You might have noticed that I haven’t been updating this place so much recently — although that’s quite a common occurrence nowadays so you might not have noticed! This hectic stage of my life finally came to an end on Friday as I sat my last exam. Here are a few things that have happened recently that are notable enough to deserve exclamation marks. Then I will get back to writing about proper stuff.

UFO sighting!

Was this an early sign that I was losing the plot? While I was on one of my many commutes from Kirkcaldy to Edinburgh I saw something in the corner of my eye while the train was passing Edinburgh Airport. At first I thought it was a bird or something — it was quite small. Just as I focussed on the mystery object, some kind of bullet or something shot across really quickly and the object disappeared in a puff of smoke.

My first thought was that there was some kind of clay pigeon shooting competition or something going on. But it seems unlikely that this would take place on the runway at an airport. Moreover, it seemed as though the mystery object was taken out by some kind of science fiction-style laser shot.

That experience was probably an early sign that the exams were genuinely driving me mad. For the sake of my own self-esteem, I have decided that it was a weather event. A really weird weather event.

Hand dryers that actually work!

There was a nasty surprise when nature called while I was in Edinburgh Waverley train station recently. It now costs 30p to spend a penny. The current inflation worries finally had a tangible effect on me personally. Forget food and fuel prices — the cost of taking a leak jumped by 50%! And it is plain inconvenient having to use a 20p and a 10p rather than just dealing with one 20p piece as before.

Anyway, I went in to do my business and they’ve given the place a nice renovation. The highlight is undoubtedly the new hand dryers. Hand dryers are notoriously awful. They just never do the job. All that ever happens is your hands get a bit hot and your hands remain as wet as they were when tap water rather than wind was enveloping them.

These new hand dryers in Edinburgh Waverley toilets are something else though. There are posters next to them that actually say, “Hand dryers that actually work!” I just thought to myself, “yeah right — hand dryers never work.”

The new dryers are quite strange. Rather than sticking your hands under a hot air blower, you stick your hands in a little slot in the top of a box. It’s a very strange feeling. You move your hands up and down in the pocket as wind gets blown around inside. I did this for around 10 seconds as the poster advised, but I was convinced that my hands would come out still soaking wet. But to my surprise my hands were bone dry! It’s like magic.

Furthermore, the posters proclaim that these new dryers are more energy efficient than the old design. The future of hand washing is indeed very exciting! These are special hand dryers — they have their own website as well.

So the next time you’re in Edinburgh Waverley station, think about going into the toilets even if you don’t need to go. Worth every of the thirty pennies.

The end of university!

I had three exams this time round. My personal feeling is that the first one went okay — could have been better, could have been worse. The second one was not okay — I had to choose two questions but I could only really answer one of them. The second question was just bluff. We’ll see how that went, but I’m not too confident about that. My third exam — the one I had the least amount of time to study for — was one of the best exams I’ve ever had.

At least I finished on a high. That is not quite my last action as a student. I still have some books to return to the library, collect a copy of my dissertation and utilise the careers service to try and work out what on earth to do next. Anyone want to offer me a job?

I won’t pretend I enjoyed university, and I don’t think I’ll miss it. Many people say the student days are the best days of their lives. The idea that the rest of life is even worse than this is something I’m trying to avoid thinking about.

In case you were wondering, this is an even more quiet place than usual just now because I have exams at the moment. Sorry I’ve not been more active at replying to comments in recent weeks. I found the first exam more stressful than I should have, so I decided to take today off to relax. So it’s a good opportunity to stick a lazy post up here.

I’ve been tagged by a meme twice in recent weeks. One of them will be more exciting for you readers, and I have been meaning to write a post like that for about a year anyway. But I will do this one first because the other one will take a bit of preparation. Because I need to preserve all that brain power for the exams.

This is from Angry Steve. I can’t actually see what the common theme that runs through this is. Still, if you have been tagged in a meme and you don’t take part the punishment is fifty lashes in the blogospheric dungeon. So here goes.

1. The rules of the game get posted on the beginning.
2. Each player answers the rules about himself [or indeed herself].
3. At the end of the post, the player tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they’ve been tagged and asking them to read his [or her] blog.

What I was doing ten years ago:

According to my excellent maths skills, I was 12 years old. So I was probably being exceptionally annoying at primary school. I was probably preparing myself mentally for arriving at the big school with all the big bullies.

Five things on my To-Do list today:

Well, I am posting this last thing on Saturday. So here is my to-do list for Sunday.

1. Watch the GP2 race
2. Go for a walk round the park
3. Watch the Spanish Grand Prix
4. Begin revising for my next exam
5. Uh, go to bed

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Given that I would be financially secure, I would ditch all of my formal commitments and get round to all of those leisure activities that have been building up. The pile of CDs that I bought way back in October and still haven’t had the time to listen to. The DVDs. The books I bought for my summer reading in 2006 and the books that have been added to that pile since. The issues of The Economist which I unwisely purchased a three year subscription to before realising that I didn’t have the time to read a single bloody issue.

Three of my bad habits:

1. Weighing up the possibilities for so long that the opportunity completely passes by
2. Eating too quickly
3. Fingernail biting

Five places I’ve lived:

1. Glenrothes
2. Kirkcaldy

Uhh… and that’s it.

Five jobs I’ve had:

1. Lifting furniture about for an antiques shop run by a family friend
2. Sales assistant at Woolworths

Uhh… and that’s it.

Five books I’ve recently read:

Hmm difficult one. I don’t often get a chance to read a full book (I think my pace is about two per year). But I have read most of a few books at university so I’ll put the details here.

1. The Economic Development of Modern Scotland, 1950-1980, Richard Saville (ed.) — Skim-read many chapters for my exam on the Scottish Economy. It’s not very “modern” any more though — it was published in 1985 (no modern perspective on oil, little if anything about electronics, poll tax what poll tax?). Good chapters on the Highlands and Islands Development Agency and the Scottish Development Agency though. Shame they never came up in the exam!
2. The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan — Food for thought for proponents of “more democracy”. I thought it would be really useful for my dissertation. It was kind of, but I enjoyed the read more for the bits that weren’t much to do with my dissertation.
3. A Logic of Expressive Choice, Alexander A. Schuessler — A theory on voting behaviour and things like that (cases which should be collective action problems but aren’t). It gets a bit technical towards the end, but the early chapters are fascinating to read. If you want to know why the US President is just like a can of Dr Pepper, this is the book for you!
4. Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner — Finally something I read in my spare time. Quite fun to read.
5. The Worldly Philosophers, Robert L. Heilbroner — I found this book very boring; it took me over a year to read. It’s okay when it’s talking about people you’ve heard of. But in the chapters about people I’ve never heard of, it was a real struggle to read.

Five people or communities I’m going to tag:

Well first of all, bollocks to leaving a comment as per rule 3 at the top. It’s bad enough tagging someone as it is. I will tag five people here and if they notice it they can carry on the meme if they wish.

1. Colin
2. Jeff
3. Mat
4. Rhys
5. Sarah

You know, I really don’t mind the SNP all that much. I mean, in the sense that they are better than Labour then I am pleased they won the election. And I think that, on the whole, they have done a very competent job in charge.

But what have they done since gaining power? ASwaS notes:

The first Act of the SNP Government was to abolish tolls in and out of Fife. The second Act has been to remove university fees. As a St Andrews graduate I feel like I am in a privileged subset of the population.

So there have been two acts, both of which I oppose. This is a bit paradoxical because I am a student living in Fife. Received wisdom has it that I’m supposed to be in favour of these policies. But only the myopic think this. People see the headlines — “free this” and “free that” — without thinking about the full consequences. The policies are unashamedly populist, but unsustainable. This makes the SNP demagogues in my book.

Both of these policies are completely counter productive to a Fife-based student. I have already covered free university education before, so I won’t bore you again. But I have been meaning to write about road tolls for a long while now. So here is why road tolls should not be scrapped.

Roads are a scarce resource. There are only so many roads that can be built with the resources we have (not least space). And it is well known that no matter how many roads you build, drivers will literally be queuing up to use them.

Roads are a particularly scarce resource if you are trying to leave Fife (and who would blame you?). Geographically isolated, Fife is a peninsula. The River Tay lies to the north, the North Sea to the east, and the Firth of Forth is on the south. On the west, the Ochil Hills act as fourth barrier to entering Fife. It is almost as though the Flying Spaghetti Monster was trying to tell us something about Fife.

Anyway, the point is that if you want to travel to Edinburgh from Fife by road you don’t have many options. Basically you can cross the ageing Forth Road Bridge and deal with some horrendous traffic jams. Or you can spend even more time (and use up more petrol) going via Kincardine.

So roads out of Fife are a very scarce resource. When a resource is scarce it has to be rationed somehow. Clearly, no everyone who would like to use the Forth Road Bridge, or indeed any road, would be able to use it because there simply isn’t enough of it to go around. There needs to be some way of finding out who needs to use the road the most.

There are two ways to do it. One way is to make people spend time. This is the way most roads work, and of course the Forth Road Bridge has recently become one of those roads. The other way is to make people spend money. Evil, evil money. Yes? No.

Evan Davis has explained why queuing does a really bad job at rationing a scarce resource. When you make people queue, you are making everyone spend a lot of time. Time is the scarcest resource of them all. You can’t bring back the past, and you can’t transfer your spare time to someone else who doesn’t have enough time. Once time is spent, it’s gone forever.

If, on the other hand, you use money, it might still be costly to you as a person. But at least the money doesn’t just disappear. It has simply changed hands. The money can be re-spent again. Now, society is better off than it would have been had everyone been made to queue.

So to use the Forth Road Bridge as an example, the government could choose to whack up the price of crossing. This money could then be used to build more hospitals, or even — shock horror — a second Forth road bridge or tunnel. Or they could use it to reduce taxes.

Instead, the SNP have chosen to make not only drivers crossing the bridge, but also society as a whole, pay through the nose just so that they can say that they have removed road tolls. It’s a pretty pyrrhic victory if you ask me.

A couple of months back Calum Cashley was sceptical that the removal of the tolls would lead to greater congestion. His argument was that as the charge was only £1, removing it would not make crossing the bridge much cheaper in the eyes of many. But if anything, this is an argument that the charge was not high enough in the first place!

Instead, the SNP have taken it in the opposite direction. Common sense dictates that it would increase congestion. And evidence suggests that it has — by half an hour every morning. The rush hour is now a rush hour and a half.

The situation starts to look even worse when you consider the environmental impact of this situation. If road tolls were in use then think of the carbon emissions that would be cut. Instead, the SNP have removed the one toll road left, meaning that even more drivers are just standing still on the road with their engines running and emitting carbon dioxide. And the SNP are supposed to be a green party!

So road tolls make sense from an economic and environmental point of view. Does that mean we should dive head first into a full-on road charging scheme? Possibly not.

I seem to remember that when Evan Davis wrote that post, it was on the back of a debate about the possibility of people being charged to use roads by the mile (or something similar). This involves having a little box in your car that enables you to be tracked wherever you go. It might be economically efficient, but there is a serious problem with civil liberties there.

Also, it is perhaps worth pointing out that queuing is probably not always the worse option. Even though people grumble about NHS waiting lists, it seems preferable to a charge-based system where doctors could make up your illnesses in order to extract more money from you.

Nevertheless, the principle of road charging (if not the method as it currently stands) is perfectly sound. The tollbooth system on the Forth Road Bridge did not suffer from this civil liberties issue, so there was no good reason to abolish them. It was all the more farcical when the Scottish Government decided to pull them down at a cost of £2m, when they had only just been erected at a cost of £4m!

Oh dear. SNP MSP Christopher Harvie has found himself in a spot of bother for comments he has made about Lockerbie and the Scottish yoof.

On getting to Lockerbie, I discovered that the place is a dump - it was Tescotown. It should really have a certain attraction of a rather sombre kind as a place where something terrible happened; there are, after all, places on the western front and that sort of thing that have such an attraction for families who have lost people there.

There are a few things about this paragraph that are a bit off for me. I might be completely right to say that Lockerbie is a dump. I have never been, but frankly it wouldn’t surprise me. There are plenty of dumps around the place, and Lockerbie isn’t exactly known for its beautiful beaches or rolling hills.

Jeff is right when he says that if Lockerbie is a dump, Christopher Harvie should be able to say so. It should not be exempt from analysis because of the fact that it is the scene of the country’s worst terrorist atrocity.

But here is the thing. Christopher Harvie seems to be saying that Lockerbie should be positioning itself as a potential tourist attraction to help rake in the money from fans of disasters. As Mushkush implies, the idea leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth.

Following that he turns his guns on the much maligned youth of the country. They cannot get a second of peace from the establishment’s whining about the yoof.

They are a demographic that literally cannot win. If they spend too long indoors playing their Xboxes they are criticised for not getting enough exercise and causing an “OBESITY EPIDEMIC“.

If they do the opposite and dare to go outside to get some fresh air and happen to commit the heinous crime of wearing warm clothing they get called names like “hoodie” and “yob”. And everyone points at them and says, “Why are you standing on the street corner? It is so intimidating.” As though just standing around is intimidating.

If they are not on the corner but are standing in the vicinity of a shop some ridiculous person comes along and installs a discriminatory device that is deliberately designed to cause youths pain. And people wonder why today’s young people are disaffected.

Anyway, Mr Harvie has added himself to the long list of poshy snooty types criticising yoof fashions. You know, fair enough on that front. Some people do wear horrendous clothing. But why is he attacking Tom Hunter for it? I thought the SNP were meant to be aligning themselves as a pro-business party. But Christopher Harvie’s comments are about as anti-business as it gets.

It must also be said that the most immense fortune that has been made in Scotland in the past few years - that of Tom Hunter - has arisen from selling people what must be the ugliest clothes worn by anyone on the entire continent.

Tom Hunter is one of Scotland’s most successful businessmen. If Mr Harvie’s theory is true, then Mr Hunter has done the country’s people a great service–selling people clothes that they want. He spotted a gap in the market. It is what great businessmen do best. It should be celebrated. But Christopher Harvie just looks down his nose at it.

There are also echoes of this anti-business sentiment with his dismissal of Lockerbie as “Tescotown”. It is the most successful business in Britain, which makes it the butt of ill thought out jibes like this. What does it even mean to be a Tescotown anyway? My town has a Tesco as well–does that mean I should just go and top myself now?

Anyway, back to fashion. What clothing would Christopher Harvie prefer people to wear? Knickerbockers. Goodness me. Apparently his personal preference is for plus fours. And look at that awful check jacket. Holyrood Watcher rightly takes him to task.

For me, this whole issue highlights a problem with the electoral system currently in use for Scottish Parliament elections.

Christopher Harvie was the SNP’s candidate where I live in Kirkcaldy. During the campaign he began to get a bit of a reputation as a “mad professor” among some locals. From today’s comments it looks as though he earned that reputation.

Even Brian Taylor has used slightly colourful language on his blog to call Mr Harvie ‘The Nutty Professor‘. And according to Kezia Dugdale, “Rumour has it the SNP were waiting for an episode like this but were surprised it has taken so long.” In addition to Christine Grahame, it looks like the SNP has its second major loose cannon.

Prior to Mr Harvie’s campaign, I was considering voting for the SNP as an anti-Labour tactical vote (not that it would have done much good anyway). But I did not want to vote for Christopher Harvie. He lost in Kirkcaldy. Yet, today he is an MSP. He got in through the back door on the list vote.

No-one voted for him to win his seat. People only voted for the SNP as a party–or Alex Salmond For First Minister, as they were known on the ballot papers. What a shock those voters will have got, thinking they were voting for Alex Salmond and instead getting Christopher Harvie!

The problem with the list system is that it gives voters the minimum amount of power possible. Voters have no control over the candidates. Positions on the are determined internally within the parties. This makes the MSPs accountable not to the voters, but to internal party structures. This allows too many poor candidates become MSPs and fills the Parliament with lackeys. The Scottish Parliament needs a heavy dose of Single Transferable Vote to weed out these people.

One last thing. I really don’t get this quote from Jackie Baillie on Christopher Harvie’s comments.

“He represents a supposedly pro-European party but displays the worst kind of euro-phobia.”

He singled out Scotland’s youths for criticism, and said they were the worst in Europe! How this is supposed to be a display of Euro-phobia beats me.

Unfortunately, this does not tie in with my theory about the inadequate list MSPs. I have to conclude that Dumbarton is one of Scotland’s many Labour rotten boroughs.

On Saturday evening the last GNER train departed from London Kings Cross on its journey to Newcastle. They had to give up the East Coast franchise after their parent company ran out of cash to pay the government.

Reading about the company’s history on Wikipedia, I find it difficult to believe that it had only been around since 1996 — a strictly post-privatisation company. It had such a grand image that seemed steeped in history.

The GNER name was in fact a clever nod to three previous companies that used to operate on the East Coast — LNER, GNR and GER. It used a very old-fashioned looking coat of arms. It continued to use the ‘Flying Scotsman’ name, and even prided itself on running along “The Route of the Flying Scotsman”. All of these elements conspired to make me think that a company that was little more than a decade old was an important tie to our past.

Not so. But nevertheless I will be sad to see the name go. Rob Fenwick will have fond memories. But, despite their romantic image, I found GNER to be pretty shoddy as a train company in my experience.

I have not used them often — only for journeys between Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh. There are three choices here: First ScotRail, Virgin (now CrossCountry) and GNER. GNERs always made me the most nervous.

GNER trains were often chronically late. If I had to arrive at my destination for a certain time, I wouldn’t rely on GNER to get me there. Sure, they were susceptible to this because they made long distance journeys. But so did Virgin, and I found them much more punctual.

The trains themselves (Mark 3 coaches, in case you were wondering) were older than any others I have come across and were especially prone to breaking down. The slam-shut doors, whereby you had to lean out of the window for the privilege of getting the hell out, were like something from a pre-Health and Safety, pre-Disability Discrimination Act age — mostly because they were.

The worst delay I have ever been in was with GNER. The train broke down just past Haymarket and we had to wait for ages to get permission to go back to Edinburgh Waverley! And it was already very late. I felt sorry for all of the passengers who had to travel a longer distance on it. I just jumped off and ran for a more trustworthy First ScotRail train — as did quite a few other people.

Taking GNER’s place is National Express East Coast — or (if you like your four letter initialisms) NXEC. Of course, they will be using the same piss-poor rolling stock, so I won’t be holding my breath for an improvement on that front.

I do like that East Coast logo though. I saw a glimpse of it somewhere last week on my way back from Edinburgh (can’t remember where though) and didn’t know what it was. Its silvery glint caught my eye. I didn’t have enough time to look properly, but I liked what I saw of it.

Virgin Trains also recently lost its franchise — to Arriva-run CrossCountry. I’ll reserve judgement on CrossCountry as I haven’t used them yet. But I have to say that, unlike GNER, I always found Virgin’s service to be top notch, despite its image.

The trains themselves (Class 220 Voyagers in my neck of the woods) were excellent — comfortable and fast. But most importantly I could rely on them to get me to my destination on time.

There is a Virgin / CrossCountry train that departs Kirkcaldy at 1012 every day. This is a perfect train for me as it gets me into Edinburgh for my 1110 lectures, of which I have had many. It is the first train I can use my railcard on as well.

The Virgin one is cheaper and faster — but riskier. If it is late, I will be late. If it is on time I will be just a little bit late. But I have come to trust it. The train is very seldom late, and if it is then it is only fifteen minutes or so, rather than the hour or so you might expect a GNER train to be late. I’m quite sure this service will continue, as I have barely noticed the change of franchise.

If you are a user of Windows Vista, you will no doubt be aware of Windows Gadgets. For the uninitiated, they are basically tiny little applications that run on your desktop (you might also know them as widgets or, in the world of Facebook, applications). You will also be aware that none of the sidebar gadgets in existence are actually useful.

Yeah, there’s that massive oversized analogue clock. And there’s that calendar that doesn’t do anything except tell you what the date is. Then there is the RSS reader that only allows you to subscribe to certain Microsoft feeds. The only really useful one that came as a default on Vista is the post-it note style thing. But apart from that, unless you really like currency converters, there was not much to get stuck into.

There isn’t even anything decent among the third-party efforts. The only good one is iTunes Accessory. Almost all of the others are banal and pointless.

This always struck me as a bit weird. After all, there seem to be a lot of good widgets available for Mac OS X. And even when you look at the wonderful and varied ways that Facebook Applications have been used, the world of Windows Sidebar Gadgets is startlingly stagnant.

But yesterday I discovered a truly useful and surprisingly well-executed Gadget made by National Rail Enquiries. Once you install the gadget, you simply type in your start station (and, optionally, your destination station) and up pops a list of how the trains are running. Essentially, it is the live departure boards feature of the National Rail website, just sitting there in the corner ready for me to glance at.

I already put it to good use yesterday, in my little game of chicken (what’s the latest train I dare to get?). I couldn’t decide which between two trains I should get. But when the earlier one started to run late, I decided I had better stay on the safe side and get the earlier one.

The gadget could do with a couple of extra features. Clicking on a journey brings up a larger screen with details on the expected journey times — but only from your station onwards (eg., I get a table of all the stations between Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh Waverley). But I usually like to see how the train has been running at stations prior to Kirkcaldy to give me a better idea of the journey’s history. I always get the impression that the journey estimates are a little on the optimistic side, and I’d rather like to see the cold, hard facts of how the train has actually been getting along.

But I can’t complain too much. As I said, it is just amazing enough that such a useful gadget has finally been made, and by National Rail Enquiries of all people! I get the feeling that it is going unnoticed (apparently it’s been around since July, and I’ve only just found out about it). If you are a regular train user and have Windows Vista, you probably ought to install it.

BBC News:

SNP leader Alex Salmond said Gordon Brown was a “big feartie from Fife” who had lost credibility.

Excuse me!

I guess that’s put the final nail in the coffin of the rumour that Alex Salmond was thinking about standing in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

Any more of that kind of patronising from the Edinburgh elite and this proud Kingdom will have to start thinking about forming its own movement to gain independence from Scotland.

Via Angus Nicolson, who adds:

In other news: Condoleeza Rice said Kim Il-Jung was a “speccy git from Pyongyang”, Osama Bin-Laden said George Bush “did a poo in his pants”, and the Burmese Junta reacted to global condemnation by saying “Nyah, hyah, hyah!” and sticking out their tongues.

Iain Dale has heard a rumour that Alex Salmond is planning on standing against Gordon Brown at the next general election.

I live in Gordon Brown’s constituency, Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. If an election were to be held tomorrow, I would vote SNP. This is not because I support the SNP’s policies, because I don’t. If I voted according to principles, I would vote Lib Dem tomorrow. Unfortunately the hopelessly skewed voting system does not reward this, hence the need for tactical voting.

But I hate Labour, and the possibility that Gordon Brown could be toppled (however slim this possibility is) is too tantalising for me to ignore. The SNP are the party in the best position to give El Gordo the gubbing he and Labour deserve.

But if Alex Salmond becomes the SNP candidate for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath I might be forced to reconsider. There’s no point voting against the most loathsome politician in the country if it involves voting for the second most loathsome.

Supposing the rumours are true, where does this leave Alex Salmond’s promise that he would give up Westminster politics? He just can’t seem to let go of it. For somebody who wants an end to “London rule”, he seems awfully keen to take part in it. This would be the second time he would have reneged on a similar promise since he became First Minister.

Via MicroShaft.

Incidentally, I really wish people would start spelling (and pronouncing) Kirkcaldy correctly. I know it is not the easiest to spell or say, but I keep on seeing mistakes from people who should know better. And given that more people talk about Kirkcaldy now that it contains the PM’s seat, it really is starting to get on my nerves a bit!

Sorry about my absence over the weekend. I was here all along. In fact, I was here more than usual. It was one of the least busy weekends I’ve had in a while. But I somehow misplaced my blogging mojo and I was distracted by other things.

Other things like my latest internet addiction, Scrabulous! Jeremy Bentham thought that humans wanted to maximise pleasure rather than pain. Goodness knows what he would have thought if he saw me inviting Facebook friends to play Scrabble against me.

It has mostly been a demoralising affair. I hadn’t realised quite how rusty I was at Scrabble. I knew it was bad when I changed my target in my games to staying within 100 points of my opponent. Apologies to everyone who has had to put up with my awful Scrabble standards.

Still, I did win one game. I got off to a good start with ‘zealot’ early on, but I fell behind. Just when it was looking beyond hope, I redeemed myself with — of all words — ‘pies’. I always knew they were good for you really.

It’s incredible to think about the popularity of the Scrabulous Facebook application. I would never have heard of Scrabulous if it wasn’t for Facebook even though Scrabulous must have been in existence for a while.

This is part of the genius of Facebook Applications. They realised that there is added utility in combining other websites with Facebook. For instance, with the Last.fm Facebook apps I can see the music that all of my friends are listening to — people who I didn’t necessarily know had a Last.fm profile. With Scrabulous I can instantly play games of Scrabble with my friends without having to sign up or track down my friends.

All this has got me thinking about Facebook Applications again. When they were launched at the beginning of the summer, it felt as though there could be two or three really good uses for it, but that it could lead to the kind of overload that makes MySpace unbearable.

Now my profile has 14 apps on it (not including the ones made by Facebook themselves) and rising. Some are trivial. Others are distracting. The best are nigh-on revolutionary.

Perhaps with the latter group of applications in mind, Facebook themselves appear to have taken a bit of a step back. One annoying move they have recently made has been to call their excellent Courses feature an application and promptly remove it. I still don’t understand the justification for it.

For students like myself (who, after all, Facebook was originally designed for), the courses feature was not a mere add-on service. It was practically integral to the website as it allowed you to easily find your classmates.

Now it has been ripped out and replaced with at least two different applications (and probably more in the future). And because different people will be using different applications (or none at all), now you won’t be able to find your classmates so easily. Not the smartest move by Facebook if you ask me.

I wonder quite why Facebook felt the need to pull out. Maybe they are feeling the heat of the spotlight a bit too much. It’s not good to be the top dog. Ask McDonald’s, CocaCola, Microsoft or (now) Google. These companies all receive exponentially more flack than whoever is on the next rung down. Facebook is dangerously close to being among them.

By passing on responsibility for so much of its functionality to third parties, at least Facebook can now attempt to divert the attention elsewhere. If somebody launches into some kind of tirade about privacy and the courses feature, Facebook can now say, “Don’t look at us — it was [third party application developer].”

Perhaps there are less sinister reasons for Facebook’s change in tack though. A new application is causing a bit of a buzz and it is putting Facebook itself to shame (via Martin Stabe).

I have written in the past about how Facebook’s geographical networks are woefully inadequate. Basically, they have plucked some major cities from the atlas and decided that that will do. There are only 17 geographical networks for the UK, and they are almost all major cities.

If you are in Scotland you have to choose from Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh or Glasgow. Tough luck if you live in the Western Isles or even Fife, a peninsula wedged in between two of the aforementioned cities.

The rather excellent looking Neighborhoods app cuts out all of this nonsense. It makes these geographical networks for you. I added the app and it created a Kirkcaldy network for me, just like that! It has its own network-style page.

Of course, the problem with this is that the network is extremely small compared to, for instance, the Edinburgh one. In fact, I am the only member. But perhaps the tight-knit nature of these networks will work to its advantage. If the Neighborhoods app takes off (as it apparently has in Seattle), it could prove to be just the ticket. A simple solution to an old problem that Facebook themselves didn’t have a solution for.

It feels like a good time for me to review some of my favourite Facebook apps. But that will come tomorrow.

Do you ever find yourself in awe of people who would normally be mundane? Today I found myself in the unhappy position of having to take the train into Edinburgh (every time I enter the city it just reminds me of university dread).

For some reason that I can’t really fathom, the train was absolutely mobbed today. The station was busy enough — on both platforms. When I got on the train it was already standing room only, before any passengers from Kirkcaldy boarded. It was not as if it was a particularly nice morning or anything. Yet the train was heaving with tourists.

Anyway, the poor train guard had a mountain to climb just to get tickets out to everyone. He had to barge his way past the dozen or so people standing in the “vestibule area”. Once he emerged he was confronted with a large group of people from Cupar who had only gone and bought the wrong tickets. Their tickets were for Dundee, not Edinburgh.

Most guards obviously can’t be arsed with their job. My guess is that some might have pretended not to notice that the tickets were for the wrong destination. After all, this was a group of daytrippers who were, to be fair, of advanced age. Having to shell out for new tickets would put a considerable dampener on their day and, dare I say, edged them a couple of hours closer to death. Other guards might just lose their patience over the matter.

But this guard knew what was what. The passengers seemed pretty upset when they realised what had happened, but the conductor kept the whole situation under control. Most would have mumbled and grunted. Some others might have rolled their eyes and tutted. This one? “It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s all under control. Keep your tickets. You can get a refund at the station.”

Of course, this is just him doing his job. But the unusually high number of passengers made the journey feel a bit chaotic as it was already, and there must have been several passengers on the train who did not yet have a ticket for those all important barriers in Edinburgh. And by the time the whole tangle was sorted out, we were almost halfway to Edinburgh already. I’m not sure how calm I would have stayed.

In time to reach the Forth Bridge, he made an announcement on the loudspeaker system. This is another point where you can usually tell whether the guard’s heart is in it. Sometimes they start with a heavy sigh, making you wonder if the guard is accidentally broadcasting to the entire train when he actually meant to dial 0898 50 50 50. Then they might grumpily plod through the script, as if to signify, “Look here, I really can’t be arsed, so don’t give me shit today, okay?”

Incidentally, I am certain that some members of staff have a bet on to see who can say “Cupar, Leuchars” the quickest. So the next time you’re on the East Coast Main Line around Fife, listen out for the announcement. “Edinburgh *sigh* Waverley… Haaymarket… err, Inverkeithing, gah, Kirkcaldy… Markinch… *cough* Ladybank… Cuparleuchars… Dundee…”

I am also sometimes amused (and this is where I reveal my snobby side) at the way guards try to speak formally and politely but are just incapable of doing so. Many long words are inventerised, causating me to arise my head from my book in amusementation.

There was none of that sort of thing from today’s masterful guard. He was a fine speaker with an authoritative yet friendly voice. In fact, with his distinctive, formal Scottish accent I couldn’t help drawing a comparison with late night radio hero Rhod Sharp.

Yet again, the guard was the calm amid the storm. “Those of you who still do not have tickets, I will endeavour to see you before we arrive at Haymarket and Edinburgh Waverley.” Not only this, but he seemed to be getting into the spirit of the day for many passengers, who were mostly tourists, as I have already noted. Acting as part tour guide, he appended his announcement: “To the group that joined us at Leuchars, you will see the painters hanging off the side of the bridge; I was not jesting about that.”

It was that last comment that made me think, “Wow.” In a hectic situation he managed to find the time to make a frivolous but heart warming comment for the benefit of the daytrippers, and provide on update on it over the loudspeaker system.

I quickly realised that it was silly to be so impressed, because he was only doing his job. But so many people don’t do that. Most guards grumpily check your tickets then sod off to their cabin for the remainder of the journey.

By contrast, here was a person who knew what he was doing. He kept control of a busy train with some upset passengers and still found the time to have a bit of fun with the passengers as well. I found myself appreciative of the fact that the guard put in so much effort and that, horror of horrors, he looked as if he might even enjoy his job — one that most would find unfulfilling.

I think now I understand why lollipop men are sometimes on the honours list.

I first smelled a rat about Fopp’s financial security last week while I was working in Cumbernauld. The Woolworths there has a Fopp directly opposite, and I noticed one night that it closed earlier than usual. The following day it never raised its shutters — it was “closed for stocktake”.

I thought that was really odd. The store must have only been open for about a week; two weeks maximum. Why would a store need to stocktake when it had only been open for a maximum of two weeks?

It does not take a genius to work out that something might have been amiss, but I never imagined that it would be a company-wide problem. I suspected it was just a problem with the Cumbernauld branch specifically, not the entire chain.

I considered the possibility that Fopp as a whole might be in trouble. But I quickly discarded this, given the fact that earlier in the year they had optimistically bought several of the Music Zone stores which had gone into administration at Christmas. That is not the behaviour of a company that is in trouble.

When I received a couple of texts from Twitter about the health of Fopp, alarm bells began to ring again. The Cumbernauld Fopp store with its shutters down did have wider significance. It seems as though Fopp is in major trouble.

After work I brought the Twitter messages up in a conversation. I learned that the also recently-opened Glenrothes store has also mysteriously had its shutters down recently.

I came home and immediately searched Google News for information on the situation with Fopp. Seemingly, every Fopp store in the country was 50 Fopp stores were closed last Friday for an “extraordinary stocktake” (whatever the hell that is), but the company bullishly reopened its doors the next day.

But yesterday Fopp halted its online ordering service and stopped accepting credit cards at its tills. That sounds like a company in major trouble.

But as if that wasn’t enough, this evening I have read (via DJ Martian) that some workers will not get their scheduled pay packets tomorrow. Moreover, some Fopp stores will not be opening their doors in the morning.

Sitting here today, it is easy to say that Fopp simply over stretched itself. Ever since this year began, with the acquisition of the already faltering Music Zone stores, Fopp had completely changed its position in the high street.

Not so long ago, it was the sort of place that you would only find in a major city — Dundee or Edinburgh were the closest stores to my town. Suddenly, Fopps were opening all over the shop, in places like Glenrothes and Cumbernauld (I do remember being surprised to see a Fopp there when I first saw it).

Somehow, it just didn’t seem right. In a way, suddenly you would be more likely to find a Fopp in any one town than an HMV. That’s how it felt to me. And that was a situation which — while I was glad about it — just didn’t seem to make sense.

For this reason, I had assumed that Fopp must have been in extraordinarily sound financial shape. Seemingly, that is not the case. It looks as though they have just overstretched themselves too far over these past few months.

If Fopp goes into administration, I would be immensely sorry to see it go. When I first visited a Fopp, I wasn’t terribly impressed. But I soon learned to love it.

In fact, Fopp is the most dangerous shop on the High Street. All too often I would enter a Fopp for a cursory browse, or looking for a particular release. I would always emerge with an armful of bargain £5 / £6 / £7 CDs that I hadn’t been looking for.

Just last week, the day before the mysterious stocktake, I went in to the Cumbernauld store to buy the new releases by Simian Mobile Disco and Justice. I came out with the Sneaker Pimps album that I had been putting off buying for many, many years. I also chose the cheapest of the Can CDs, to add to my slowly growing collection of Can CDs. Fopp was that kind of shop. You would surprise yourself with what you ended up buying.

If Fopp goes, what is left? Even though its recent expansion felt odd, Fopp was a trusty friend unlike no other record shop. Smaller indie shops feel dusty and unwelcoming. The likes of HMV are expensive and sometimes lack selection. Fopp is (was?) a perfect in-between situation.

When I visited the BBC News website today to look for news on Fopp, I instead found news about how HMV is struggling. If even HMV is feeling it, it is fair to say that High Street retailers — especially those specialising in entertainment — are in big, big trouble.

Without Fopp, it is fair to say I would probably no longer buy CDs on the High Street. I would be left with online retailers alone. But the obvious next question is: How long will I be buying CDs for, before the world goes MP3-only? What a sad world that would be.

Update: It is confirmed. BBC News: Fopp closes down its 105 stores.

Recently I found myself spending a large part of two weeks working in Cumbernauld. Nothing very exciting; I was there as an extra pair of hands to help out at the newly-opened Woolworths store. (This, incidentally, explains why I have been a bit quiet here for the past couple of weeks.)

Cumbernauld is probably famous for two things (excluding Gregory’s Girl). The first is its slogan. How many towns boast such a well-known slogan? “What’s it called? Cumbernauld.”

Unfortunately, the town is also famous for the fact that it is utterly undeserving of the slogan. It won the Carbuncle Award (awarded to the bleakest town in Scotland) in 2001 and 2005. And a couple of years back producers on the Channel 4 programme Demolition were inundated with requests to demolish the entire town.

The new Woolworths is part of a new shopping centre which has been built in a belated attempt to restore the town’s “carbuncle” image. The locals seem pretty excited to finally have some decent shops again. Once the units fill up, the new Antonine Centre has the potential to work fairly well.

The new shopping centre contains a couple of murals which seem to be an attempt to big up the town. One has “comar-nan-allt” (the Gaelic origin of the town’s name) proudly written in Celtic-style writing. On the opposite wall is a celebration of Cumbernauld’s 50^th anniversary. Yet, sadly, civic pride is not very high in Cumbernauld.

It is not difficult to see why. On my occasional wanders around during my lunch, I felt as though I was in a promising world while I was within the confines of the Antonine Centre. But as soon as I left, I entered a bleak world which hasn’t been touched since the 1960s.

Cumbernauld Shopping Centre, which is joined onto the new Antonine Centre, is the famous “rabbit warren on stilts”. But while it looks mildly offensive on the outside, it is downright depressing on the inside. The place is dimly lit, with dirty and drab décor.

The only real big name shops left there are Argos and Boots — and Boots is due to move to the Antonine Centre in a year anyway (they wanted to move straight away, but apparently messed up the lease!). The rest is just full of independent pound shops and amusement arcades — much the sort of thing you would find in an “indoor market” type environment. Hardly the stuff of a world-beating town centre. You would never guess that Cumbernauld was Scotland’s eighth-largest town.

What little I saw of the rest of the town was pretty much as I had expected. I had visited Cumbernauld before, but I could not remember any details about it. But my time there this time around has confirmed my general suspicion that Cumbernauld is not unlike Glenrothes really. Of course it is nothing special — but you never see Glenrothes being awarded a “Plook on a Plinth”, do you?

Here is the thing that has confused me greatly about Cumbernauld, though. It is a really boring town. Most think it is downright ugly. So why did they spend so much money advertising it on the television?

All Cumbernauld had was an ugly indoor shopping centre that had made a bad name for itself. While the indoor shopping centre might have been a new and exciting idea fifty years ago, today it would be strange if a town didn’t have one.

Did they really think that people would flock to Cumbernauld as a tourist destination, or a place to set up a small business? All it really had to its name was this drab, anonymous shopping centre — the likes of which you would find in just about any town in the country — and a lot of roundabouts.

I am a bit too young to remember any of the famous adverts well enough. I might be wrong about this, but I seem to recollect one that contained a badly-animated monster (presumably supposed to be Nessie) swimming along while a voice-over parroted the catchphrase.

Can anybody confirm this? If it was real, and not just something I imagined, it seems to sum up the level of realism that Cumbernauld’s officials possessed. Why use Nessie to represent a town that is scores of miles away from Loch Ness? And actually, why bother advertising in the first place?

A search on YouTube has proved fruitless. I cannot find any of the famous adverts for Cumbernauld. Instead, what comes up is video after video of people pointing out how bleak their town is. Ironically and self-deprecatingly, the videos feature the “What’s it called?” catchphrase. The optimistic meaning of the catchphrase has disappeared without a trace.

The overriding impression I have of Cumbernauld is that it is a town that was plonked up there in the 1950s and 1960s amid great optimism. But this optimism bred complacency which led to the town remaining pretty much untouched since then.

In short, practically every building there looks like it has been untouched since the 1960s. Given the backlash against modernist and brutalist architecture which has taken place since then, it should not be surprising that the place should be seen as depressing. I thought Cumbernauld Shopping Centre could have been improved a great deal if it was just given a good lick of brightly-coloured paint.

Yet, any attempts there might have been to rejuvenate the town were seemingly half-hearted and invisible. This is how Cumbernauld ended up being a town with a large population, above-average income, below-average unemployment and yet no decent shops.

Above I said that civic pride ran low in Cumbernauld. That is probably not quite true. I think residents of Cumbernauld would love to love their town, but can’t.

They were let down by Cumbernauld’s local officials and politicians, who buried their heads in the sand. Any criticism of the town was batted away (you can see this on the BBC News articles I linked to above). Seemingly, they hoped that if they just claimed often enough that Cumbernauld was a great town then people would start to actually believe it.

Of course, they never did. And by promoting the town so much, they seemingly created a rod for their own back. It generated false expectations that were surely never going to be reached. This is how Cumbernauld can be awarded the Plook on a Plinth while somewhere like Glenrothes can carry on anonymously.

So Cumbernauld’s officials eventually capitulated and the new Antonine Shopping Centre was built. It remains to be seen if it will be a success. Clearly, residents are very excited about having shops like Woolworths, Next and TK Maxx on their doorstep. It was obvious from my time there that Cumbernauld was just screaming out for this to happen.

And even though the shopping centre’s units are still mostly empty, what shops are there are very busy (with the sad exception of Dunnes, who paid off a lot of their staff just a couple of weeks after opening). But obviously this is due to the initial excitement and will eventually die down. So it’s difficult to tell whether or not the Antonine Centre will be a success or a failure.

Some say that it is too little too late. They are probably right, in at least one sense. A new shopping centre is hardly enough to resuscitate such a terminally ill town. The YouTube video that I embedded above was posted less than two months ago, when the Antonine Centre had almost opened.

Cumbernauld might now get some nice shops. But it is fair to say that it will never be the great tourism and business centre that officials and residents alike seemed to believe it would be.

I’m not much of a gigger really. In fact, since the first proper one I attended six years ago (My Vitriol, who must now rival Portishead as the slowest-working band in the world), the only other gig I’ve attended was a really awful local band in a pub. I was dragged along, and I haven’t really recovered since.

There are a few reasons for this. One of the main ones is that hardly any of the bands that I like ever play in Edinburgh. My brother says this is because Edinburgh has a 10pm “noise curfew”. WTF! It’s meant to be a city of culture, but no music is allowed in case it wakes up Tarquin. Shameful.

The trek from Kirkcaldy to Glasgow is tiring, time consuming and expensive. But I don’t think anything would have been able to prevent me from seeing what Battles are like live.

Of course, we had to endure a shite support act first. The Penpushers have four members, but only two of them ever seemed to be doing anything at any one time. (My brother pointed out that one of the members was called Obsolete — and wasn’t he just!)

The music was nothing special. I think if this was fifteen years ago, when DJ Shadow was at the height of his popularity, this would have felt fresh and maybe even exciting. Today, the sound is rather dated and underwhelming.

At one point the frontman bemoaned the lukewarm reception, calling the audience “an Edinburgh crowd”. But they deserved an Edinburgh reception. Especially since we were about to see possibly the most futuristic band around at the moment, Battles (not The Battles, as Mr Penpusher annoyingly kept calling them).

The start of the performance caught by surprise. Bassist Dave Konopka, without the other members present, appeared just to be fiddling around, preparing or practising something. Then, all of a sudden, he just turned round and hammered out four bars worth of music.

Konopka stopped playing, but the music continued in a loop. It was a loud, bassy line — the sort that you can feel as much as you can hear. It seemed vaguely familiar, but nothing I could place from Battles’s records. Then he turned round to attend to his magic box. A few button presses later, and all of a sudden the unfamiliar sound was transformed into the very familiar beginning of ‘Race: Out’.

The rest of the band arrived, and we were to be treated to an hour or so of mind-bending music and technology. And the use of technology is quite important, because this is what pushes their unique sound. A simple guitars-and-keyboards band, Battles are not.

Pitchfork seemed to think that their album, Mirrored, is nothing short of revolutionary. Also read their review of Seefeel’s Quique for a comparison of Battles’s mix of guitars and technology to what Seefeel were able to achieve 15 years ago. Battles could not have existed in their current state before today.

It is just as well that they do exist today. Ever since the likes of IDM started to sound a bit stale a few years ago, there has not been much in the way of forward-looking music. It looks as though, right on cue, Battles have come to save the day.

Five or ten years ago, Mirrored would have been one of those studio albums that is impossible to replicate in a live environment. To watch the guitars and Tyondai Braxton’s vocals being electronically manipulated like this in real time is pretty extraordinary. As you may be able to tell, I was as impressed by the technology on display at the gig as much as the music itself.

Indeed, the music itself was a little bit off-colour. Particularly at the start of the set, a few mistakes were being made. Ian Williams in particular seemed more excited by the prospect of jumping around and looking energetic than actually hitting the right key on his keyboard. For a band that is often labelled “math rock”, they seem to delight in being imprecise from time to time.

And this “math rock” band is not just about chin stroking. Infact, particularly on Mirrored, they seem to be almost anti-chin stroking. At times whimsical and humorous, Battles are not afraid to produce an unashamed crowd-pleaser such as ‘Atlas’. And ‘Atlas’ really is a crowd pleaser, with members of the audience singing along to the “whooa-aay-oooh” bit, though they were probably prohibited from singing the rest because of ambiguity as to what the rest of the lyrics actually are.

I suppose the sheer energy is part of what makes Battles awesome live. This is particularly true of their stunning drummer, John Stainer. He clearly has his admirers. One person in the crowd seemed to be there solely to see John Stainer. At one point he just randomly started chanting, “John! John! John! John! John! John! John!” I think in his head the whole crowd was chanting with him.

Unlike Williams, Stainer is so relentlessly dedicated to playing correctly that it almost defies belief. Fast, precise and intricate, it was inevitable that he would start sweating. But I have never seen somebody sweat so much in my life. By the middle of the performance he looked like he had just come out of a swimming pool.

It wasn’t just sweat either. At one point I was unfortunate enough to look up just in time to see a huge string of gob come out of his mouth. I have a feeling that, when I’m old and senile, that will be my best memory of the gig.

I was a little bit annoyed that they didn’t play what I think are the two best tracks on the album, ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Ddiamondd’, but you can’t have it all.

Battles in action: ‘Atlas’ live at Chicago Glass Bottle, 30-03-2007

That full concert (!!) is available on YouTube here.

More Battles awesomeness

• Last.fm event page: Battles at ABC2 on 23 May 2007
• Flickr photoset by Mike Quin: Battles at the ABC
• Battles MySpace
• Battles official website

I have always struggled to come to terms with the fact that there are so many train stations in between Dundee and Carnoustie. I have never travelled on a train beyond Dundee, so I haven’t seen for myself how close they are to each other. I’ve tried to look at them on Google Earth, but it’s difficult to keep track really.

Anyway, I find it difficult to imagine that there is the need to have this many train stations between two towns that are only about ten miles apart. I mean, what is it? One for each golf course?

Bear in mind that Carnoustie itself has a population of around 10,000. Kirkcaldy has a population of over 40,000 and has only one train station to its name. So I don’t really know what Carnoustie and the wee towns between there and Dundee have done to deserve having so many train stations.

I know that not all of the stations are used all of the time. But sometimes I catch a particular train from Edinburgh that stops at every station on the way, including these obscure ones between Dundee and Carnoustie.

I remember a few months back reading an article on Scotsman.com about a proposal to close the Barry Links train station. According to the article, Barry Links station is only used by 26 passengers per year, despite the fact that a train stops there twice a day.

The community of commenters at Scotsman.com is one of the worst going, and that really is saying something. Commenting on this article, many people abandoned what little common sense they might have.

Several commenters even suggested that the problem with Barry Links was not that there were too many stops there — but that there weren’t enough! It’s certainly a novel take on economics. Nobody uses it, so let’s give them more. And never mind the fact that there are half a dozen other stations within a stone’s throw.

Sense kicks in only around comment #38:

If you were starting with a blank sheet of paper (or were playing Railway Tycoon) you would never in a million year puto a stop at Barry Links, for example. Just because it is there now does’t mean it should be kept. The maintenance cost for that station, per person, most be astronomical.

Keeping it would be nice, in a romantic way but you have to ask whether you would be happy if they were talking about putting new station on that site ? Of course not.

Matt T has a really interesting post outlining the ten most used and ten least used train stations. Golf Street is the least busy train station in the UK, apparently serving just eight passengers in the financial year 2004–2005. Eight passengers in an entire year! And its running costs are £33,000 per year.

Barry Links is not so far behind, with 14 passengers.

With numbers like this, combined with the fact that there are so many other stations nearby, these stations ought to be for the chop rather than being celebrated by the Scotsman.com users, none of whom actually appear to have used either station.

Shrieks about what would happen to the local economy of Barry (if it has one) or the impact on the community don’t really wash, especially since the community itself seems far from enamoured with the idea of boarding a train there.