It's not only phones that are dumb.
The bins in the left and right stores were emptied less than 24 hours before this picture was taken. There is a reason (not a very good one) why the binmen didn't empty the middle one, but that's rather beside the point.

Imagine the scene. A member of homo sapiens sapiens leaves his flat with a bag of rubbish. He approaches the bin stores and ponders "which bin will I but my bag in?".

He ponders anew "I can surely sqeeze it into that middle one" and opens the gate. Then discovers "Oh, I can't get my bag in. There's no room. I'll just put it down where the vermin can get at it."

And finally, no doubt having been born in a field as all good parents used to say, he shambles off leaving the gate open.

I bought a new phone recently. I don't know if it advertises itself as a smart phone (it was probably too cheap for that) but given the dumbness it has just exhibited there is no way it could avoid prosecution if it did.

It has lots of nice features, like a radio and a music player. It also has a diary function and I've been using that in an attempt to wean myself from a paper diary. I've entered numerous engagements up to late September this year.

This weekend I had lots of timepieces to move an hour forward but not my computer and not my new phone. They smartly moved themselves ahead.

But the phone also dumbly moved every future entry in my diary one hour ahead. That is not dumb it is just plain stupid.

We were filming in a care home this weekend. It was a nice, relaxed and friendly place so I mused on putting my name down for it while I was there. But I didn't. It's much too soon.

Seeing a picture on the wall of Sean Connery visiting the place I thought he must have been sussing out a spot for himself. He is after all a good bit older than me and he'd surely love to be back in the old country away from the stress of Carribean living for his final years.

But it was only a sentimental tour through the scenes of his youth for the care home stands on the site of North Merchiston Primary School, his alma mater.

Who should sit down next to me at the Traverse this evening but the census man. The show was called Smalltown. How appropriate is that?

I was being hurled about Dumbiedykes in a wheelchair at lunchtime yesterday but thanks to the iplayer caught up with the Movie Café this morning. There was even less of the band playing than I had anticipated but we did survive Liz Taylor's death and learn about the Rank gong.

It was found in a junk shop in Greenwich yonks ago and some years later given as a wedding present to the couple who run the Dunedin Wind Band. Not a terribly exciting story but illustrative of how things turn up in the least expected way. Just as on Wednesday night the man who turned up at my door with a census form was a theatre friend I hadn't seen for four or five years, earning an honest crust while hawking himself around the drama school audition circuit. He's living a few streets away from me in the same street that was lived in by another young actor who played in a production of mine a couple of years ago. Unlikely to be the same flat but how spooky would that be if it is.

The first day of shooting "Similar Lily" went well today and as a plus it introduced me to a lovely little park that I didn't know existed just off the Pleasance. I'd have uploaded a photo had it not been for the fact that dressing the set involved spreading litter all over the place.

The big movie news of the day was Liz Taylor's death. I'm not especially sad but may be crying about it soon. I've been eagerly awaiting the Dunedin Wind Band item due to be broadcast on BBC Scotland's Movie Café tomorrow but have been warned that it may be bumped in favour of an obit for the dear departed.

I had a harrowing afternoon. No, I didn't watch the rugby. I went to the cinema.

Today's Cameo double bill consisted of Touching The Void and 127 Hours. I couldn't watch much of the arm cutting in 127 Hours, daft when you know it's not real. You can only get a body double to do so much after all. But it was gruesome.

Before the the cutting itself the director has to find ways of filling up the five days that poor Aron Ralston was stuck there with his arm wedged against the canyon wall by a huge boulder. So we see the chap's various failed attempts to free himself, his near drowning in a flash flood, his camcorder ramblings and bits of flashback and hallucinations. But although my attention was held throughout it's a bit thin, so I had some sympathy for the guy whose loud snores told that he for one had not found the film totally engrossing.

Much more happens in Touching The Void so in a way the director's task is a lot easier, but the demands of recreating the climb and its aftermath are colossal. I saw a making-of about it once and the achievement by camera crew and actors struck me as immense. Seeing the film itself for the second time I was squirming in my seat in empathetic fear and trembling most of the time and couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. The inter-cut matter of fact commentaries by Joe Simpson and Simon Yates (and their non-climbing companion) are I think a masterstroke.

What a great film.

The gong in this picture is a papier maché artefact but there was a real gong that made the noise that introduced J Arthur Rank movies. It's a Chinese instrument and its proper name is a tam tam. There will be an edition of Radio Scotland's Movie Café programme broadcast at 13.15 on Thursday 24th March that deals with this instrument and its history.

So what, you may say and why should I care? Well that tam tam now belongs to the Dunedin Wind Band for reasons which will no doubt be explored in the programme and I am a member of that band. I will be making my broadcast debut as a saxophonist in the programme.

I sat right in front of the gong during the recording so you will need to have a fine ear to pick me out but should you detect a wrong note during the 30 seconds of Pirates of the Caribbean that's likely to be broadcast that's very probably me.

No excuses now. If you are not able to tune in for the broadcast there is always the iplayer.

I was, as they say, privileged to take part in a ground-breaking production of The Tempest in last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe in which the central role of Prospero was played by a female actor.

Now Hollywood has followed suit and I was eager to see the results. So were many of my colleagues but Edinburgh's cinemas made it difficult for them by scheduling very few screenings and almost all of those at times when good little boys and girls should be tucked up in their offices. Thus only two of us made it, a pensioner and a public servant.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Apart from shifting Prospero's "such stuff as dreams are made on" speech to an earlier point in the story (where it makes a fine reflective soliloquy as Prospero looks fondly on the satisfactory conclusion of her matchmaking) and adding what seemed to me an unnecessary bit of back story involving a husband for Prospero, here called Prospera, the film resists the temptation to rewrite Shakespeare's play.

Not everyone speaks their lines as well as Helen Mirren. At times Caliban has an attack of the Jeff Bridges and much dialogue is blown away in the initial storm scene (perhaps that is intentional naturalism) but by and large only the most exigent Shakespearean verse devotee could have grounds for complaint.

I appreciated the efforts of all the actors to incarnate their characters. We had suitably romantic young lovers, a delightfully bumbling Gonzalo, nasty villains and loveable rogues plus a gentle sad eyed Ariel who is a shimmering animation bursting out of pools and flashing across the sky as a swarm of bees to do Prospera's bidding. That, the fire breathing black dogs and whirling zodiac sign filled heaven all reinforced for me the magic elements of the story though it seems that not all critics liked them.

The locations on the volcanic wastes of Hawaii gave superb cinematographic opportunities and absolutely appropriate settings for the tale. The final image of Prospera casting her magic rod into the sea was lovely but I'd have liked the long shots of the sailing ship being tossed around in the storm to have been more convincing.

My only major disappointment was that the film wasn't shown at the Cameo for half the price.

What can I say about Girl X?

I'm sure they meant well but that's as far as I can go.

The Price Marking Order 2004 has been a boon and a blessing to us all. Since it passed into law (thanks to the EU) it has not been necessary to carry a calculator on shopping trips to work out whether a 450gm jar of jam on sale for £2.37 is or is not a better buy than a 385gm jar of jam on sale for £1.99.

Now the unit price must be displayed making comparison a piece of cake, though sometimes (and perhaps in contravention of the regulations) one sees a price per 100gm against one product and a price per kilogram against a similar product. The unwary or those unable to multiply/divide by 10 can get burnt.

I reflected on this as I shopped for coffee today. Amongst the brands on offer was one in a 250gm pack at £3.53. That's a unit price of £1.41 per 100gm.

For those who find it tedious or challenging to measure out their coffee the same brand's range also included packs containing three sachets of what they described as microground and instant coffee at £1.45. Of course you have to pay for the convenience of being able to rip open a sachet and empty the contents into your cup instead of going through all that messy and potentially inaccurate spooning.

Thanks to the Price Marking Order 2004 you can see how high a premium that convenience carries because coffee bought in this packaging costs £21.02 per 100gm. To be fair it's not exactly the same coffee in both cases but it would have to be some super duper coffee to warrant a price multiple of nearly 15.

Putting it another way, and I confess to using a calculator to work this out, the convenience premium per cup is about 40p. The inconvenience premium of having all that packaging to dispose of is incalculable both for the consumer and the planet.

We had more wind than usual at band practice last night when we were joined by a piper. She made more noise than the other 30 of us put together.