Dokonjō Gaeru

ど根性ガエル Dokonjō Gaeru or "The Gutsy Frog." La Rana Valiente in Mexico. I recently spent a week in Tokyo and watched this every morning. Really cute show with tons of appeal and great exaggerated poses. It was animated by TMS and I believe Miyazaki worked on it.

I haven't been able to find episodes online either to purchase or download. I ordered a dvd from Japan, but it turned out to be a second series from the 1980's and the drawings are really sloppy compared to the original, which ran from 1972 to 1974.

Can anyone help me find this?

Tiger by Bud Blake

Incredible drawing and staging. Blake is very underrated as a cartoonist. Tiger didn't have the warmth, wit or humanity of Peanuts, but it was a still a simple, fun strip with beautiful drawing. He can sure put shapes together.

If I were a test case I would...

Anne-Marie Charrett (the Maverick Tester) has put together a lovely e-book to raise money for  Chandrashekar B.N (Chandru), a tester recently diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. The e-book contains over 300 memorable and funny responses to a Twitter challenge started by the Daily Testing Tip prompting testers to complete the phrase “If I were a test case I would…". The book is available for download for free here.
The e-book also contains some never seen before Cartoon Tester cartoons specially made for the e-book. Enjoy :o)

The Testing Planet is out

Go and get your copy of the Testing Planet here

Here's a cartoon from the last issue:

Post it show 2010

Mr Fails

Hi all,

I would like to introduce you to a good friend of mine, Mr Fails.

He is an excellent tester but he's gone through a rough time of late. With his permission, I have written a short biography, please read his story here.

 Mr fails would like to know if you have any feedback on the eBook. You can leave comments in the STC blog site, on this post or you can email me. All feedback is appreciated :o)

Kind regards,
Andy Glover

A little exercise

As I mentioned in my last post, I lead a short exercise at the Danish Alliance during the EuroSTAR conference. I must add my thanks to Zeger Van Hese (@TestSideStory) and EuroSTAR for arranging the conference room for the evening session.

The exercise was straight forward but not easy. People had to go into groups and create a number of drawings of what testing is,  BUT they had to use one of James Bach's descriptions: ”Testing is the infinite process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous so as to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous". The words infinite, invisible, ambiguous, unthinkable and anonymous had to be 'drawn'.
At the end of the exercise, I collected all the drawings and here is the result:

NOTE: I collected another drawing for 'unthinkable' but I can't remember what its meant to be now (really bad drawing skills by me!). If you were present at the exercise and remember the drawing, please let me know. Something to do with a cave/exit??

EuroSTAR highlights

Hi all,
Sorry for not updating the blog for ages. The last few weeks have whizzed by and now it's less than 2 weeks to Christmas! Where has the time gone?!
One thing that has kept me busy recently is EuroSTAR, a software testing conference held in Copenhagen. The conference organisers invited me to display some of my cartoons. To begin with, I was apprehensive, I wasn't sure how the cartoons will be received (I don't get to see people's reaction to the cartoons when I post them on the blog). Thankfully it was all positive, lots of people visited the cartoon stand, I even heard a few of them laugh out loud! Below is a photo of the stand:

I also managed to produce business cards to give out (not that I own a business!), so people could take them home and check out the blog. Each business card had an individually hand drawn mini-cartoon:

It was certainly a highlight to share my cartoons with other testers and chatting with them - a lot of them gave me really positive feedback on the cartoons. Another highlight was attending the many track sessions and workshops. It was unbelievable the wealth of experience and knowledge at the conference. The most interesting topic for me was SBTM (google it if you don't know what that means) but it is now better known as MTBS (coined by Carsten Feilberg). After one of the sessions, I met up with a few other testers who work in a similar environment to mine and we agreed to set up an email group so we can share our experiences on using exploratory testing and MTBS (that's another thing that's kept me busy over the last week - in a very good way!)
The social side of EuroSTAR was great too. I was kindly invited by Shmuel Gerson to attend the Danish Alliance. It was a real pleasure to chat about testing over a couple of beers (or maybe a few more). One of the nights I got the group to do an exercise (more on this in a different post). Suffice to say, I was glad I did the exercise even though I was nervous and not at all prepared! Many thanks to Shmuel and Jesper Ottosen for organising the Danish Alliance events. I won't forget the experience :o)

Last but not least, the biggest highlight by far during EuroSTAR was completely unexpected. I met Rob Sabourin. I knew of Rob through a children's book he created 'I am a bug'. I remember reading the e-book version a couple of years back and loving it. So, during the Danish Alliance, I approached him and introduced my self, to my surprise he said he was hoping to meet me! Wow! He wanted to give me a hard copy of the 'I am a bug' book, I was so honoured. The book has a great history - all the pictures/cartoons were drawn by his daughter - how cool is that?! I've since read the book to my kids and they love it :o) I got my wife to take a photo, you can tell they like the book as usually they can't help but look at the camera.

To finish off, here are two cartoons. The first one was designed and drawn by Nathalie Rooseboom DeVries (@FunTestic). The second was designed by Bart Knaack (@btknaack). He was one of the guys behind the Test Lab at the conference.

Crafted in Balance

Here is a lengthy interview with me regarding Yeast Hoist 15 by Justin Farrar for arthur
(fyi - bottles have been spotted in CA BevMo & Whole Foods locations - detailed update on CA retailers soon!)

4-D on Dec. 4th

Daylongs/Dunes/Diva/D'Aoust - at The Smell. see you there!

My first day at Expo:QA

Last week I attended Expo:QA, a software testing conference in Madrid. The people behind Expo:QA did a great job organising the event and looking after everyone. They even provided beer and wine during the lunch break! The Spanish food (tapas) was fantastic too.
It was great to meet and chat with testers from around Europe and I found the sessions and key notes interesting.
The first key note presented by Arnold Aumasson was about the testing industry as a whole, its history and future growth. I’ve drawn a little cartoon to describe some of the points (but don’t quote me on it!).

The next keynote was from Dot Graham where she talked about test automation. My favourite bit was if someone is showing off about their test automation, ask them to run the automation right here, right now. If they come up with excuses (e.g. The tester who has to run it isn’t around, or we don’t have enough licenses, or the scripts are not available, etc) then their test automation isn’t up to much.
Next I listened to a session by Derk-Jan de Grood. To kick off his presentation, he said he sells testing. I think that’s great. More testers should be selling testing. He talked about selecting test design techniques depending on the risks.
Geoff Thompson was next. He talked about why in development we are still making mistakes. His overall message ‘testers are the silver bullet’ was well presented and explained.
After a fabulous Spanish lunch (with sea food paella) I attended a keynote by Alan Brown. He talked about improving the visibility of the development process. He was able to give a real example and I was amazed how transparent their development and testing was.
Virginia Chalegre was up next. She talked about accessibility testing on web sites for the visually handicapped. I found her presentation very interesting. Unfortunately, most web sites have a long way to go. One thing that stood out for me was if a web site is accessible then it naturally becomes testable too (this is certainly the case when it comes to test automation). At the end she showed us how to say ‘question’ in sign language. As I think a major role for testers is to ask questions, I made a note to remember the sign.

The last session was presented by Graham Moran around tool evaluation and implementation. I took lots of notes on this one so I think I’m going to have to vote this session as the best of the day!
During the evening, ExpoQA organised a social in a famous Madrid park, El Retiro. Drinks were flowing and I managed to speak to a number of people from Spain, France and Italy! I was impressed with how well they all spoke English.
Later on, I had a sit down meal with other testers. Here’s a cartoon of the people I sat with. A gold star if you can work out how many languages were spoken at the table!

After the meal we watched an excellent Flamenco show – a fantastic way to finish the day :o)

For more details of the presentations, you can check the expoQA site.

YEAST HOIST #6

Diary comics from 1997. I think this is my favorite issue of YH, and the one I always hoped to get back into print... even though it's quite embarrassing for me to look at now - here it is at What Things Do

Beautiful testing

[NOTE] This cartoon was printed in the Testing Planet

Oxymoron

I’ve been a fan of Banksy for a while now. He’s a street artist who draws brilliantly funny graffiti. You can check out some of his work here.

Banksy recently did a film about making money in the art world. Guess what? Anyone can make loads of money out of not very good art work. So, with that in mind, I thought I could make (and sell) some testing ark work too.

And here it is (see screen shot below). What do you reckon? I call the piece “Oxymoron”. It is estimated to be worth around 3,000 US dollars. Of course, this is just an image. The original art work has been printed using a black and white printer.
This great piece of testing art can be yours. Just send me an email with your bid and the highest bid wins. Simple. (Bidding closes tomorrow evening).

On second thoughts, you’re better off giving your money to charity.

…And you’re in luck! This Christmas, STC are raising money for the charity Oxfam through a great eBook entitled “A tester is for life, not just for Christmas”. Testers can contribute to the e-book as well as giving money to charity. Read all about it here.

Yeast Hoist: Kept in Balance by Equal Weights

Yeast Hoist: Kept in Balance by Equal Weights - this fifteenth installment is an 8pp. booklet that hangs from the neck of an earthenware crock and holds 16.9 ounces of a delicious top-fermented Belgian Abbey Ale.

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE ONLINE FROM BEIRKRAFT

drawings for sale

Time again to try to sell some weird old drawings.

The Cartoon tester talks about testing

I'm off to expo:QA'10 very soon! The s/w testing conference is in Madrid which is very special to me as I lived there for around 8 years during the 80s/90s. I can't wait to visit the place and listen to people talk about testing in my native language (as well as the chance to eat real food, you can't beat churros con chocolate).

Here's a cartoon I made for the conference...

Is that a bug in a s/w testing site?

First things first. If you like my cartoons and want to find out more about me and what makes me tick, The Software Testing Club have just posted An interview with Andy Glover. Let me know what you think :o)

If you don’t get the “irony” of this cartoon you should definitely read this book: “Perfect Software and other illusions about testing”. It comes highly recommended (I’ve read it twice and I will read it again soon).

BTW… this cartoon was originally inspired by Rosie, the creator of Software Testing Club… don’t know why she would come up with a cartoon like this!! :o)

bibilography

i guess there's really only 4 of these I've read cover to cover, but I'm chipping away at them all...

Cloning

I'm going to be at EuroSTAR this year, YEAH! EuroSTAR's monthly newsletter has today's cartoon on it. Hope you like it :o)

More details here of what I'll be up to while at the conference.

Let me know if you'll be there and we can meet up.

BVA

When testing, always know why you're testing.

Stunning Disney Original

Listed in the latest Heritage Auction and credited to Hank Porter.

Monotonous, context and certification

Hi all,

I just want to thank everyone who follows this blog! I would have given up months ago if it wasn’t for all your support :o)

It’s been a bit hectic of late so I’ve not been updating the blog as much as I wish.

Today’s cartoon was first printed in The Testing Planet (check out the newspaper if you haven’t done so yet).

I specially like today’s cartoon because it reminds me that if we follow scripted tests without using our brains, then we’re not testing, we’re just following a script! That can get very boring, I don’t like being bored!

I got the idea about the matchsticks from a fellow tester who heard the same joke a few years a go (thanks Karen!). The title for the cartoon “the monotonous tester” I got from an article by Pradeep Soundararajan (thanks Pradeep!).

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I hope some of my cartoons reflect the following statements I believe about testing:

• Good testing is a challenging intellectual process (hence today’s cartoon)
• There are no best practices for testing. It’s all about context!
• Every software development is unique (e.g. be very careful with testing metrics and estimations)
• Testers provide a service to the software development project (by testing and finding out relevant info on the application)

I *think* all of the above rings true with the context-driven school of testing. Some of the text was taken directly from the “Lessons Learned in S/W testing” book.

This has led me to believe that the current test certifications are harmful to the testing industry. Being a certified s/w tester (which regretfully I am) does not mean I know how to test. Test certifications are very good at identifying people who are good at memorizing words (I can be good at memorizing words). By claiming we're good testers because we have just passed a multiple choice exam sends the message to the wider s/w development industry that testing is fairly simple, so much so, that in future we could train monkeys to do our job (or automate every single thing that we do in testing).

I’m not a monkey (or a robot). Nor do I think my job could be done by a monkey (or a robot).

Thanks for reading. Thanks again for following this blog.

Steve Mellor: Rock Lobster

Jason Armadillo has kindly shared this fantastic & rare Steve Mellor comic called Rock Lobster. Thanks, Jason!


Steve Mellor replies:

I can't believe someone found Rock Lobster! I haven't seen it in years and have so far been unable to find where I stored the original pages.It was done back in the days of zipatone which in this digital age I don't think you can buy anymore. The all bold face word balloons crack me up. I guess I was saying that the comic was meant to be read LOUD! I remember that right after it was published I wanted to redo a couple of panels and basically the whole final page but now I'm not so sure about that. All those background funny animal girls are so 80's. Thanks for putting it out there. Steve Mellor