CMBuckley.co.uk :: Blog

Supposedly 2% of all pound coins are counterfeit. But how do you know when you have a fake? I heard the news item and had a quick look at the pound coins in my pocket, and couldn’t see anything. I thought that maybe it wasn’t all that easy to spot. But then I saw one my Mum had:



There are a few noticeable differences:

• The lettering and images are faded
• The images have less fine detail
• They may not pass the “spin test” (although mine did) — the obverse image is not in the same orientation as the reverse image
• The lettering on the side is incomplete or off-centre
• The side inscription and obverse or reverse image may not match the supposed year of print (although, again, this one did)
• The material of the coin may feel different — this one felt less dense than the real one; gold paint may also flake off
• A vending machine will probably not accept it

There are other things that you can do beyond just looking at it, such as weighing it on some very accurate scales, or testing the resistivity.

One thing that doesn’t prove it’s fake, however, is the orientation of the lettering on the side. All my pound coins (except the fake) have the obverse facing upwards when reading the lettering, but I’ve seen other coins where it’s the other way around. There’s a three-part post over at Blogalism that goes into more detail, and in one of the comments explains that the coins fall from the face-stamping machine into the edge-inscription machine, giving it a 50% chance of appearing either way up. More information is available on the old WBCC page.

I’m still tired even a whole day after getting back, but I though it was worth it to mention how good the festival was, yet again!

I didn’t get a ticket immediately after last year, but waited until March. With hindsight, I reckon an early bird ticket might be required from now on, as it was even busier than last year! I even missed out on the brie and crackers…

Again, my list of bands includes a couple of bands for whom we only saw the odd song:

Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Metallica Pendulum Avenged Sevenfold Dropkick Murphys Plain White T’s Alexisonfire Mindless Self Indulgence Eureka Machines	Babyshambles Rage Against The Machine Vampire Weekend Goldfinger Friendly Fires Biffy Clyro Serj Tankian Dizzee Rascal Taking Back Sunday	The Killers Bloc Party You Me At Six The Raconteurs Seasick Steve Hifi Handgrenades The Automatic Random Hand

Again, I felt like I missed a load, but with so many on at the same time it’s impossible to get it all in! Thanks go out to Rob Marshall for his clash finder, which helped out greatly!

View pictures of the festival

Radovan Karadžić, the recently captured war criminal, was doing a good job disguising himself as Noel Sharkey:


Er, I can’t remember which is which now.

The Firefox team are going for a new world record — “Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours.” The (currently beta) version 3 of their popular web browser is due to be launched in late June. Visit the Download Day 2008 page for the official date, and to make your pledge!

The walls have spoken. In the last week or so, Facebook has introduced a new feature called Lexicon (learn more), which allows you to enter a number of search terms and see how popular those terms are on people’s walls. The graph of “party tonight” when compared with “hangover” is quite predictable, especially around Hallowe’en and New Year’s:



The graph I found interesting, however, compared “work” and “play”: it seems much more people are talking about the former! Or maybe it’s just that they’re complaining about it?

Or maybe it’s because people who go out and have fun actually go do it rather than sitting on Facebook talking about it, whereas people at work just sit on Facebook and complain…

I was never a big fan of Dell, mainly because it really annoyed me that they only shipped Windows with their machines. Reading The Microsoft File made it clearer, if no more acceptable; Microsoft bullied retailers to shipping tied processor–product bundles, effectively forcing other operating systems out of the market.

Dell redeemed themselves in my eyes when they announced that they would be offering Linux as an alternative, but it seems that’s not the whole story. To summarise the summary, it would appear that every time Dell offers some kind of alternative to Windows, there’s always something that means the Windows users get preferential treatment over everyone else… Now that doesn’t seem fair, does it?

Woo, I got my ticket! Here’s the line-up so far:

It was late on in the morning (ooh, at least 11). The conversation had wandered. It’s taken me a few minutes sitting here to try and piece together the conversation again, but I think we started talking about Dave’s foot noir (his ingenious idea at James’ leaving do) where he kicks a football around a fog-drenched pitch, lamenting James’ absence. We then tried to think of a suitable score for the film, and I came up with Yann Tiersen’s “Comptine d’un autre été: L’après-midi”, an apt lament. I’d only seen it in Aidan Gibbons’ The Piano (YouTube), but apparently it’s from the Amélie soundtrack. So from Amélie, via Jean-Pierre Jeunet, we get to Delicatessen. A vision of dystopian France meant I just had to bring up District 13, then parkour and Casino Royale, but I digress.

Anyway, Emma lent me Delicatessen, and I watched it this evening. So many little things caught my eye that I couldn’t turn away for one moment! For those who haven’t seen it, I won’t say much, but suffice it to say that an underground gang of vegetarian rebels is an interesting film concept…

Oh, and I know that this post is around 75% digression, but I must add that for some reason Dominique Pinon reminds me of a certain misunderstood individual…

After spending too much time looking at images on imagechan, I was reminded of a perfect photo opportunity from childhood, sitting just in my garage:



Maybe I should be doing some work.

We are all friends
No matter when
No matter where
No matter how dangerous the way
No matter how far the way that we are yearning towards.
But we all know
No matter where we are
We have our own companion now.
And we can get everywhere no matter how far it is.
Because we have our own bright future
As long as we still have dreams.