Musings of an Optimistic Cynic

... or so someone told me today. How many are writing to nobody as I seem to be doing? How many are effectively writing a diary? How many would be better off to talk to real people? How many will still be posting in a month?

It's easier to get forgiveness for something you have done than permission for something you haven't.

One for the Java geeks:

I found a nice code coverage tool today (Cobertura). We have a Spring-configured model layer with JUnit tests executed as part of the Ant build process.

As happens a lot our test coverage has slipped and is not where it ought to be. It was an easy task to integrate Cobertura into the build process to measure coverage of those JUnit tests and then produce an easily readable report (HTML) with loads of detail. See the Cobertura sourceforge page for more. I plan to expand it's use across all our model layer components and then up into the control layer.

Incidentally I came across it whilst reading the excellent NFJS (No Fluff Just Stuff) Anthology, Vol. 2 (Pragmatic - all their books seem to be very good).

Anyway, a good day. I seem to be one of the rare cases of someone who enjoys their job - or perhaps the unhappy ones are just more vocal.

There are 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't.

Check out Hoax Funeral. I've just bought the CD and it's pretty good. Difficult to classify in style really - a bit folky but not really folk music (at least not as I understand it - I don't much like folk music).

They apparently appear in the current "Next Big Thing" section of Q Magazine.

Oh yes. A controversial subject to start with.

I've just been reading a little bit of Philosophy (what we used to think of as drunken stupid conversations when we were younger). It seems that some adherents of Creationism claim it to have equal scientific value as Darwinism, which becomes a problem when those people are setting educational programmes for children (notably in the US).

Claiming that the fossil record supports Creationism as much as it does Darwinism (on account of the "great flood" explaining the layering of the species with the higher mammals universally reaching higher ground prior to their becoming future fossils) is just plain daft. It might conceivably be correct on the grounds it can't be disproved but that is just the problem.

If a single human fossil were to be found in the layers from the time of the dinosaurs the Creationists would undoubtably (and quite reasonably) claim this supports their view. The strength of the science behind Darwinism is that it would be immediately disproved if such a discovery were made.