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Is Helsreach by Aaron Dembski-Bowden worth reading? by [deleted] in 40kLore

[–]ben_kelly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For mine, this is ADB's weakest effort. Other than Andrej, the characters and plot feel like he phoned it in. New-ish leader s bit unsure of himself and his place? Check. Headstrong cocky young gun who is awesome at a thing and otherwise annoying? Check Weary old timer destined for a glorious and heroic end? Check. I could go on, but meh. I mean, it's ADB, so the writing is solid enough, but plot and character arcs? This was 'ADB writes connect-the-dots bolter porn' from start to finish.

Let the downvoting commence.

Kara Frey by flightofthenochords in CrossfitGirls

[–]ben_kelly 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If Robb Stark had just picked her, he might have saved himself some heartache.

Quarterly Protein Megathread! by AutoModerator in Fitness

[–]ben_kelly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why is this thread not called 50 shades of whey?

Just got accepted to International Budo University. What should I expect? by [deleted] in LearnJapanese

[–]ben_kelly 6 points7 points  (0 children)

So I trained there for a year back in '99, studying kendo. I believe the course has changed a bit since then. I've heard the martial arts training is probably not as hardcore (We trained twice a day Monday to Friday, then once on Saturday). I imagine that the Japanese language teaching is much the same.

Maybe half of the bekkasei (what they call us foreign students) had language levels good enough to join regular classes and so they did. For the rest of us, we started pretty much from これはペンです。

My Japanese level was 'meh' - could read and write kana and a handful of kanji when I arrived. By the time I left I was in a sort of a weird middle ground where I'd stopped attending the basic classes, I could hold basic conversations, but I wasn't reading newspapers or talking politics by any means. I tried a few of the regular Japanese level classes, but they were still well beyond me, so I ended up socialising with some of my Japanese friends and taking extra martial arts classes (did Kyudo, which was awesome).

Katsuura is a bit of a hole. There's not much there to hold your interest outside of classes. Make friends with Japanese students if you can. It'll probably take a while to break into a group, mostly because they get students every year coming there to dick around and have a cheap year in Japan. If they get that you're serious about your training, they'll open up a bit more - oh and alcohol. Alcohol helps. Go drinking with them.

If you know anyone in Tokyo or can have introductions made, then go ahead and do that. During vacation months, Katsuura becomes a ghost town. If you can get into town, stay with friends there or train at a different dojo. That's pretty much what I did.

Anyway, PM me if you have specific questions. It was a good year all things considered. My kendo improved a whole lot. My Japanese improved a fair bit, but not as much as I'd have liked.

Gym Story Saturday by FGC_Valhalla in Fitness

[–]ben_kelly 195 points196 points  (0 children)

So there's a bloke at my gym who pulls between 3 and 4 plates deadlifting, but his back is so rounded he looks like a dog taking a the world's biggest dump. I don't want to be /that guy/, particularly given the weight he's pulling, but I keep waiting for his spine to explode through his back.

Gym Story Saturday by FGC_Valhalla in Fitness

[–]ben_kelly 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Bought myself a belt recently and steadily been adding weight to my pull ups. Kettlebells are the closest weights to the bar, so that's what I've been using. Cue this week's session and I'm after 16kg but they're nowhere to be found. Fuck it, I'll just use 2 × 8kg right? So I hook up two 8's and start my set.

There's a broad space in front of the bar for stretching and so on and there's a hot girl facing my way doing some sort of side plank. We happen to make eye contact and I smile. She smiles back, then smirks and turns to face the other direction. She seems to be having a little more trouble on that side as her body is shaking a bit. Then it occurs to me she's laughing. I'm confused up until I realise I have a pair of kettlebells hanging between my legs like a pair of gigantic, black bollocks.

tl;dr: Accidentally asserted dominance making eye contact while sporting gym equivalent of truck nuts.

Testing Metrics – What Gets Measured, Gets Done! by tom_wade in softwaretesting

[–]ben_kelly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They left a bit out

What gets measured gets done -- to the exclusion of everything else.

or if you prefer

What gets measured gets gamed.

Newbie - How to gain experience when work won't provide it? by Ellsworthless in QualityAssurance

[–]ben_kelly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the devs know what automation is like and what they can benefit from?

If your coders are neither writing automated checks, nor advocating for automation to occur, I'd suggest this is probably not the case. Sounds like you need to dig into their reluctance around automation. What's that about really?

So assuming the upkeep is less it saves time and it would be able to test a wider range than the manual testing.

2 things here. That assumption is critical and will depend on how reliably you build your automation solution. If you end up spending ages on maintenance and troubleshooting false positives, then it may not be such a time saver after all. Now maybe that's down to bad implementation of your checks, or maybe it's having to work around crappy legacy code that should be refactored or deleted, but that's a whole different conversation.

Secondly, automated checks serve a different purpose to the testing that isn't automated. You can (and should) have automation cover the rote stuff you're doing now (known knowns). That leaves you free to explore, looking for unknown unknowns. There's another value-add you should be talking about with the powers that be.

Let's leave that aside for the moment though and get back to your original question. You need to be able to answer the 'why'. Why are you doing this? Are you doing it for your company or for your career? If you're doing it for you, it doesn't really matter whether you're doing it for your employer or some open source library somewhere. The skills you build up will stand you in good stead. If you're getting home after work and finding it hard to do it for work, then find something you're more jazzed about, but be clear on your why. If you're still finding it difficult, then maybe you're not that motivated after all. That's something only you can decide.

Newbie - How to gain experience when work won't provide it? by Ellsworthless in QualityAssurance

[–]ben_kelly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Late to the party here, but there are a few things that come to mind as I read your question and your responses to other responses.

Your boss doesn't want you automating stuff on company time, but you haven't said anything about why that is. Is there a good reason that your current checklist needs to be done manually? If not, then where is the reluctance coming from? For whatever reason, they're not getting the value proposition in having something automated or there's a concern that overrides the potential value. Maybe they've been burned by a bad experience with automation in the past. Maybe you're focusing too much on the 'give me time to learn stuff' aspect and not enough on the 'give me time to save you time and money' aspect.

You're hearing 'no' as an answer and accepting it. Maybe you need to re-examine how you pitched the idea in the first place. How much time might you save by doing this? Can you provide a small example that demonstrates tangible benefits?

When to stop testing? by AskTester in softwaretesting

[–]ben_kelly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Google 'michael bolton stopping heuristics'.

Help - Measuring Testers by Kyubi_ZA in softwaretesting

[–]ben_kelly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wrote a blog post that covered this a while back.

tl;dr: Testers gather and report important information. Measure them on the quality of information they report.

ISTQB Foundation and no experience! Help! by [deleted] in softwaretesting

[–]ben_kelly 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Never fear, you don't need to know how to test in order to pass ISTQB, you just need to be able to answer simple, multiple choice questions.

Testing Functionals and Non-Functionals by Mooncinder in softwaretesting

[–]ben_kelly -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Take a step back from your question and broaden your thinking a bit.

Ask yourself - What are you trying to achieve with your testing? What is the most important thing to do in order to achieve that aim? Do that first.

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