover a true expression of Gospel community, how do we respond to the incomer, the economic migrant, the guy here looking for a slightly better life for him and his family (I hope he finds what he’s after), the seeker of asylum, even the tourist.

In light of Jesus, I’m not sure how much emphasis needs placed on matters of nationality and geography, at least in the negative way we like to. Even if we go back and consider the Old Testament, there’s a lot in the Law about right treatment of the ‘alien’.

Of course, I don’t know the answers. I just ask the questions. But I wish more people would ask the questions.

I’ve added two new people to the sidebar, and I can recommend their blogs to you:

Ruth Elkin is a youth worker I met last year at the PCI YM Summer School.

David Seah is a designer-type who spends a fair amount of time considering himself and his approach to life; the honesty of his self-assessment is quite humbling. He also designs forms, lots of them, some of which are exceedingly cool and potentially very useful.

Others may join the list soon – I keep discovering cool, interesting and entertaining sites.

As I seem to be suddenly on a form-designing kick (it’s sad, oh so very sad), my wife asked me if I could throw something together that she could use to keep track of her time off from work. Her requirements were reasonably precise: days of the week, a month in a line, easily-readable dates and little boxes that had room for explanatory symbols to be marked in.

I came up with something that has satisfied her, and I’m actually finding it quite useful myself. As it stands, there is a key to be filled in with slots for annual leave, statutory holidays, days in lieu of stat. days (we both do jobs where that happens easily) and sick days, plus four dotted lines to add other things that come to mind.

So, as with the other forms I’ve done lately, these are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. The font is BlueHighway from the D*I*Y Planner Widget Kit (it is otherwise available, but that’s where I installed it from).

Here are the downloads as A4 PDF files for 2007 and 2008:

• LeaveTracker2007.pdf 20KB
• LeaveTracker2008.pdf 20KB

Here also is a zip file of the OpenOffice.org 2 Draw source files for these. These will allow you to, for example, edit the key to fit your own needs:

• LeaveTracker2007-08.zip 28KB

As before, if these are of use, I’d be grateful for a comment to let me know. Enjoy.

The comics are funny, if very gamer-y. Works for me, maybe not for you. But the heart of the matter is a way with words that runs something like this:

You couldn’t pay us to play Lair any more than we have already. The game has given me a new respect for the professional reviewer, because when a game like Lair hits their desk, they have no recourse. They must tread, as Dante did, down that scarred staircase and into the greasy throat of hell.

Over the summer, I was flicking through an old notebook and I found a couple of things I wrote a few years ago that didn’t make me cringe too much. Against my better judgement, I throw them on the mercy of the world.
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