I’m Alan Macdougall. I’ve been working in online financial services here in Wellington, New Zealand for thirteen years. I’ve managed internet banking services for a major bank, and later, contracted for a couple online brokerage houses.
I’ve had a personal blog for many years and have carefully steered clear of writing anything in there that’s work related. That’s great, but it does end up cutting out a good deal of the stuff I think about every day.
So here’s a place where I can, finally, write what I think about in those weekday hours.
Finding a new username and/or domain name is always a bit of a mission these days. Typically I turn to Scottish Gaelic for answers: that language has lots of interesting looking words with consonant combinations not found in English or in other commonly used languages on the internet.
Plus I can pretend to have some sort of heritage connection with it.
In an older Gaelic dictionary I came across this word:
stadh -a, sm Use, utility, service. 2 Work, working. 3 sm Swathe of cut corn or hay.
As best as I can tell it’s pronounced to rhyme with stark except with the terminal -rk sound replaced by a Scottish -ch.
So I take this word is to apply to a thing that is useful and working. And the third meaning, which apparently is restricted to the dialect of Skye, is a nice rural vestige.
I’m using the Tumblr theme Pragmatist by texburgher / Geoff Barnes. You can install it here. Thanks!