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Archive for category Personal
I am back from EuroStar.
I’ve got lots to write about EuroStar: the people, the lectures, the Test Lab, the venue. However, if my mails are any indication, the thing people are waiting most to read about is the “Rebel Alliance” night.
This night, which went by many names (“Rebel Alliance”, “Oprørsalliancen”, “Danish Alliance”), was an informal meeting of friends. As we did at StarEast, it was “a mini conference after the conference, with beer”. We had there very special people and some famous names from the software testing world, and we spent the night talking testing, debating testing, listening to lightning talks on testing, playing games and debating some more. I am a boring nerd, so for me it was the best party ever.
The content and energy were fantastic, it was a remarkable evening. In this post I’ve collected some pics, videos and links.
Who was there? I know I’ll miss a name, but here goes a list (random order):
Jesper L Ottosen | Joris Meerts | Dorothy Graham | James Lyndsay
Bart Knaack | Zeger Van Hese | Martin Jansson | Henrik Andersson
Michael Bolton | Andy Glover | John Stevenson | Rob Lambert
Carsten Feilberg | Ajay Balamurugadas | Markus Gaertner | Henrik Emilsson
Julian Harty | Rob Sabourin | Rikard Edgren | Shmuel Gershon
Lynn McKee | Rob Lugton
| שנה הלכה שנה באה אני כפי ארימה. שנה טובה לך, אבא, שנה טובה לך, אמא.(link) |
“For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne. (link)” |
Tomorrow we celebrate in Israel the New Year in the Hebrew calendar. Yes, 4 months before December 
, and guess what… we are now celebrating year 5771! The difference between the years counted in Gregorian calendar and the Hebrew calendar is ~3760 years.
New years, calendars and dates are extremely important for Software Testing.
Let me tell you a true story about value, about a bug. It was not a bug I found, but in fact a bug I had created. Read the rest of this entry »
This is our fourth Happy New testing Year post, after this one, this one and this one. :)
So, a few hours before January is over, I’ll transpose here an answer to Testing.StackExchange about the last decade on testing:
Question: What are the most important software testing developments of the decade?
My Answer:
The question asks about the most important developments… Not the best or the worst, the beneficial or the harmful.
I’ll try to answer here with considerations by me and others I found on the net. Not everybody will agree that all these are good — even I don’t agree with all — but my approach here is more of a reporter than a judge. Read the rest of this entry »
Demetri Martin
One best friend of mine introduced me to Mitch Hedberg and Demetri Martin, great one-liner comedians. They are/were two funny men!! Three, actually, if you count my friend which is also funny.
After hearing the disks for over a year, not only the jokes aren’t any less funny, but I’ve started to find subliminal testing messages in them .
I’m writing down these “insights” because I find value in them. And even if they fail to teach you something… Hey! At least the jokes are pretty funny!
So here go some favorite quotes, and their parallel in testing:
These days I went to a book fair of a well known publishing house, and found there my very own analogy for Exploratory Testing.
I tell the story and analogy below for your pondering and criticism.
You know how these fairs are, I believe book fairs are similar everywhere: a loft filled with tables filled with books at good prices. You walk around the tables, take the books you like and proceed to checkup.
I like books, better yet when they are good/useful books, and even more when they’re cheap — so I came to the fair prepared! I planned a budget (100 NIS) studied the catalog of discounted books and decided beforehand which books I wanted to buy: Read the rest of this entry »
Job Description
Mar 12
I was reading a job position offering these days for a “QA engineer“.
There was the usual mumbo jumbo of the required traits (“BSC in computer science or equivalent“, “Worked directly with R&D department“) and advantage points (“General knowledge of at least one mainstream (programming) language“), and one of the requirements lines said “Testing methodologies: STD, STP“.
I got curious to know what these methodologies are and what the TLA mean, so I called the company offering the job: Read the rest of this entry »
I like the SQE.
SQE brings columns by Michael Bolton almost monthly on the Better Magazine. They also arrange the nice STAR conferences (hadn’t the opportunity to participate yet, but I will eventually) and store a large number of articles online of all testing flavors.
Today morning I was greeted by an Email from SQE: The subject read “Are you certifiable?“.
My first reaction was to discuss the term. If I am certifiable? I? In my mind, I was arguing whether a person can be considered certifiable or maybe the topic of certification is the one certifiable.
As in “Software Testing is (or not) a certifiable topic” against “Johnny is a certifiable (or not) software tester”.
I was puzzled over the confusing choice of words:
This is the third Happy New testing Year, after this one and this one.
This is quite exciting, three new years means two full years!
Let’s recapitulate my 2008 blogging activity:
- This last year I did not do my self-goal of at least 12 posts, due to the account problem at the beginning of the year.
From the new posts, one (Testers don’t think like Developers think like Computers) entered my list of ‘classic posts that new team members read’ :) together with A Bug with a Helmet and the “untestable things posts (1, 2, 3)”. - This also means that, although the blog is kept unpublicized, I’ve got (compulsory) readers now .
- I had at least two very interesting to write BotT: BotT: Excel 2007 has algebra difficulties… and BotT: Linus’ bug, youtube no workee!.
- On the corporate blogs, I started a new series of post about Intel(R) AMT – not as popular as the ASF series, but I got good feedback. Read if you’re interested in the technology I work on.
Hope this next year comes with at least 12 posts, all of them useful.
Gotta start thinking on January’s post…
I’ve started a quote collection. Many times I want to quote someone but I just don’t remember how exactly the phrase was. Or remember the quote but am not certain on the source…
I am fond of quoting.
Not sure why, but I like to quote. I guess it gives some legitimating to what I am saying.
So, the quote collection is available at this address: http://testing.gershon.info/quote-collection/. It will grow slowly, please check it regularly.
