Today was the 6th WTA session and we had a large crowd actually.

Participants: Lalitkumar S. Bhamare, Eusebiu Blindu, Astier Eric, Albert Gareev, Shmuel Gershon, Griffin Jones, Srikala Kancharla, Nancy Kelln, Mohinder Khosla, Phil Kirkham, Michel Kraaij, Michael Larsen, David Liebreich, Aleksander Lipski, Lynn McKee, Nabarun, Ravi Shankar, Ben Simo, Bala Sista, Aruna Venkataraman

Application to test was this one:

http://test1.testalways.com/cgi-bin/cards/html/playing_cards.html

A video for it to show it better:

The mission was:

It’s a simple game that uses a playing hand of cards, and based on the hand selected, an image is generated when the player click on the “Generate Image” button.

The primary task is to test the application, and today’s charter is as follows:

1) Detect if any relation exists between the selected cards and the image generated in popup (after pressing “Generate Image”)

2) Are you able to determine if the application needed some skills that you needed to improve and, if so, which is the main one?

3)What is the main testing skill that helped you the most in this session?

More description here: http://weekendtesting.com/archives/1736

I really like how a simple type of meeting like WeekendTesting is evolving. For me it shows a lot of stuff that I could improve and learn. The getting together part to test and studying the application, brainstorming is all a great combination.

Performing or doing something is not always in correlation with describing the actions done, in such way that someone else can improve the same skill.
For example there are some athletes that excelled at their sport, but were not the best coaches for others. Or some who didn’t even been professionals, but were the best coaches.
This is the case also in testing, when good testers are not able to present the parts, approach etc to other testers, so they can become as good at it. It happens because we don’t consciously realize the exact way we perform some actions.
Another perspective related to this can be seen in this video:

which, I guess after the number of views, is funny for a lot of people. But most of the people would not be able to describe what makes it funny. Some of the images there can describe actually small accidents. But there are other videos with small accidents, that are not perceived as funny. So what makes it funny? Its a hard question to answer.

The same can be applied to testing when asking “What makes good testing?” Is not a question with an easy answer. In fact some people have decades in the field and cannot give an easy answer to it.
I think that there are testers who test better than they are able to explain it. I think there are testers that explain better than they are able to test.
This doesn’t mean necessarily that testers who don’t seem to bring value by testing can explain better. And vice-versa.
I don’t see nor a direct proportionally link between the two, testing and explaining, nor an indirect proportional link. I think there is a connection, because is the same area , but in a different way. And each of the skills must be improved.
A tester will not just learn to describe better and teach others just by resuming at testing, but by going and studying other fields.
Also someone who knows to describe things very good will not be of a much help in testing, if he/she is not really doing testing.
People tend to find a quick answer and implement ways of doing testing in organizations that are not very feasible. Just copy some approach and implement. And if it doesn’t work blame others. This is an effect of inability to analyze what makes it good testing.
In my opinion, to become a real professional in the field, one needs to improve both skills mentioned above.

In my previous post I presented something that I saw it  as an issue, but it was wrapped quite fast because I was busy with other things, like work

I made also a short video to show it:

But I have realized soon enough that could be some problems.

Also I didn’t take some stuff in consideration.

1) After using IE8 to see my post and clicking on  the link with Google search, I noticed that is going directly to Google.cz (my local domain)

Then I figured out that it worked in Firefox, not (necessarily) because of the browser, but because of the Google Search option to used Google.com (instead of your own redirected service like Google.co.uk, Google.cz etc)

You didn’t need to use the link to search it, but since I put it there, I should have been more specific.

2) Because of the previous reason (using Google.com instead of local domain) the results could have been different. So my statement that you should click on the first link was not correct (in your local domain it could have been the 2nd or 3rd result)

3) I was only focusing on the current time, so the page and Google search relevant cannot be relevant  in the near future (even if you use Google.com option)

I would put timeline also in localization testing

4) I have no idea if this works in other browsers and different OSs and I am not able to test is quickly

5) I mentioned it could be a security issue but now I am not so sure. Everyone can find out the tables of a WordPress blog or plugin. So its not a very big deal from this aspect.

There could be other specifications added but for now its only this.

Had to show this because I found it quite interesting. And can give ideas when doing localization testing, or working with different database collation. In addition can be pen testing.

Try to access this link directly:

http://czechfolks.com/2009/04/14/are-czechs-xenophobes-jsou-cesi-xenofobi/

Well the page should load pretty fine…you should not see any obvious issues at this point…

But try to

1)copy the title inside

Are Czechs Xenophobes? (Jsou Češi xenofobi?)

2) and try a Google search with that text from clipboard

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=Are+Czechs+Xenophobes%3F+%28Jsou+%C4%8Ce%C5%A1i+xenofobi%3F%29&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=fd0f73886609171d

3)click on the first link

You (should) see:

a)this error up on the page

b) the url is the same as the original one presented early

c) favicon icon is not present compared to the situation when the link is directly accessed

Try it till they maybe fix it!

The observer effect is the potential impact of the act of observing a process output while the process is running.

Example is a process that uses a log file by default with limited data as output, but, in order to monitor it, the logging is set to DEBUG and view it. This can cause the process to slow down and alter the data metrics that were originally wanted in the first place.

Another example is an application that measures the performance of a computer but which, in the same time, is consuming resources, altering that data.

This is not observable only in information technology but everywhere. When someone stares at you and monitors your work, it can affect your productivity

Because looking at some behavior and trying to figure out some defect for example, is actually changing the context in which the application is running, some bugs are disappearing or are changing.  This is called an heisenbug.

One common reason why heisenbugs appear is that executing a program in debug mode often cleans the memory before the programs starts. This forces variables in a last-in-first-out cycle, instead of keeping them in registers.

From the development environment to actual live usage, there is a longer way than assumed. A cause also for “Works on my machine” when bugs are raised 

Another cause  can be time. If an application is monitored, but that application interacts with another one, which is not monitored, but between it there is a need for a synchronization, this is when a heisenbug is possible to appear.

Here is a nice animated video example in physics: