TLDR; Some notes on journaling (a useful process, you should use it), and then all the public content created as a result of journaling over the month of October…
The content on Patreon is accessible for only $1 a month at patreon.com/eviltester. Supporters gain access to downloadable PDFs of the content and micro courses e.g. How I Test - Web App, Test Ability Audit and more
Reflections & Journaling
Patreon provides me with a good reason for reflecting on my work, what I learned, etc. And so on a daily basis I added an additional Journaling task to my work which results in a text post or video on Patreon (and you can see a list of the October posts below).
The other aim for that consistency is to demonstrate, by example, that Journaling, and taking time to reflect, is a useful process.
I keep track of my time during the day as follows:
- at the start of the day - create an Evernote Note for my daily notes
- write down my focus and high priority tasks for the day
- carry forward from yesterday any ongoing tasks or unfinished todos
- track my work in the form of todos, checks, timestamps, copy and pasted logs as my day progresses
- at the end of the day, create a small summary of what went well, and what I need to change
I learned this… from testing.
- Management - in order to keep track of my work, and my teams, regardless of process (Waterfall or Agile), I kept a log.
- Exploratory Testing - identify aims, track work, write down questions etc for visiting later, track actual observations, summarise when finished to support review
- Even when we engaged in scripted testing in the olden days I had to keep a separate log because I would spot things that were not part of the script that would need investigating. The tools were too slow to keep writing all actuals in, so I used a separate log, etc.
I find that keeping track, with periodic timestamps, in my log:
- helps keep me focused
- reminds me of the time so I don’t spend too long on particular activities
- saves me when applications crash - I tend to write in my log first, and then copy paste to another system
- e.g. defect descriptions would be written in my log and copy pasted, emails are written in my log and copy pasted
- provides me with an easy to search archive for commands, thoughts, questions
I can’t stress how valuable all this is. And all the content listed below is a result of the above approach.
Blog Posts For October 2019
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How to Randomize your Software Testing Thought Process
- How and why you might want to stimulate your thought process with random triggers.
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Reflections on Names, Nasty, Variation and Mystery
- Thoughts on Software Testing slogans relating to role naming, what is testing, how to vary our approach.
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On Goodness, Automation and Modelling
- Thoughts on Software Testing slogans relating to being good on projects, equating testing with automating and diagrams with models.
Patreon Posts For October 2019
The following posts on Patreon were collated into a 75+ page PDF that patreons on the $5 “scholar” tier have access for downloading to make it easier to catch up with the content. Patreon Summary Index
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Lessons learned from creating a Simple Text to Image tool
- A 1000 words on some learnings from creating a simple JavaScript component to convert text to image. And the impact on testing.
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- Why not just say ‘why not just?’. I explain how communicating with options can offer more benefit to the listener.
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Branch by abstraction and working in small steps
- My Revamped Selenium Test Pages are an ongoing MVP. As is my text to image tool Both use branch by abstraction to help me proceed.
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- Finished converting my old test pages to shiny new test pages that live on heroku and have more functionality.
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Prolific Testing and Doing something different
- Identify value in the output you create and the work that you do. Work to become efficiently prolific and increase your chances of a hit.
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Using Linkedin to get your profile and message across
- Some tips on using Linkedin to build your profile and get your message out.
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Doing something new and different
- Experiences and lessons learned from doing something different, so we don’t let fear and doubt stop us moving forward.
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- An analysis of design decisions and risks in a side-hustle weekend project from a development and testing perspective.
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- Some notes on modelling and transforming between models for creating automated execution and tactical automating to support work.
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Blogged: Randomize Your Thinking
- Pointer to blog post, and a description.
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Insights into Testing from Random Slogans
- How random slogans can help think about testing, and some prototyping in JavaScript for image generation.
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Anchoring Bias Leading to Defects
- Without a repeatable set of test conditions, bug fixes can be hacking. And bugs can be caused by Anchoring bias.
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Automatically find your email addresses in network traffic for data leak
- A short experiment to create a web traffic alert monitor for data leaks using the Chrome Debugging Protocol in Java.
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Worked example - analysis of security issue found in live
- When we find an issue it is useful to analyse ‘how did it happen’, and possible detection and mitigation. This is a worked security example
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Using Chrome Browser Dev Tools to find a Data Leak Security Issue
- I found a security issue in an online application using Dev Tools, and simple strategy explained in this post.
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JavaScript and Console Game Cheat
- An example of using JavaScript and console to cheat in an online game.
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An Initial Experiment with Chrome Debug Protocol
- An Initial Experiment with Chrome Debug Protocol
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- Selenium Conf 2019 Day 1 - notes from the day
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- Multi-Module Maven Projects - explained how I use them
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Accountability and Learning approaches and Patreon
- Accountability and Learning approaches and Patreon
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Generic Generative Grammar Sentence Generator
- Generic Generative Grammar Sentence Generator description of a tool I’ve started
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Future processing my paper memory
- Future processing my paper memory
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Sometimes a different interface works wonders
- Sometimes a different interface works wonders
Twitter October 2019
I found a few interesting links that I posted to Twitter, which are listed below. This list is semi-automatically collated using Chatterscan.com
- The London Selenium Conference videos are starting to appear on YouTube - making this a good time to subscribe the channel -
- A 6+ hour graph theory algorithm course, with example code implementations -
- Clear and short overview of some graph algorithms -
- I added some ‘injectable’ bugs into my Generic Sloganizer. If you expand the instructions then you’ll find a list of bug buttons. Click on these and the app will have some deliberate bugs for you to find. Reading the bug code is called cheating though -
- I updated The Pulper to version 1.2.4 - now it is styled so looks more like a ‘real app’. -
- Reasons to, and not to, render content using JavaScript -
- How an Evolutionary Algorithm found a flaw in a simple online game -
- I created a new ’testing’ app. A simple generative grammar based sentence creator. Releasing it without much commentary. I’ll add that later. -
- How to convert Google Alerts to RSS feed
- Google Play Store went rogue on my Android phone this morning. Downloaded 6.4gb of data and consumed my data for the month. Now checking all android settings that prevent apps from downloading stuff over data.
Note: I don’t summarise all the content that I release to social media so you might want to follow me there as well.
You can gain access to the content on Patreon for only $1 a month at patreon.com/eviltester. Supporters gain access to downloadable PDFs of the content and micro courses e.g. How I Test - Web App, Test Ability Audit and more
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