Sick of being given the wrong information by National Rail Enquiries’ phone line? Don’t have WAP on your mobile?

National Rail have launched a new text service, the TextMe TrainTracker(TM) for departures/arrivals information. It costs 25p per text received, plus the standard cost of sending a text to the service.

The short code is 48 49 50. To find trains departing from Edinburgh, you would text:

dep Edinburgh

For trains from Edinburgh to Linlithgow:

dep Edinburgh to Linlithgow

For trains from Lewes to Brighton after 1500hrs:

dep Lewes to Brighton 1500

I tend to trust the automated information more than the call centre, but given some dubious information I’ve seen on the WAP and online departure boards recently, I wouldn’t risk too much on this information being 100% accurate.

I was very disappointed to see Germaine go. Like Peter Black, I was rooting for her to win. I sympathise with her reasons for quitting though: given the past antipathy between her and Brigitte Nielsen, introducing Jackie Stallone (who appears courtesy of the Jim Henson Workshop), was just unpleasant.

(Original image nicked from The Zbornak Files.)

You may have seen on the grown-up news that there were storms in Scotland last night. One upshot of this was the cessation of all services by First Scotrail.

Usually I start work at 8.45am. Today I got to work at 11.10am. And I wasn’t even the last to arrive.

On the plus side, I now have a contingency plan should this happen again…

Joe Gordon has been sacked from his job at Waterstone’s in Edinburgh for moaning about work on his blog, I learn from an article in today’s Guardian. I shan’t repeat my thoughts here as I’ve already commented on doctorvee’s blog.

Instead, since the Guardian article, “Blogger sacked for sounding off”, includes this excerpt from Joe’s blog:

Not far from my flat is a new bakery/pastry store, The Old Bakehouse, which also has an art gallery in the basement. Delicious pastries and artwork? Now how cool is that? Groovy.

and since I walk past it every day, and since I now have a new smartphone and a bit of software called PhotoAcute to improve its photos, here’s an illustration.