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Makefile:

me:
	@true
a:
	@true
sandwich.:
	@[ -w /etc/shadow ] && echo "Okay." || echo "What? Make it yourself."

Shell:

$ make me a sandwich.
What? Make it yourself.

$ sudo make me a sandwich.
Okay.

From CLI-Apps. See also xkcd.

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.

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 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…

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.

At our last day at work before Christmas — oh yeah, I got a job by the way — we decided to have a go at some comics after seeing some crazy comics
at Pandyland.

The rules? A maximum of 4 panels, and use some base imaging software. That’s it! Here are the efforts:





Yes, I’m aware mine bears more than a little similarity to Cyanide and Happiness, but that’s because I have very little imagination and graphics skills…

The other day Paul told me that square wheels (and, indeed, any regular polygon except a triangle) can ride on a road constructed of inverted catenaries. A catenary is the curve made by a telegraph wire when stretched between two poles — a cable hanging under its own weight.

A little bit of thinking about the road makes you realise that the length of the catenary s must be the same as the length of the side of the square, and the height h must be

.

This is because the centre of the square, the axle, must remain at a constant height from the ground for a smooth ride.

Anyway, armed with this information, I spent this afternoon making a real-life version of this. I used some string to mark out a catenary of the right size, and used it as a template on two bits of plywood. A fair bit of jigsawing and filing later, I had this:



I was really surprised how well it worked! Check the video to see how smoothly the “wheel” runs along the “road”!

Lolcat has taken over my life. I spend far too long looking through pictures of amusing cats superimposed with intentionally grammatically incorrect captions.

But I love it.

Some of my favourites:



For more pictures, check http://icanhascheezburger.com, http://lolcats.com or http://lolcats2.com, or perhaps you might want to check out http://lolcode.com, a programming language based on those exact macros. It’s arguably as good as some of the esoteric programming languages!

So good, even xkcd has picked up on it.

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me…

Helen, Caroline and I went to see the third film this evening. If you didn’t like either of the first two, don’t go see this one. Mind you, that’s because you’re a lost cause; they were both excellent, and this one was a great finish to the trilogy!

Convoluted? Difficult to follow? Pah. If you know the characters well enough, then the complexity only makes the film better. There’s not as much comedy in this as there was in the previous two, but it had its moments: from the recoil of Marty’s gun to Jack’s miniature pirate ship, this film is everything I could have wanted!

I want to be a pirate!

We went to see Spider-Man 3 for Jay’s birthday today. I’ve seen the second, and really enjoyed it. This one, I must admit, was no different — despite warnings from critics and friends alike that “there’s too much going on.”

One thing, though — I’m sure it’s tongue-in-cheek, or at least I hope it is — but I did find it rather daft that when ol’ Spidey wins back the public, there’s a huge American flag? I’ve read that the same thing was done in a more subtle way in the first film, and apparently so much more so in the second that I don’t remember it. But was that necessary? Come on!

In addition, the symbiote seems to turn him in to Gerard Way. Anyone else notice that? Oh, apparently they did.