I went through my public 2010 blog posts and summarized what I had written about down in the list below. Not much for this year, not that it’s the quantity of posts that matters. But back in 2008 and 2009, I averaged about 4 entries a month. This has now dwindled to 2 entries a month.
Is this thanks to microblogging? Have I less to gripe, er write, about? Are the iTouch apps too much of a time-sink than I would like to admit? Has having to censor my work due to confidentiality clauses become a deterrent? Have I become too busy with work?
Whatever the reason is, I’ve found 2 entries a month to be somewhat manageable. So my goal for 2011 is to have the discipline to keep at it. Not just the writing, per se; it’s more of the learning. Testing blogs, social networks like twitter and the software testing club, and – more recently – the weekend testing sessions have provided me with invaluable opportunities for learning and exposure to new technologies, techniques, tools, ideas. I reckon I’ll continue tapping on to these resources in the coming year.
Read more…
It’s been nearly two months since I’ve cleaned up my reader feeds. I’ve added back some of my subscriptions back then but for most parts I’ve still been using the Software Testing Club’s blogger feeds. This evening, I felt like updating my subscriptions and highlighting some more blogs that I enjoy reading:
- The Tester’s Headache (http://testers-headache.blogspot.com/) – I first found out about his blog through one of his posts on the carnival of testers. I like those carnival of testers posts especially when I get too busy to catch up on my reader feeds.
- Purple Box Testing (http://ubertest.hogfish.net/)
- Test This Blog (http://www.testthisblog.com/) – This is also one of the first few blogs that I subscribed to. If I’m not mistaken, I think it was this post that reeled me in.
- Marlena’s Blog: Testing and Coding…Concurrently (http://marlenacompton.com) – She helped bring weekend testing to the ANZ region. Thanks to her, I’m getting more testing brain food.
- Adam Goucher: Quality through Innovation (http://adam.goucher.ca)
- Selenadelesie.com (http://www.selenadelesie.com/) – It was one of her blog posts that finally prompted me to take the BBST course.
- +1 testing (http://plusonetesting.wordpress.com/)
Over time, I’ve accumulated quite a lot of feeds in my Google reader. Some feeds haven’t released anything new in ages; some release content that I only tend to mark as unread which makes me wonder why I subscribed to them in the first place; and of course, there are some that I still continue to be keen on.
Sometimes I feel this compulsive need to declutter, and so I went on right ahead and unsubscribed from ALL of my feeds (I backed them up before unsubscribing), and have begun the process of adding stuff back in. So far, I’ve re-subscribed to the blogs of friends, to feeds of web comics I enjoy reading (Dilbert, xkcd, Savage Chickens, etc), and to a couple of Google Alerts. (But, of course, I re-added only the ones I still want to follow which is kind of the point of decluttering :p)
As for the testing-related feeds, it just so happens that the Software Testing Club had just revamped their testing feeds website. I was wondering why I couldn’t access the page early the other day and couldn’t retrieve any web clips from it through the rss reader on my google desktop either. It was back up when I went online after work, and just in time for my decluttering thing.
I referred to the 20 or so most recent posts in their Bloggers feed and (re)subscribed to those that I particularly liked. I figure I’ll just subscribe to the rest as I find them in the Bloggers feed. My recent (re)additions were:
- Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin (http://lisacrispin.com/wordpress/)
- All Things Quality (http://strazzere.blogspot.com) – This one’s actually by one of the first testing bloggers I subscribed to.
- Quick Testing Tips (http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/) – This reminded me of Daily Testing Tips so I added that right away even though there wasn’t no feed from it yet, lest I forget.
- Test Side Story (http://testsidestory.wordpress.com/) – I was lured in by his post on perverse incentives.
- Testy Redhead (http://blog.testyredhead.com/)
- Thoughts from the test eye (http://thetesteye.com/blog/)
I’ve bookmarked quite a lot of testing related links through del.icio.us already. But I guess these are the few that I regularly check:
