I’m addicted to Shazam. The app is installed on my mobile and when I’m out and about and hear a song I like but don’t recognise, I Shazam it. As long as I have a signal I’ve soon presented with the song title and artist details.
As I travel more, enjoying cosy nooks in cafes and bars nursing a beverage as I write, I tend to overhear snippets of conversations in foreign tongues. I try to guess the country of origin but I’m never sure if I’m correct. This got me thinking about a shazam for languages. Unsure of a language being spoken? Just open an app and it will tell you. Maybe even including the dialect or region. Would that be useful to anyone? Beyond satisfying a curiosity of mine that is.
It doesn’t need to interpret what is being said. I’m not asking for a universal translator. Besides, that would technically be eavesdropping. No, I’m just interested in knowing what languages are being spoken around me.
It’s just a thought.
The art of exploratory testing
As a tester you learn various formal processes in your approach to testing. Component, System, Integration, Interface, and distributed testing techniques both positive and negative paths. You learn the V-model and agile, test strategies, and iterative testing. But all of it is structured with a well-defined path and focus. Usually there is very little fun in the actual testing. It’s all regimented and strict with little deviation from the frameworks and methodologies in play. Rarely do you get a chance to just play.
During one contract I was having a conversation with the programme manager and he said that testing had 100% coverage and there were hardly any bugs left.
“Oh” I said. “How about a challenge?”.
“Like what?” was his reply.
“How about I take the weekend to do nothing more than unscripted exploratory testing? I won’t follow any test scripts. I’ll just play with the software.”
He intimated that that won’t work and I wouldn’t find any bugs without proper structure and method to my testing. I’ll be using decades of experience I said.
So confident was he that I suggested that for every high severity bug I found I was paid one hundred pounds. For every medium, fifty pounds, and low only ten pounds. He thought about this and finally said no as my reputation proceeded me and he figured this bet may prove expensive.
What I had suggested actually exists today but mainly for the finding of security bugs and is known as Bug Bounty programmes.
The art of exploratory testing is becoming a lost art in the QA field. I highly recommend that every IT project under test introduces exploratory testing. Not only will it most likely uncover bugs that you didn’t know were there, it will do wonders for your test team’s morale as it will allow them to have some fun and to just play with the software unscripted, allowing them to use their skills and experience to find bugs quickly. It may also help identify paths that are not covered by existing tests. It’s also useful to do this at the start to identify test cases needed.
Give it a try. Allow your testers to explore!
Time and Travel
When looking for work I look at the location and have to factor in the time to get there, and back, plus the cost of travelling.
If it’s not too far then I generally travel by car and factor in fuel, insurance, and parking. Further away and I look at trains, which in the UK are very expensive.
If the role is very far away and requires a long train journey, maybe with one or more changes, then I need to factor in both the cost of the tickets and my time spent travelling as this is lost time that must be compensated for. After all, employment is you selling your time to someone, including your time getting to and from the work.
What tends to happen IMO is that the company looking to hire you only factors in the salary as they assume the individual they hire will either live locally or pay to get there themselves. This is fine as long as the salary reflects this, which often it does not.
Companies want to hire from a larger pool of candidates but often do not want to pay the higher cost in bringing in someone from further afield. They either do not want a remote or hybrid worker, or wish to compensate for the commuting costs, either as expenses or within the salary.
Agents have gotten angry with me when I won’t entertain a role that is far away on the grounds that the rate being offered is too low after factoring in the commuting costs and lost time.
When recruiting from the wider market you need to consider both the costs in terms of time and travel.
Conversations with the dead
The older you get the more conversations you can recall with the dead. I’m not being morbid here, I’m just remembering conversations I’ve had with people that are no longer here.
I can recall being sat at a table with four other people discussing the latest mobile phone screen technology, demonstrating a video of waves hitting a beach playing smoothly in the palm of my hand. Yet I am the only one of the five present for that conversation as the others have all since passed.
I can remember conversations with friends and colleagues over the years where I’m the only one still around to recall it. Like a failing RAID server with my mind the last media in the array, still holding onto the data, those memories.
It’s both a sad and happy thought at the same time. It’s sad that the others are no longer with us, but happy that I have those memories of them.
Occasionally my mind will trigger such a memory and I’ll recall conversations with people that are no longer here. No one else has those memories but me. The older I get the more such memories I share alone.
Friends come and go
I’ve been let down by a few ‘friends’ recently and it got me thinking (again) about friendship. Friends come and go but family is life as they say, and this is generally true. As a freelancer I’ve worked many contracts where I’ve met some great people. We’ve sat next to each other five days a week for months on end, gone to lunch and for a drink or two together. We’ve talked about everything and consider each other friends. Then something happens. The work comes to an end, they move away or onto something else, and you never hear from them again.
It’s sad but it’s best not to dwell and to move on yourself. Friends will come and go. Don’t take it personally, it’s just life.
Getting angry with the world
It’s so easy to get angry with the world. Everywhere you look there seems to be things going wrong. Public transport is late so you miss your appointment. Contractors not turning up to do a job you agreed and booked in advance. Products being delivered that are incorrect, damaged, or not delivered at all. Service that is sub-par and over priced. Financial organisations making errors causing you to lose out on deals, be fined for late payments, or over charging. You can’t get an in-person GP appointment. Long hospital appointment waiting lists. Your car breaks down after you drive it off the garage forecourt. Your new computer, games console, TV, cooker, breaks down after only a few days or weeks of use, and getting the seller or manufacturer to rectify the problem proves tricky. It’s like you need a degree in consumer law! Just reaching a human to air your grievance to appears to be a challenge.
All this can weigh you down and you end up carrying so much anger inside of you. Trust me, it’s not worth it. It will only cause you stress and further health problems. Just let it go.
Obviously I’m not saying forget the issues that are causing you to be frustrated. I’m just saying let the worry, annoyance, and stress go. Go make a cup of coffee or tea and take a time out. Meditate, relax, read a book. Then, when calm, consider your options. How urgent is the problem? How best to approach it? There’s no such thing as fast great service anymore, so be prepared for a resolution to take some time and be ok with that. Learn to have backups and to factor them into future planning.
It will take time and practice but you’ll get there.
There’s no sense in getting angry with the world. Instead be at peace with it. We all live in this world with all the challenges that modern civilization brings. Learn to guide yourself through the wild rain of life. Build a better umbrella.
If you have to ask
I do love the ambience of a good coffee shop. The aroma of freshly ground coffee wrapped around the delicious notes of freshly baked pastries.
Coffee shops are a great place to chill and unwind with a good book or to write. I prefer certain chains but also like to explore off the beaten track taking in the originality of independents.
On occasion I’ve encountered independents that do not put prices on anything. So I ask how much a food or drink item costs and at one place I was informed that “If you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it”. This is not only rude but pretentious. I left. It’s not that I couldn’t afford it, it’s that I did not want to support such a business. If an establishment can’t be upfront about their prices then they don’t get my business.
If the first time that you find out how much something costs is when you pay the bill, would you be happy?
Upgrading your car
I’ve been thinking about upgrading my car. I don’t mean the mechanics or body. I mean the in-car electronic systems.
Let me explain. The year my car was released the manufacturer saw fit to install an SD card reader with an upper storage limit that was only a few MB above the current version of the TomTom navigation and head unit software. So the original owner was unable to upgrade the software without replacing the SD card reader. So the in-dash navigation unit keeps referring to turns and roundabouts that are no longer there.
Looking into the upgrade options, I could replace the SD card reader at considerable cost, then pay for the latest TomTom software for my head unit, which is now considered old tech. Or I could replace the entire head unit with a third-party Android unit avoiding the need to pay TomTom anything.
In addition to the head unit, the security system is also considered out-dated and even hackable. Like a Samsung mobile the manufacturer of my car abandoned support after several years and after realising there was a serious security flaw that could not be fixed cheaply. So they just fixed it in the next model.
And don’t get me started on the sound system, AC, and in-car illumination.
Upgrading modern cars feels more like upgrading your PC, only way more expensive and complex. And I’m not even talking about electric cars!
With age comes experience
I’ve been thinking about experience vs age.
Whilst looking for work I find myself reading a great many job adverts, and I find it amusing that companies looking for skilled individuals will list a lot of desired skills with the minimum number of years experience against each one, followed by words such as ‘junior’ or ‘graduate-level’. In other words they want someone young and cheap, but they are not legally allowed to say that.
The problem is that in order to obtain these required skills and experience another dimension must be taken into consideration: time. You see, what generally happens as you acquire 5+ years in a given skill is that you age. And given that some skills are linear whereby you progress from one set of skills to another, you tend to age more.
So with age comes experience and the longer that you are in the game acquiring skills and experience the older you get. So if you want someone that is highly skilled with lots of experience, you have to accept the fact that they will not be young nor ‘junior’.
Digital Minimalism
There’s an almost OCD quality around the art of minimalism. Owning only the fewest of items necessary to deliver the quality and experiences you desire from life. Everything in its place and position. Feng shui’d to perfection if you will. A tidy desk / room / office / house is a tidy mind as they say.
I’ve been thinking about minimalism recently, but in terms of the digital world. I hate clutter. I mean I really hate it. Things have to be tidy and in their place, and this goes for my devices. My laptop and tablet desktops need to be organised and de-cluttered. The amount of apps installed must not be excessive. The amount of data on my hard drives should not be more than is necessary to allow me to complete my work and to entertain me. Anything else should be backed-up to secure storage.
Many years ago when working for a large corporation, one of my tasks was OS-hardening. This involved taking a working solution and performing a deep-dive into the operating system of each server with a view to reducing its footprint. By that I mean reducing the amount of hard drive space needed in order for the system to perform the required tasks to the agreed requirements, securely. That meant removing all unnecessary applications and files, streamlining the OS down to the bare minimum, thus reducing its footprint. This reduced the need for large storage media, sped up install and backup times, and reduced the attack surface.
Although I no longer perform OS-hardening these days, I still have this almost OCD compulsion to continue to optimise all my devices, reducing the amount of apps installed to just enough to perform the required tasks, and to keep the data on the devices to a minimum. It can be very cathartic at times, and it keeps my devices from running out of storage space and from draining the battery too quickly.
I call it digital minimalism.