Friday, July 27, 2007

UNIT testing

White box, Black box, Component test; is your UUT realy stand-alone. Is the interface stand-alone? Most likely not. Is the interface automatable? ...sometimes the input or output from software that interfaces with hardware like a fingerprint scanner might actually require that you need real fingers to get good input data because a testing-layer that allows 'fake' input to get injected was never desighned in. I think that for a test engineer, the big headaches are around, have a specified and desighned enough tests, and should not be around things like. "Is it automatable, can I get it stand-alone and in the spotlight on it's own?". Reality is that integration testing will show you which unit tests you should have created, but never thought of. I think these are the ones where I want to kick myself, because a small failure has caused project hiccups.
I imagine there is a good book on this stuff, (unit test specification that is) and how you can go about nailing the beast down to produce quality in the right places early and easily. I must say I look forward to the next Symbian component testing project (probably some blue-tooth work) ,and I have learned a lot about unit-testing in 6 months. I look forward to Bluetooth, because it is something I know little about, and the possibilities there are really wide for some fun to be had.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Who are you?

Asking this question without looking for a 'rhetorical-question' kind of response is difficult of yourself. How can one shout out THIS IS ME!, without being suspected of being a screamer at heart if you are not. My quest for clarity here is currently stemming from a desire to communicate happiness and energy, while wanting to be pretty much left alone, introverted perhaps. Since nobody has time for the quiet fellow in the corner, some 'quiet' folk let themselves get 'out' a bit and quite enjoy the attention; without realizing the damage done to the psyche.

So am I an extrovert screaming to get out of an introvert? Or just plain shy most of the time... on the extreme hand not blowing your own trumpet will never get you anywhere either. This topic will probably get resumed latter.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Warning, may contain nuts.

Sign found on a lanyard, which I thought was intended for hanging things about your neck.

The warning about climbing trees with a rope still around your neck makes sense, but a lanyard intended to not be worn about the part of you that seems to work best of all?

Monday, July 02, 2007

Frequency oh blot

So why would you want to admit your mistakes? Well plenty. In a world where everyone is perfect, you can hardly be blamed for lapsing into paranoia whenever you find there are some things you did not know. The perfect person mitigates this by saying, hey I have not been doing it for long enough. The paranoid madman just gets depressed (me).

Office life is tough sometimes and keeping up with the Joneses is probably goal number 1. Although you cannot ever be sure of your progress if the playing field is strewn with obstacles that you have never encountered before (see above philosophy).

/interrupt F1 GP!
Sometimes I just love the way the brain works, I was explaining to my neighbor James about a new feature I wanted to add to my modbus simulator program. When suddenly while doing on about it I get a brainwave.. Hey there is an easier way to create custom graphical forms, I mean you can use a browser, but everyone has browser favorites. The solution is just to let the user use any browser he wants, and hence no need for embedded a IE-activeX control into my program, just pump out the HTML. I mean having a graphical form inside your program is neato, but it is heavyweight, and for all the control you get, you have to write lots of extra code, then stress about the browser ActiveX stuff being there at all. Nobody wants to wish DLL hell onto their little program do they?

Oh, F1 you say :-) Groovy. Now I am no motor-sport fan, but this weekend is Silverstone weekend. OK enough messing about, lets do some work.