So I’m going to actually register for CAST 2007 this week, but cannot decide if I want to attend for just the conference, or the conference and tutorials. This indecision makes me think I should just goto the conference and save some of my travel/conference budget for something else though what exactly is still unknown. Maybe AYE since it is mentioned by lots of people I know but I missed their super-early registration by over a month.

Someone make my mind up for me; I only have $3000 CDN (which is about $2900 USD I think at current conversion rates).

When I started this blog I had the usual notions of having conversations with readers. This of course means that the reader needs to participate via comments. Then I discovered how annoying blog spam is and turned on comment moderation. Essentially, the first time you post a comment I approve you as a commenter to my blog. From that point on your comments get through without my involvement. This (plus Akismet) beats the spam thing nicely.

Normally I don’t jump on the ‘here is a link everyone else has’ bandwagon, but this post by Kathy Sierra about how she has cancelled all appearances due to threats of sexual abuse and even death has made me doubly relieved not to allow anonymous comments. Having been online for more than 15 years (with a hefty online gaming addiction for awhile), I have done more than my fair share of regailing in the anonymity of the internet. But stuff like this makes me think that it is time for the Internet to give up it’s settler’s rush mentality, accept responsibility it’s impact it can have on people’s lives and start to remove anonymity.

Perhaps I’m getting cranky as I get older, or perhaps it’s because I have seen my 14 yr old daughter post a headshot of herself online any have a dozen comments from people using pseudonyms but claiming to be in their late 30s or early 40s as ‘hot’ but I am sick of the things done online by people because they have no way of getting caught. Nearly physically ill sick.

For some reason, some of the content has not being displayed in some RSS readers recently. More specifically, the ant tasks in the Metrics series are not showing up. I checked the feed and they are there, and it also appears in Google Reader. So if you are interested in the tasks themselves, you will have to click to view the the actual article. I’d fix it, but I don’t even know what the problem is.

Oh, and Feedburner now says there are 38 subscribers. A new record! 🙂

You can not get my QA101 slides from Subversion over at SourceForge. More specifically, SourceForge Subversion Browser. Click on the revision number to download; not as pretty as doing a ‘release’, but much less of a headache.

Oh, and next class is scheduled for January 20, 2007 2PM – 6PM for 4 weeks. Contact Toronto College of Technology to register.

Update: It’s now 10 – 2 instead of 2 – 6.

It’s that time again. After only 6.5 months at Points I’ve decided to move to The Jonah Group in a somewhat similar role as I was in before. Specifically, it looks like I will be testing functionality for the RouteOne (not to be confused with Route 1) application, all the while trying to mature their overall QA process.

As for why I left Points… (or ‘How to tell Adam it is time to leave even if that wasn’t what you were trying to say’)
(more…)

There is still time to register for my QA101 course which starts again (3rd time!) this Saturday @ 10.

There will be a bit of a slowdown on the frequency of posts for the next little while as I find myself laptopless. As alluded to in a couple posts, I did most of the posts while commuting on the train, but with the change of job I find myself working at a desktop computer instead of a portable.

Hopefully the lack of laptop will be temporary as I’m seriously considering getting a used iBook (for OS X) to be yet again to hack/blog on the train.

Anyone else local have such a beast available to purchase in likely the next 6 weeks or so?

So an apology first off for the semi-butchery of my presentation last night. It was a last minute replacement for another presentation and I think it showed. I’ll do better next time (ooo, ominous foreshadowing). Okay, that aside, here again is why I did the presentation.

• To showcase that there is innovative work being done at the other end of the spectrum in terms of software design than what is typically demoed. We will never have AJAX, and are only just now growing a web service interface, but it is just as cool.
• To start to get the Brand of Adam a little more well known. An entry in the wiki page is one thing, having me have your attention at the front of the room for 15 minutes is another entirely. As I mentioned during the presentation, it’s blatant self promotion.
• To raise the profile of Testing and Quality in the start-up community. In talking to some people at the schmooze portion after the last couple DemoCamps it seems that someone who strictly is interested in Quality and Testing is a novelty almost. If that is the case, leverage me for your testing / quality problems.
• There have been (I think) 35 presentations so far in the Toronto DemoCamp. Lets say (a pessimistic — realistic?) 3 or 4 of them survive the next 7 years as Select Access has. Odds are you have been assimilated into a larger company; an HP for example. That doesn’t mean you have to stop innovating or producing exciting code.

(Oh, and for those who have no idea what I am talking about, I showcased a tiny portion of Select Access at DemoCamp5 last night)

I have in the last month or so started tracking the usage stats of the various pages here via the folks at Performancing. This works great for the individual post pages, but notso great for the ones that are the full entry on the main page. So the question is, if I made every post one which you had to click to read in the main text, how much would that annoy the readership?

Oh, and here is a timely comic from Gaping Void about site analytics.

So depressingly true. The first two sites I rebookmarked after the laptop died were the Performancing stats and the FeedBurner stats.

If you are wondering what has/is-going-to happen to the post frequency, my laptop died which is where I do all my posts with while riding the train to/from work. When it gets back up and working, you can look forward to posts on…

• Another chapter from the Watts Humphrey book
• Akimbi slingshot (very cool from the slick sales webinar I saw)
• A couple posts on the stuff I will be making available from sourceforge
• The 3 pillars of Testing (Accountability & Auditability, Repeatability and Traceability)