I LEARN today - a little late, sadly - that November is National Novel Writing Month.

An annual event in which aspiring writers try to start and complete a book, it began in 1999 in San Francisco with 21 participants and now has 300,000 worldwide.

Often they'll meet in cafes and the like and write together for a few hours. The aim is to complete 50,000 words or so before the month is up.

Had I found out about NNWM even this time last week, I would have been in with a chance - at least if I'd followed the lead of Belgian writer Georges Simenon, creator of Maigret. He claimed in a 1965 interview that he could write a novel in just 11 days.

Tuning in to BBC Radio Scotland at 10am, I am expecting coverage of the launch of Scotland's Future, the White Paper outlining what an independent Scotland would look like. Instead, I get some woman wittering on about a Madonna concert at Murrayfield. Has there been one? I live nearby, I think I would have heard it.

A little miffed, I turn over to BBC Radio 5 Live. Much better. Here's Eck doing the needful from the podium at the Glasgow Science Centre and, later, fending off Nick Robinson's questions about Doctor Who. Actually it might have been the other way round. No matter.

Still with Radio 5 Live, and more in hope than expectation, I text presenter Victoria Derbyshire with my thoughts on the independence question. The predictive text on my near-obsolete mobile doesn't like "Eck" - I'm offered "Fak" as an alternative, which could be problematic on-air - so I use the First Minister's Sunday name instead. And would you believe it, they actually read out my message? If the programme is still on the BBC iPlayer, you'll find me about 42 minutes in. I'm "Barry from Edinburgh".

(Here I should refer you to the get-out clause on my Twitter home page - that all comments are my own opinion and in no way reflect the editorial position of this small but perfectly formed organ.)

If I had £450,000 to spend on a Christmas present I don't think I'd put "dinosaur skeleton" at the top of the list, but somebody obviously has: a 55ft-long diplodocus skeleton, nicknamed Misty, sells at auction today for that figure. Was Leonardo DiCaprio the buyer? He does already own one dinosaur skeleton and might, I suppose, like another.

What we do know is that the diplodocus in question was discovered near a quarry in Wyoming in 2009 and ate its last fernburger 150 million years ago, around the time UKIP was putting together its policies on gender equality.

"The skeleton comes apart like a giant Ikea flat pack," explains one of those involved in the sale. He doesn't say if it comes with an Allen key or whether the buyer will be required to also buy a bag of tealights at the checkout, but it seems likely.

Gordon Henderson of the Federation of Small Businesses says: "I challenge anyone to get a photograph of the Castle without a bus in it."

The castle in question, by the way, is the one which looms over Princes Street and Mr Henderson is adding his voice to those who say the coming of the trams will raise the tone of Scotland's premier shopping street. They could hardly lower it. Still, if he's prepared to put some money where his mouth is, I accept his challenge. Watch this space - though not if you're riding a bike as you might catch your wheel in the tram lines.

We've been learning a lot recently about bitcoin, the virtual online currency you can use when you go shopping on the "dark web" for drugs, guns, dinosaur skeletons or secondhand copies of Scotland's Future. Now I don't pretend to understand by what conjunction of zeroes and ones bitcoin operates. The algorithm that can explain algorithms to me hasn't been written yet, and is never likely to be. But I do understand basic economic theory. So when the value of a bitcoin hits £600 this week I can, as the Yanks say, do the math.

Math(s) done, I can also look down the back of the sofa to see if any of this now very valuable bitcoinage is lurking there. Well, it works when I need bus money. All I find is a handful of Lego Star Wars figures, however. Can I spend them? I know they form a currency of sorts in my son's world, but the things he buys with them are things I don't really need.

Turns out I'm looking in the wrong place, anyway. If I had any bitcoins they'd be on my computer hard drive along with whatever spyware GCHQ has installed this week. Welshman James Howells found this out to his cost when he junked an old hard drive he'd been given only to realise later it had 7500 bitcoins stored on it. At today's rate they'd be worth over £4.6 million. Woops.

Mr Howells, by the way, is currently searching desperately through the landfill site where he thinks his computer may have ended up. Mind you, if he waits a few weeks he may not feel quite so bad about the loss. "Looks like a classic bubble," writes today's edition of The Economist, noting that in January the price for a single bitcoin was only around £10. If that bubble bursts and the bitcoin falls back to the January level, Mr Howells is only out of pocket to the tune of ... well, you do the math(s).

In what is already a very crowded field, the title of Worst Selfie In The History Of The World has been awarded to Kevin Constant, a footballer with Italian minnows AC Milan. He photographed himself stripped to the waist and posted the self-portrait on Instagram.

So far, so normal behaviour for a bored footballer with narcissistic tendencies holed up in an expensive hotel room.

And, while the Errol Flynn moustache and the black bow tie wouldn't on their own be regarded as ridiculous (Errol Flynn sported both at one time or another), the combination of them, a mohawk haircut, and a thick chain which on closer inspection is actually a tattoo make for a truly retina-bothering image.

Oh, and you can see his pants over the top of his trousers.