The Ramblings of Octavo

Crystal Reports is amazingly phun to use. No really. It makes even the most logically simple changes almost impossibly difficult without completely redesigning any given report and since you’re usually not even sure how you got it working in the first place, you’re not about to tear it down and rewrite it from the start. Especially since when you do take this brave and reckless route, you usually run into one of Crystals other little quirks. I think I’m slightly masochistic. You see, the amazingly frustrating and annoying challenges that Crystal presents one with on an astoundingly regular basis are actually quite fun to solve.

I saw an advert on TV the other night for the Nokia N90, which means it’s finally been released, which means that it’s brother, the N91 can’t be far behind. This is a phone I dearly want to get my paws on. I’m an admitted Nokia zealot and I will not condescend to use another (read: inferior) brand. Now, let me enumerate the various qualities of the N91…

A 4Gb Hard drive. 4Gb. That’s plenty space for a nice music collection AND one or two movies. It’s got a pretty decent 2 megapixel camera on it and a standard headphone jack instead of that stupid proprietry Nokia pop-port. Standard USB 2.0 data transfer interface. Bluetooth and Wireless 802.11g…how cool is that shizite? It’s a series 60 smartphone which means it runs the Symbian OS, which isn’t really great, but every phone has to have a down side doesn’t it? Probably the battery life will suck (if you’re constantly accessing that HDD I mean), but all in all I think this is an awesome phone.

Any Nokia reps reading this, feel free to send me one

I suppose now you want to see this gift to humanity from the almighty Nokia?

Here ya go Rygel — a pic of my new desk (it’s a bit overexposed cuz of the LIGHT from the WINDOW that I now have!!!!)

Also, here’s a shot of the moon I promised a few posts back!

There are more pics of both the office and the moon on my Flickr account

I have a window

I don’t think I mentioned this yet, but the company I work for recently moved offices to a new building. It’s been really nicely done with no expense spared to give the staff a really nice work environment - I must say that I’m pretty damn impressed. Among other things we all have direct phone lines, allocated parking and spiffy new desks. The phones are all IP phones, which is cool because it means that everyone has their own voice mail which is sent to you as an email. Of course the down side is that when the power goes out or the network dies, so do the phones… (You know you’re in the digital age when your phone say “Booting…” when the power comes back on).

And yes, the biggest boon is that we finally have natural light in the office. I have a window which looks out onto the mountains… it’s a lovely sight really!

YAY!

Funny as fsck!

And now, for something completely different…

Anyone that knows me well knows I am a firm advocate of evolution and am frankly scornful of those who cling to a literal interpretation of Genesis. To me, it is inconceivable that one could honestly believe that we were formed by a creator god rather than by natural biological and evolutionary processes, given the abundance of irrefutable evidence all around us. So it is with great interest that I am following a modern day rehash of the Scopes trial.

As many of us know, America is currently wrestling itself, with the right-wing Christian fundamentalists doing as much as they can to push their religious agenda into the mainstream society. To this end, they are trying to introduce the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID) alongside evolution. Of course the US constitution forbids the teaching of religious doctrine at schools - ID, the fundies claim, has nothing to do with religion and is a bona fide scientific theory. Nothing could be further from the truth…

The idea (it doesn’t even come close to qualifying as a scientific theory) behind Intelligent Design is that some things in nature are “irreducibly complex” and imply that we were intelligently designed, rather than by random mutations. IDers claim that this has nothing to do with Christianity, but anyone can see that this “theory” begs the question: What designed us? That the obvious answer is “God”. The simple fact is that ID doesn’t come close to being a scientific theory and fits more with the term “hypothesis”.

The current trial is being waged by a group of 11 parents against a school board in Pennsylvania. The school board voted to read a statement during a biology class which cast doubt on evolution and suggested ID as an alternative. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the trial. Will the judge be swayed by the religious fervour of the defendants, or will he see it for what it is and enforce the constitution? Only time will tell…

Coverage by New Scientist is here, here, here and here.