Clusters? I'll believe it when I see it

That's not a bug

There were a number of people who didn't get the cartoon about differentiating between a good and a really good tester. For those who didn't get it or like the cartoon, thank you for return to this blog again :o)
 The idea behind the cartoon is that it can be very difficult to assess the performance of a tester, this can be specially hard during the recruitment process. For example, a tester with a testing qualification (ISEB/ISTQB) does not necessarily mean they are a good tester (nor does it mean they're a bad tester!).
 I’ve been recruiting testers for around 4 years and it’s not getting any easier. It can be very hard to determine if the candidate is actually any good at testing, it's one thing giving answers to questions in an interview but it's completely different testing real applications. If I had to give any advice, I would recommend employing testers who you think are suited to the culture of your work place; would you get on with them? Would other testers/developers get on with them? Also, for our workplace, it’s important that the candidate understands what type or style of testing they are getting into: is it heavily documented? What SDLC is used? Is there a requirement to use automated test tools sometimes/all the time?
 I could give you more advice on recruitment, but I'm afraid I would have to charge you and I couldn't guarantee the advice would be of any use.
;o)

Calendar

Fever Chart goods

The folks at McSweeney's have decided to make a limited edition print - as well as a Tshirt of the cover of Fever Chart

If most testers couldn't lie

Classic Chicago Tribune Cartoonists - 1931

Chuck Jones: The Bear That Wasn't

Great Chuck heads:

HELP NEEDED: I don't know what title to use for this blog post

Another Great Cole

Take It Like a Man

"You start drawing with your brain, but aim to draw from the heart. That doesn't happen instantly. You have to first absorb the knowledge slowly and then forget about it and let your pencil be guided by your subconscious. Not easy, and it hurts to go through the stiff period. A lot of lesser men give up during the stiff beginnings of learning something new and that's a dirty shame. Take the pain and shame like a man and get over it. You'll be so happy when your new knowledge becomes second nature. Otherwise you will be stuck, a slave to formula for life and unhappy, maybe even without knowing why. That pain and shame is essential to your progress. Embrace it. Kick the walls if you have to. But get back to the drawing board and force that stiff information into your head. Then lay awake nights obsessing over it. That's your tax for being gifted."
- John K.

How to become a testing expert

The Softwaretesting club have just released the 1st issue of their community magazine. It has lots of great articles and they have printed 5 of my (exclusive!) cartoons in it, you can download the magazine from the club's site. Enjoy!

Kurtzman Storyboards

Very cool! Via eBay.

Print this out...

Every so often, you hear a manager or developer or even a tester saying: “Lets migrate ALL the manual tests into automated scripts. This will be better because blah blah blah”.

To combat such foolishness, I have designed a picture to print out and pin up by your desk so all your visitors can finally understand the truth; it’s brain power of a tester that identifies and reports bugs and a developer who removes them, and not an automation tool (unless of course someone else identifies the bugs, but I don’t want to talk about that right now).
To add even more impact to the print out, you could colour it in :o)

Owen Fitzgerald: Dennis the Menace

GREAT drawing and acting by Owen Fitzgerald, from Dennis the Menace 76.

Jack Cole: The Bob Clampett of Comics

Many years ago, when I was first getting into classic cartoonists, I would constantly read in interviews about the genius of Jack Cole. So every time a fancy hardcover comics compilation came out with reprints of Cole comics I would eagerly buy it, but I just couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. For some reason, every time these books and magazines reprinted Cole, they would pick the absolute worst of his comics- really early, crude artwork, and usually very badly reproduced or "restored." I knew and loved his Playboy cartoons, but could see very little of that quality in the comics.
It wasn't until many years later that I finally found the good stuff online, and it blew my mind- finally! The energy, layout, movement, drawing, strangeness and invention, just the sheer ENTERTAINMENT of it all was even more than I could've hoped for. Cole put EVERYTHING into these panels- just pure joyful fun and energy.

Bizarre and beautifully unique character design:



Great hands:





This is an incredible page: fantastic perspective in the first four panels- and check out that cart whipping around the corner in panel 3. How about Plas pinching Woozy's lips closed with his foot claw in panel four? Can't beat the combination of virtuosic ability with unique imagination.



















How strange is this? He's got Chester Gould beat:





More great hands:









Wow:



Subtle: Love the folds on the suit, and Plas' limp arm on the stairs:



Yikes!