Testing & Movies & Stuff

 " CREU GWIR FEL GWYDR O FFWRNAIS AWEN" "IN THESE STONES HORIZONS SING" - The Welsh and English inscription on the Millennium Building in Cardiff, Wales, UK  This is a three part series on my recent trip to the UK. Some of it was written during the trip and a lot was written afterwards. I decided not to change the continuity of the writing and publish each part as they were written editing only for spelling or grammar. Enjoy! The past two days I’ve spent a lot of time walking around. I like walking. It gives you the sense of a place. I like walking by myself most times because it lets you take things in at your own pace. I’m not particularly fond of crowds, or being squeezed into small spaces. I’m not a small person, and that’s part of it. The other part is not feeling like I’m trapped. I’ve never particularly liked that feeling whether it was a manifestation of a mental state or a physical reality. I mentioned to a few folks back home...

"I'm all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil." - Truman Capote Today, I saw a tweet from the BossBoss, which led me to her post about life at Ministry of Testing. She encouraged others who are involved to jump in and write about life and what it involves. Rosie and I met at the 2015 TestBash in New York. I was inspired by a number of speakers there and the fact that Rosie decided it was worth it to "jump the pond" and get TestBash started in the US. I hadn't thought how much that one conference would influence where I'm at now in life, but I can say that I was definitely influenced. The TestBash community has been a home for me and my ideas ever since. I joined twitter, and then later started a blog. At one point, on one of the slack channels Ministry of Testing has, Rosie called for writers and I was invited to the writer's channel where folks were talking about articles they were trying to publish ...

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/hero.html “A Hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” - Christopher Reeve This year started off with some tremendous growth for me in my work-life. I have been learning how to consult with clients, getting the hang of new technologies like Docker and Rancher, and even learning more subtle uses of JavaScript for automation. All the while, I've been working with wonderful writers through Ministry of Testing, watching each one of their articles come to life and represent them in the best possible way in the community. The writing community itself has taken on a life and I see all the people involved doing amazing things. Another contributor to that community, Gem Hill, asked me to be on her podcast . That was a great experience. ...

“One piece of wisdom a writer quickly learns ~ typos keep you humble.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri “Mr. Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found the relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world. Nevertheless, like all fervid writing, the task was done in less time than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs. Glegg's,- why, she belonged, like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private judgment.” ― George Eliot I'm sure the Spell Check tool was planned to be more of a convenience rather than an accessibility  tool, but for me, it was a life saver, a teacher, and the best reference tool ever created, besides Google. I've always been a pretty rotten speller. I don't remember a time I've ever passed a spelling test with an A or didn't manage to flip letters around as I write. Typewriters were a little easier and a comput...

 “Time is a game played beautifully by children.” ― Heraclitus, Fragments I had an interesting experience this weekend. A friend of mine contacted me and asked for some ideas to help her daughter learn about testing video games. Think about that for a minute. I've had a lot of kids, including my oldest nephew ask about game design and creating video games, but my friend mentioned testing. Testing as a career. Testing as something that happens with a technology genre most kids are introduced to first. Games and tech have had a long marriage and they have shepherded many a child into the tech industry with ideas of creating or designing games for the next generation of kids. This isn't a new thing either. A friend of mine from my second grade class showed me game designs he had created on paper after I had shown him some of the stuff I was writing. We were 9 years old. Personal computers were barely an idea then. I know he was talking about the At...

Credit: Jeffrey Veregge - http://www.jeffreyveregge.com Leap, Don't Look  Superheroes have to start somewhere. They learn over time. They have complex stories. They do things at times we all wonder about. They do things we wish we could do ourselves. A short time ago,  I wished I could write more,  I wished I could speak more,  I wished I could learn and grow my skills. I did a lot of wishing.  I wished for people to understand my viewpoint,  or at least give me credit for the good ideas along with the dumb ones. I wished my life was more interesting than it was. I wished. One day, I stopped wishing and I did. It was a small step.  Just a tiny one.  I wrote an essay for a contest about how much I loved Ministry of Testing and Test Bash. In two years, I've gone from wishing to doing.  I've traveled more,  I write more,  I've learned more and continue to do so. S...

"The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing." - Isaac Asimov Somewhere in the the distant past, like a decade ago, manual testing wasn't considered non-technical. It was actually considered to be a very technical job in which someone doing the testing had to understand computers, operating systems, command line syntax to access everything from the directory to error logs, and a million other things that started appearing in the computing ecosystem. Fast forward to present day, manual testers everywhere are being called non-technical because they don't practice automation on a regular basis.  When did understanding computers become a non-technical thing?  We don't call business analysts non-technical. They produce technical writing and information necessary for developers and testers to understand how code is supposed to be created and work.  We don't call customer service reps non-technical. They deal with custome...