Musings of a Software Engineer

I was in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago and I went to the Cambridge University Press Shop.  Like a good geek I thought I would look at the Computer Science books that were available and see if there was anything of interest.  I was surprised that the shelf was so small, but then I thought most information is now more up-to-date on the Internet which kind of makes sense.  The thing that really did surprise me was that there was no books about Software processes or Testing!

By trade I’m a tester and since university I’ve had to learn quick about testing both Functional and System Testing.  Testing is always seen as the poor mans development but I really enjoy getting new functionality and seeing if its possible to break it and making the quality of the final Product the best it can be.  But surely universities should be teaching about testing in more detail and explaining to undergraduates and post graduates what its all about.  I remember my university days and I think we touched on Black box and white box testing but it was only for a couple of lectures if that!

Maybe over the coming weeks I might right about my experience of testing and about how to become a better tester.  But I would love to encourage universities to look at testing as a main part of the course.

Doing a quick google and there are loads of website with some really interesting information, here are just a couple that I spotted with a quick look:

• http://www.testingbrain.com/
• http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.6942
• http://www.softwareqatest.com/
• http://www.softwaretestingclub.com/

It must be a sign of my age or something like that, because yesterday was the first time for a long time that I’ve not been able to solve a problem with windows!  I was trying to fix a computer for a relative, what you would expect to be a simple problem that it was unable to connect to the internet.  After booting it up the problem was easy to spot, something had got corrupt with the DHCP client that was running on the machine.  Now suchly this must be an easy think to fix I was thinking….

After doing all the things I could think of I turned to the old friend google.  Searching for the error message that ipconfig returned I got hundreds and thousands of hits, sounds positive I thought.  So after reading a number they were all pointing to it being the TCPIP stack had become corrupt (now maybe I’m mad or something but how on earth can the IP stack become corrupt! anyway…).  So after running through the netsh commands that are within Windows XP SP2 I rebooted.  Thinking that was an easy job now where is the beer, sadly I was mistaken up came the computer still not working.  Ok I thought maybe there is another magic command to run that I could reset the ip stack or even better just reinstall the TCPIP Protocol.

Well after about an hour of trying a number of different “solutions” I gave in, I had a spare network card and through well maybe just putting in another card would spring it into life.  So I unscrewed the case and got the network card installed and rebooted thinking job done… again I had failed the same error message was returned by windows.  I spent another fustrating hour trying to fix the problem but to no avail.

It looks like another windows reinstall which seems abit over the top to what appears on the outset to be such a simple problem.

There are days where sometimes I hate computers.

Better late than never but even Garfield is using a mobilde phone now!!!

A really great review from the register of the last decade or is it the last decade!  Anyway a great read about how things have changed in the world of technology.  How the mighty have fallen and the once little start-up seems to be taking over the internet.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/16/noughties_review/

Well its taken me almost 6 months but I’ve finally found a flaw in my lovely iPhone! With all the “cold weather” that has hit the UK I’ve been having to wear gloves when being outside (understandably) unfortunately the iPhone does not work when wearing gloves. So the screen on an iPhone works by noticing the change in electrical current when my finger touchs the screen. Doing a quick google confirms that this is indeed how it works! http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/iphone1.htm.

So now I’m thinking well this isn’t much good being unable to use my iPhone when its cold outside! Ah but wait where there is a will there is a way, now you can get eTip Gloves (isnt it great that everything either comes with an e or i infront of it these days).  You might be wondering what are eTip gloves well basically they allow current this current change to happen on the screen allowing you to have warm fingers and a working phone .

Google Product Search shows that North Face are the people that make most of them:

http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=etip+gloves&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=xyBLS5TMBpTz_AbuzKiWAg&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQrQQwAA

Millennium Bug!

Looks like the Millennium bug hit 10 years later than expected… after thinking about it last year I thought the next one was going to be a long way off but turns out it was 2009 -> 2010.  Looks like a number of companies and countries have been effected by problems when everyone was shouting happy new year this time around.  The register has a number of articles now on the problems:

• Y2.01K bug trips up Symantec – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/05/symantec_y2k10_bug/
• 2016 Bug Hits Windows Phones – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/05/windows_mobe_bug/
• Oz Bank thinks its 2016 – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/04/bank_queensland/

Millennium Bug!

Wow has it really been 10 years since the Millennium Bug “hit” the world (or Y2K or Year2000 or armageddon!).  I remember all the news reports about airplanes were going to fall from the skys and Hospital equipment were going to blow up and attack the people they were suppose to be looking after.  I was at University doing my Computer Science degree at the time and it was really interesting to see how computers had taken over our lifes even then.  Could you image the problems if something like that hit now?  Our iPhones turn into Transformers and kill all there users!! Ok maybe abit out landish but some of the news reports at the time almost made you believe that would happen.

Alot of money was thrown at the problem to fix problems that did exist and the computer scientists must have done a good job review code to make sure that nothing would go wrong / fixing any problems that were spotted.  Something interesting to think about is when is the next problem like this and will we still remember the Millennium Bug then and just ignore it…. could that be a disaster waiting to happen.

If you were too young to remember the Millennium Bug have a good interesting read of it over at wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem

On that happy note Happy New Year to one and all (New Zealand is already in 2010!)

It was not just me commenting on the strange going on with the eurostar!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/22/eurostar_eurotunnel_fiasco/

Snow

Every year it always surprises me that when thesnow falls ont the UK the whole country comes to a halt. Maybe I’m getting old and not remembering my younger years but I’m sure itnever use to be this bad! Could itbe the more technology we have the less ability we can cope with snow or are we just useless!

Sadly I suspect it’s probably the latter of the two of these . Although train technology seemed to let us down this time with the Eurostar trains, allegidly it was not the right snow that caused the trains to break down!! That’s almost as bad as leaves on the line. Hopefully they do find the right snow or fix the trains so everyone can get home for Christmas.

I’ve not seen how other countries deal with the snow but today I think three airports have been closed because of thanks…. How do they cope in Norway etc!

Oh well fingers crossed everyone can get where they need to be at this time of year. One piece of technogy not letting us down is broadband and the ability to work at home rather than fighting it out on the roads.

Merry Christmas to one and all

Spam

After upgrading to the latest version of WPMU, I had a look around to see where there was a way of stopping spam comments since I was forever trying to delete them.  Doing a quick search on wordpress.com (why didnt I do this eariler) there are a number of plugins available that force the user either to a) answer a simple maths question or b) creates an image that the user has to enter.

I’ve not had the maths plugin running for the last month or so and on all the blogs I’ve so far had no spam comments which is fantastic.  Means that I dont need to keep deleting things every couple of days!!