marramgrass

A couple of people have asked me recently, “Why marramgrass?” Over the life of this site that puts me up to the point where I guess I can answer the question.

It’s not very exciting.

The choice of name was down to a combination of factors:

• A word that had stuck in my head since GCSE Geography
• A fairly unusual and reasonably memorable word.
• A word I’d always fancied employing as the name of a band. I’m not in a band.
• The domain name was available (the surprise!).

Now the tag line (“unexpected, and a little spiky”) I find more interesting.

Marram Grass is the stuff that holds sand dunes together at the seaside. When you’re walking through it, it has this uncanny ability to poke through even the heaviest denim jeans and stab you in the calf. This usually makes me jump a little. I pretentiously likened this nature to that of my writing here — or at least what I hoped it would turn out like.

That’s a story I’ve been thinking about telling for four and a half years. Go figure.

I’ve done some tweaking to try and fix an old silly problem with the layout here.

I think it’s all good, but if anything looks broken to you, please leave me a comment and let me know. It’d be handy if you told me what operating system (WinXP, Vista, 98, Mac OS X 10.?, etc) and browser you’re using.

Ta.

Or, “How Google Is Taking Over The World.”

Over the last eight or nine years, I’ve become at home with two artifacts of modern life which are at the same time constant (in certain societies) and fleeting: email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

(more…)

Today’s intended post is -poned, to let me bring you some breaking news. Belfast appears to have been invaded by large yellow directory-like structures, scattered all over the pavements of the city.

I only hope they don’t hatch into papery ‘phone number-crunching monsters that replace us while we sleep…

UPDATE: extra points if you can tell me where I took this picture. You should be able to tell.

I promised something geeky for today, but that’ll have to wait as I’m still playing with the thing I was going to post about (Google Apps if you’re curious). But that’ll be made up for by the super-geekness of it. I know. You just can’t wait, can you?

Instead, let me offer a little pulpish light relief.

In the midst of a busy spell at work, I’ve been giving my brain some downtime with a nice low-brow whodunnit.

Snow Blind by PJ Tracy is everything you want from a normal crime novel, with imaginative mysteries, pleasing twists and a couple of likable heroes. Unfortunately, you can tell who the killer was fairly early on. That gives it’s own satisfaction, though.

The author is actually a mother-and-daugher writing team who (according to an interview I heard on the radio last year) live hundreds of miles apart and collaborate over the phone. Sounds weird, but seems to work. This is their fourth book under the name PJ Tracy, and all four have been pretty satisfying.

So there you go. I still need to post about the Dresden books, but they’re good enough to merit their own space.

I believe they were turning on the Christmas lights in Belfast tonight, five weeks before Christmas. Since I posted the other day, I’ve been thinking some more about the whole gift-giving thing.

Specifically, I thought about how this time of year, for my family, has been the time of the ‘big’ gift, the thing you’d really like to have but can’t get (or can’t justify getting) for yourself. There’s something cool about that, but at the same time it requires a bit of a pause for thought, and in my pause I remembered a friend from Edinburgh.

This guy did something once that raised a few eyebrows among those who know him. A guitarist, when he decided to concentrate on the acoustic instrument for a while he began to dispose of all his electric gear — guitars, amps, effects. Some got sold on, but some was given away to others. (Full disclosure: I have in my possession a couple of very nice bits of gear he gifted me. I’m still humbled by it.) Any musicians out there will know that putting your kit together can be expensive in terms of cash, of effort and of time, so this was not an insignificant thing for him to do.

I remember some wondering if he had thought it through, and the occasional muttering about these young folks not knowing the value of things, of money, of… whatever.

Then and now, I realised that the opposite was true. He got it exactly. The material value of things, of money, of… is fleeting. This guy was of the opinion that he wasn’t using the gear, and someone else could. He knew that to have the right attitude was to hold on lightly, because at the end of the day it’s just stuff, you know?

Which brings me back to the giving of gifts at Christmas. I say that the extravagant gift-giving is cool not for the “Wahey! Look what I got!” factor, but for the “Wow. Look what you gave.” factor. Only one of the many ways we try to express care and love for each other as we celebrate Christmas in the West, this is maybe where we’re most prone to getting sidetracked by the medium and forgetting the message. Its meaning and beauty is in the sacrifice and intent of the giver.

Now where’ve I heard that before?

On three separate occasions today I was in the car with the radio on. I heard three different experts of varying degree educating interviewers in their chosen field. There was civil servant of some sort, a statistician, and I can’t remember who the other one was.

What did they have in common?

They all sounded uncannily like Bill Nighy. It was class, for he is a dude.

Driving to church this morning, I realised (as in, I idly figured out) that from today it is five weeks and two days until Christmas. Cue the traditional “Aargh! No shopping yet!” panic that must accompany such a revelation, and add a healthy dash of financial anxiety.

For many of us, the giving of gifts is a vital ingredient in the season, and it is backed by a rich symbolism. But, be honest, when was the last time you considered that significance? It’s good to give, yes, but it’s awfully easy to get lost in the lists of hims and hers that we need to come up with a cool/imaginative/thoughtful/significant/affordable/valuable/delete-as-appropriate gift for, and forget the why — be it a celebration joined, an obligation felt or simply an expression of friendship or love, something to say, “You’re important to me.”

In the midst of it all, the joy and the anxiety, I think I’ll be glad of The Mockingbird’s Leap. I hope so.

There’s a post I could write just now, and it would be a stormer. But I think it had best wait until I can moderate the tone of it a little — let’s say I’m a little bit miffed and quite likely to commit something to the unforgetting InterWeb that I could later regret.

Instead, I’ll leave you with this from xkcd (again):

I think it’s time for me to construct a new playlist for the car. Tonight I noticed that I kept skipping songs, and that’s definitely a sign of weariness. Give or take the occasional minor change, this is what I’ve been driving to lately:

1. “Blues Run The Game” by Counting Crows (American Girls EP)
2. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers (Best Of…)
3. “America” by Razorlight (Razorlight)
4. “Days Of Pearly Spencer” by Brian Houston (Days Of Pearly Spencer EP)
5. “Feel Good Inc” by Gorillaz (Demon Days)
6. “A Little Less Conversation” by Elvis Presley/JXL (Elvis By The Presleys)
7. “Rylynn” by Andy McKee (Art Of Motion)
8. “Jump Around” by House Of Pain (House Of Pain)
9. “Mockingbird” by Derek Webb (Mockingbird)
10. “Whiskey Lullaby” by Brad Paisley with Alison Krauss (Mud On The Tires)
11. “Last Night I Nearly Died” by Duke Special (Songs From The Deep Forest)
12. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns ‘N’ Roses (Appetite For Destruction)
13. “My Immortal” by Evanescence (Fallen)
14. “Run-Around” by Blues Traveler (Four)
15. “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” by Cutting Crew (GTA: Vice City soundtrack)
16. “Basket Case” by Green Day (International Superhits!)
17. “Birdhouse In Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants (Flood)
18. “Africa” by Toto (GTA: Vice City soundtrack)

There are a few favourites there, and a few relatively recent discoveries. All good, to my ears anyway. But now I need to start over…