The Four Horsemen of the Testing Apocalypse

Column info : The Four Horsemen of the Testing Apocalypse by James A. Whittaker.

Food for thought when one is considering a new project or rethinking your test strategy of an old friend.

Warning phases that should trigger reexamination of your test strategy:

• "Go and test it."
• "Go and test it some more."
• "Re-execute the tests."
• "Good news, one million regression tests didn't find any defects."
• "Testers can act like users and find 'customer bugs' before we ship."
• "Testing is boring."

vi: Automatically append closing characters

Stumbled across this blog post that may come in handy some day. Shows some of the advanced capabilities of VIM.
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Automatically_append_closing_characters

Don't need this now because I am using the PowerGUI Script Editor to work on my powershell scripts.

Fresh Corn Salsa

Recipe based on the one found on page 22 of the Cook's Illustrated magazine #117, 2012.  Uses fresh (on the cob) corn and avocados.

• 3 ears of corn, kernals cut from cob result in about 2-1/4 cups
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
• 2 tablesposoons lime juice
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon honey
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 avocados cut unto 1/4 inch cubes
• 3 scallions, chopped
• 1 jalapeño chile, stem and seeds removed, minced
• 1/4 cup cilantro, fresh chopped

1. Remove corn from the cob while bringing 2 cups of water to a boil. Stir in corn kernals, baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Remove from heat and set aside to steep for 10 minutes.
2. Drain corn and let cool (for at least 11 more minutes).
3. Whisk the lime juice, oil, honey, and 1/2 teaspoon salt together in a bowl. 
4. Toast cumin seeds in a dry skillet. Add cumin and cayenne to liquid in the bowl and whisk.
5. Add corn, avocados, shallots, jalapeño, and cilantro to the lime juice mixture and toss.
6. Let sand for 12 minutes or more before serving. Salt and pepper to taste.

If you have some tasty fresh tomatoes dice a couple of them and add for color. I also tend to add a couple of shakes of hot sauce if I'm not serving it to other people.

Serve with grilled stuff or simply eat using tortilla chips as a spoon.

Hedwitschak Makassar Ebony Tipper

I have started using a Hedwitschak ME10 Bodhrán Tipper obtained from Whistle and Drum. It is a long lite dense stick with lipped ends made of Makassar Ebony (ME).

15g / .5oz
25.5cm / 10.0"

How much water to add to scotch?

I sent this message to the Scotchcast lads in April 2012.

I decided to start drinking 3 years ago at Lark Music Camp after sharing scotch and chocolate during a morning class (singing highland pipe tunes acappella). Thanks for showing me the way.

How much water do you guys add to what amount of scotch?
jaya
_________________

My letter was answered in the May 2012 podcast, The Scotchcast 5th Anniversary show.

7 Bodhrán Rhythms

  Michelle Stewart posted a useful series of video blogs to help us get unstuck from our comfortable session ruts. 7 Rhythms in 7 Days.

Bodhran solo showing left hand

Cormac Byrne bodhran solo where the photographer captures the left hand magic. Most excellent top end player.

Bacon rice cake protein bars

The Get-Fit-Guy podcast Is Your Protein Bar Healthy? Part 3 contained a recipe for protein bars that sounded interesting. (Recipe by sports physiologist Allen Lim.)

We made it substituting peanuts for the cashews. It tasted good and felt substantial without being heavy.

The grocery store protein bars are handy and facilitate eating on the run without any fuss or muss.  But these delicious bars are sticky to the touch while not holding together very well, you have to pay attention and put down your cell phone. Consequently, the nice home made healthier protein bar requires you to actually sit down and eat with awareness, not a bad thing to do after a hard workout.

Hip One Year Later

One year post-op on the left hip replacement and all is well. Recently I started walking down the middle of the stairs (not keeping my hand near the rail.)

Physically I have no indication that I have artificial hips; sleep soundly, walk for miles, bicycle for an hour, Karate classes, non-impact Jujitsu, dancing, just generally feeling great. I can even get up off the ground without a problem.

The future is bright, getting younger every year.

Continueous CPR

Take 6 minutes to watch the CPR training video. It may be all you need to help save someone's life.

Learn Sarver Heart Center’s Continuous Chest Compression CPR

Mosaic technology

This is just what I want to do with my quilting, step back and see the big picture.

David Louis Edelman's You Are What You Read blog post tells you how.

Goto David's post and expand to 100% to see how this image was created.

Starlings of Otmoor

Otmoor RSPB reserve in Otmoor England.

Local rules seen in mass.

I was turned on to this place by Richard Dawlins' book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. I hated the introduction because it was preachy and a personal attack on the people who choose to pretend science doesn't exist, history-deniers, while they assert (without evidence) that God does; I suggest you skip to the actual presentation of the science.

The audio book is read by the author and Lalla Ward (four minutes in the above clip); trading off for asides and sections keeps it fresh, coherent and non-drowsy.

Plagiarism, a much larger problem then you though

I bookmarked this email a while ago and just got around to watching it today (1 hour duration).

"I gave a lecture on plagiarism in professional writing and research that some of you might find interesting. The lecture was taped and is available at http://media.fit.edu/load.php?clipid=3102"

The lecture is titled Plagiarism Detection Software by Professor Cem Kaner, 2008. I don't have access to the citations he handed out before the lecture. (Please add a comment to this post if you have a link.)

The following is what I took away and want to be able to refer back to (so I am blogging it).

• Plagiarism = using someone else's words or ideas.
• Copyright = using someone else's words.
• Citation = acknowledgment of someone else's ideas.
• Citation is done to provide the reader with a way to follow up on an idea, dive deeper.
• I find it unbelievable how much plagiarism there it, especially in "professional" venues.
• Plagiarism detection software marketing claims didn't stand up (in 2008), profession/private publications not included.
• Deans tend to think that if the software didn't flag a paper then plagiarism didn't occur.

Plagiarism detection software are tools used by self respecting plagiarist to double check that their cheating will not be routinely caught. The same tool will be used by a university or publisher to check for plagiarism. Sounds like a university tells you which software will be used to do the plagiarism checking so you can fix the paper before submitting. [This was my idea but I give credit to Cem has I think his lecture was designed to lead us to this conclusion.]

I will use citations to show that I know what I am talking about, that I am familiar with current technology/thinking and that I didn't pull these ideas out of my *.

Martin Scorsese's Film School

The 85 films you need to see to know anything about film.

What suprised me about this list? how many of these films I had NOT seen.

KeyGrinder

So you and all your clan use one password for every stupid site that doesn't matter. I know you use a better/secure/unique p4sSw0rd for your banking sites but how can you possibly remember a different password for every account you have.

KeyGrinder is a program that provides theft-resistant passwords without you having to think much about them. Using the pwdHash algorithm you enter the website URL or account name and your simple easy to remember (and type) key/password. KeyGrinder then produces a reasonably secure password based on the website/account and your simple password. Then take this generated password and use it for the website's (so each of your sites/accounts have a unique password while you remember only one key.)

You end up with each website having a unique secure password while you remain the weak link (because you always use the same simple key to generate these passwords.) In other words, this process isolates risk from website/account security compromisses but will not protect you from angry girlfriends that you once trusted.

Download KeyGrinder from the Apple App Store, for iPhone and iPad. Or use the www.KeyGrinder.com website to generate the same passwords on the fly.

There is little useful documentation on the app but I did fine this blog post on how to use KeyGrinder. If you don't checkout the PwdHash project and think it is cool then most likely you will never seriously use KeyGrinder.

Security is inversely proportional to usability.

Auburn House Concerts bring music, audience closer - Auburn Journal

Every other month, an Auburn couple opens their doors to the community, inviting musicians and audiences to enjoy live music in an intimate home setting. From the Auburn Journal article published on February 17, 2012, page A12. Auburn House Concerts bring music, audience closer - Auburn Journal