My Technology Fetish

Bach Brother's Rapid Testing Intensive

2012-02-14T18:16:00.000-08:00

When I was at StarWest in October of last year I had the good fortune of running into James Bach at the end of the day. I participated in a Rapid Software Testing class with his partner in crime Michael Bolton the prior day and sneaked into James' Critical Thinking class earlier this day. He was approachable so I asked what books he recommended for aspiring testers (an easy opening), then when he'd be giving another talk on Rapid Software Testing in the US. I told him I liked the videos of his open lecture's (I’ve blogged about them here and here) and somewhere during the discussion he mentioned a plan to setup a rapid software-like testing session near his home in Washington.

That testing session has been announced as the Rapid Testing Intensive taking place from July 23rd at 6:30pm through July 28th at noon on Orcas Island, Washington. I’m continuously trying to convince the company I work for the session is well worth the expense to go in person. There are two options, join in person or join online. I'd prefer physically being there instead of virtually for the easy of communicating and the overall experience.

The one day Rapid Software Testing session at StarWest was very inspiring but also brief. As Michael put it... the Rapid Software Testing course is normally a week long that gets crammed into three days and for StarWest is crammed into one day.

I’m not quite sure what to expect of the testing intensive but from what I can tell my goal for attending would be to practice using the rapid software testing methodologies with those who created it. I’m interested to see how they put their “modern theory of testing” into action so I can take it back to my company and apply it.

All of the Rapid Software Testing materials are available free online. It's one thing to read the materials and practice what you absorb but its quite another to work with those who built the method/theories to put everything into practice. The day I spent at StarWest in the Rapid Software Testing class was great but we were only able to cover a small amount of the material.

I'll need to do a few things in preparation:

Review the Rapid Software Testing material we covered in class
Read the material that we didn't cover (lots)
Review Session-Based Test Management
Figure out the testing tools I'll need
Maybe start on the BBST coursework?
Plan the travel details!

After the class I'll be a bit more informed on what does and doesn't work and what assumptions I’m making today when I test. This session will also be a test in critical thinking and afterward I hope to be more empowered to do research into the testing abyss to find my own path.

Perhaps I should say my goal is for: “Experience and feedback on modern testing methodologies!”

Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool

2012-02-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

Microsoft’s Web Application Stress tool is a simple, free load generation tool that Microsoft no longer supports or provides the download links to. It seems to still have a small community dedicated to using it and since Windows 7 comes with a virtualized version of XP it could very well be used into the future.

On a few occasions I’ve used it to generate load to test my companies APIs. Its interface is pretty simple, albeit old. There are quite a few sites dedicated to helping users understand it’s functionality which I’ve listed as resources at the bottom page.

I did a quick Google search and found a few sites that had the software which I cite as my original source downloads. I consolidated the tool download with the required DLL (for Windows Vista and higher). The DLL needs to be placed in C:\Windows\System32 before installing the software however I’d recommend if you have Windows 7 you just download Windows Virtual PC and the Windows XP mode and run it naturally from there.

To download the Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool or (WAST download) go here: http://db.tt/WbXmnAkf

My original source downloads:

DLL download missing when installing for Windows 7: http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcp50
Download for WAS Tool: http://predicatet.blogspot.com/2009/09/download-microsoft-web-application.html

Follow up resources on how to use:

http://www1bpt.bridgeport.edu/sed/projects/cs597/Fall_2002/jishah/web_application_stress.htm
http://www.iislogs.com/steveschofield/iis7-post-32-web-application-stress-tool-on-vista
http://www.maurodalfreddo.it/archives/89/web-application-stress-tool-anche-su-xp - I’d recommend you use in google chrome and have it translate to English

Book Review: Exploratory Software Testing - Tips, tricks, tours and techniques to guide test design

2012-01-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

Some of the first testing books I read were James Whittaker’s How to Break Software series. Those books, like this one, are laid out in a practical manner with each chapter focused on a specific attack or approach making them easy to read, reference and apply. Perfect for learning. I picked up this book a few years ago when I started questioning the way I was testing. The material was new to me and made me ask what is exploratory testing and what does touring have to do with it?

According to Whittaker (pg. 16) exploratory testing (E.T.) is testing where scripts or rigidity have been removed (paraphrasing). Whittaker explains his terms "E.T. in the small", decisions made where the scope of the testing is small and "E.T. in the large", decisions made when the scope of testing is large (small might be a screen in an application while large is the whole application). At the end of chapter 3 he mentions E.T. can be done in a way that allows test planning and execution to be completed simultaneously which is one of E.T.s most important aspects and simplest definitions. Touring (as in a tour guide or sight-seeing) becomes a metaphor for and a way to structure E.T.

There are eight chapters in the book plus a number of appendices. In the first few chapters Whittaker discusses what he sees as the case for software quality (the context of the book), introduces E.T. and explains how he uses it, in the small and the large. The next four chapters cover tours he and others have come up with. The last chapter is about how Whittaker sees the future of testing or at least how he did at the time of publishing.

The first appendix, A, is one of the most important parts of the book: building a successful career in software testing. Whittaker talks about how he got into testing and gives some advice on "getting over the hump" to be a better tester. Appendix A is short but worth reading. The rest of the appendices are old blog posts from his Microsoft days.

As a beginner I found this book much more valuable than I do now several years later. I understand E.T. is an approach to testing that can but doesn't necessarily include tours or scripts. It isn't just manual testing either. For reference Michael Bolton (the testing expert) has some good posts in what E.T. is not: (notice how the first post is about touring?)

As you might guess from the title of this book it does not do a proper job explaining E.T. in a way that one can use it, aside from following the tour metaphor. In fact after reading it again this book seems to say to the reader: these tours are the best, don't you agree? It’s important to understand exploratory testing is about the way you work, and the extent to which test design, test execution, and learning support and reinforce each other.

According to James Bach the term “exploratory testing” was coined and first published by Cem Kaner and has been worked on by Bach, Whittaker and Kaner over the last decade. It seems a bit odd that in a book about E.T. Whittaker never mentions their work and provides no references for the reader to follow up. Apparently Whittaker thinks the easiest way to explain E.T. is through testing tours (hence the book) while Bach has a more direct explanation of what constitutes exploratory testing. I found Bach’s post more informative, applicable and frankly cheaper than Whittaker’s Exploratory Software Testing book.

Exploratory Software Testing offers a limited metaphor for understanding exploratory testing. It isn't as practical as Whittaker's previous books because you can't apply the teachings very well without fully understanding what E.T. is and how tours fit in. If you only want ideas on how Microsoft’s testers used the touring metaphor to “perform” exploratory testing then you’ll get four chapters of information otherwise Exploratory Software Testing is worth skipping.

I wrote the same review on Amazon under the heading Limited metaphor for exploratory testing.

How to Setup Transactional Replication on SQL Server 2008

2012-01-16T16:17:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been testing server-side, mainly database stuff and have become familiar with replication on SQL Server 2008.

In the process I created a Google spreadsheet on how to setup Transactional Replication that I wanted to share. Here's the document: Transactional DB Replication Setup (Public)

As I state in the beginning: Instructions can only tell you how to set something up, not why to set it up. Explanations as to why I set something up a certain way are outside the scope of this document. Therefore this probably won't help those just starting out. Perhaps it will serve as a reference for those who want to learn more.

Comments are allowed in the document. You can also post comments here.

My Tester's Commitments

2012-01-05T18:53:00.000-08:00

Dear Development Team,

My job is to help you look good. My job is to support you as you create quality; to ease that burden instead of adding to it. In that spirit, I make the following commitments to you.

Sincerely,
Chris

I provide a service. You are an important client of that service. I am not satisfied unless you are satisfied.

I am not the gatekeeper of quality. I don’t “own” quality. Shipping a good product is a goal shared by all of us.

I will test your code as soon as I can after you deliver it to me. I know that you need my test results quickly (especially for fixes and new features).

I will strive to test in a way that allows you to be fully productive

I’ll make every reasonable effort to test, even if I have only partial information about the product.

I will learn the product quickly, and make use of that knowledge to test more cleverly.

I will test important things first, and try to find important problems. (I will also report things you might consider unimportant, just in case they turn out to be important after all, but I will strive to spend less time on those.)

I will strive to test in the interests of everyone whose opinions matter, including you, so that you can make better decisions about the product.

I will write clear, concise, thoughtful, and respectful problem reports. (I may make suggestions about design, but I will never presume to be the designer.)

I will let you know how I’m testing, and invite your comments. And I will confer with you about little things you can do to make the product much easier to test.

I invite your special requests, such as if you need me to spot check something for you, help you document something, or run a special kind of test.

I will not carelessly waste your time.

Based on A Tester's Commitments by James Bach

About the Author

2011-12-29T12:39:00.000-08:00

Hi my name is Chris Kenst; I'm a software tester, scuba diver and blogger. Cool, huh?

I started blogging for fun years ago and its since turned into a way to express myself and coalesce my thoughts. Only recently have I felt the confidence to step up and blog about testing. A majority of my blogging occurs at My Technology Fetish and at Search N Recovery. My hope is to write thoughtful enough that in the future I have the privilege to do some guest posts / blogging elsewhere. I understand that blogging <> journalism. =) Occasionally I do reviews of books including those provided to me for free by O'Reilly's Blogging Program. Of those books I review that I get for free I make note of it so readers can tell if I have reason to be biased.

I'm a soon to be Scuba Instructor for PADI and have been teaching / helping teach for over 4 years. A big believer in teaching from experience, from things you know and learn, I try to dive on a weekly basis - outside of classes. I'm always looking for a good diving adventure and hope sometime soon to dive outside the U.S. and Mexico.

I'm a technophile. That means I love (new) technology, always have. I started as a Quality Assurance (QA) Analyst outside of college but only in the last few years have I begun to challenge the conventional wisdom on testing - testers don't belong doing QA. It just doesn't work. A follower of the context-driven school of software testing, I enjoy learning rapidly and applying that knowledge to investigate new systems and technologies. I'm interested in becoming an "expert" software tester and contributing what I can to the community. Someday soon I hope to start a local weekend testers / test dojo to meet other like-minded individuals.

So that's me, your author. I hope you take something of value from this blog. If you do, please share your story here in a comment.

Watch Videos (YouTube, Hulu, Amazon) on your Xbox 360

2011-12-28T13:52:00.000-08:00

For years Xbox 360 users with a Gold Xbox Live membership and a subscription to Netflix could stream movies to their TV. But what about streaming from Amazon, Hulu and YouTube? If you just want Amazon they have a work around that will allow you to stream from your PC to your Xbox here.

What if you want to watch YouTube videos and free movies? How about Hulu, not Hulu Plus, which has many of your favorite shows?

The workaround I have in place requires the purchase of a software program called PlayOn (available for a monthly or flat charge) and a machine dedicated to streaming (I use my Windows Home Server). If you are going to do this I'd recommend purchasing the one-time PlayOn price for $79.99 (or at the time of this posting on sale for $49.99).

Simply download and install PlayOn on a separate machine, launch the software, sign into all of your accounts like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube and then set the server software online. On your Xbox 360 browse the available Media Players (streaming) and you'll find the PlayOn server. The Xbox can make it a little hard to navigate since everything is organized by folders. So you'll have to browse to the YouTube or Hulu folders, select the genre, or type of video, etc. and drill down until you find exactly what you're looking for. For this reason I create specific playlists on YouTube.

The best part of PlayOn is that you don't have to sign up for Hulu Plus to watch Hulu episodes and movies on the TV. Even if you sign up for Hulu Plus when you want to watch most episodes on a TV you can't due to licensing restrictions. PlayOn streams from your PC so all those free episodes are now on the big screen! Hope this helps.

Becoming a Software Testing Expert

2011-12-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

From a software tester's point of view a lecture entitled Becoming a Software Testing Expert is a bit enticing. A lecture by James Bach is even more so. Bach, widely considered an expert in Software Testing, is a passionate advocate of software testing. As an expert he's in a good position to help others.

He makes the case that testers need to be professional skeptics. If testers are constantly skeptical about what they are supposed to test, ask lots of questions and can backup their reasoning for the tests being performed then they should do very well. A software tester's best assets are their ability to rapidly learn about new systems and apply that learning to find gaps in the system. Some gaps will be based on written requirements and some on unwritten requirements.

The lecture presented at Google is worth a watch:

If you want more information about the lecture check out the slides on Bach's site: http://www.satisfice.com/presentations/bste.pdf

It's a rude awakening when you realize you can become an expert at your craft you just need to know it's possible, set a goal and then overcome the hubris gained over time from working on an application for so long. When you start on the path towards becoming an expert it stops becoming a day job and becomes more of an adventure.

I'm happy to say I'm skeptical of my skepticism towards my current testing approach. =)

Read mTF using Google Currents

2011-12-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

Reading My Technology Fetish or any blog just got a little more fun with Google Currents, the new "reader" appl from Google that works on any iPhone, iPad or Android device. Simply
subscribe to My Technology Fetish through Google Reader, then click the Add More button on your Current Library and within a few minutes you've got us or any blog displayed in a nice newspaper-like format.

I've already Search N Recovery as well as a few other news sources into my library:

Google is stepping up their content game this time coming out with a full blown iPad application instead of linking directly to the web. (Makes me wonder if this is a full blown native app or an HTML5 product?) The layout of the articles through Currents is done automatically (randomly?) and arranged in a newspaper-like format for easy viewing with paging left to right.

The app isn't bug-free yet. I added My Technology Fetish to the library but it never appeared and then wouldn't let me remove it to add it again. Big improvement over the current RSS / reader applications for the iPhone and iPad. Bravo Google.

Search N Recovery website is down

2011-11-29T17:05:00.001-08:00

My scuba website Search N Recovery is down for some unknown reason thanks to my hosting company 1&1. I've already contacted their support team and have been waiting for a resolution for over 12 hours. It's certain I will not be going back to them for hosting in the future.

On the brighter side looks like Computer Cabal has a new look. I like Blogger's new dynamic look except I'd much prefer it if they would let the designer lock in one specific look instead of letting the user change it. How else can you control the quality of the experience?

Simple and Free Windows Network Monitoring Tools

2011-11-16T18:30:00.000-08:00

Simple and free (or cheap) Network Monitoring Tools for Microsoft Windows - sounds simple enough, right?

Why would someone want simple and free (or cheap) monitoring tools for Windows? Remotely monitoring CPU, Memory and Hard Drive usage for a test lab of 6+ servers (or for any size network) is important for detecting resource constraints, either before the happen or as an explanation for why something fails.

Some may want flexibility in the resources they monitor. Personally I wanted a tool that is web based, has low (or real-time) refresh, could send alerts, relatively easy to install, is free and works for Windows Server. Nagios, which is one of the most popular (supposedly) network monitoring tools, is overly complex and takes far too much time to setup, however it also provides great flexibility.

Instead I searched the web and evaluated a few tools:

(I evaluated many more applications than these but found these to be the best of the group.)

Spiceworks and to some degree PRTG offer the features I described above: web based, low refresh times, email alerts, easy to install and they work for Windows. They both install quickly and on a regular basis scan the network for changes to individual devices as well as additions / removal of devices. Spiceworks is free, although it has some annoying ads and PRTG is free for up to 10 monitors after which it can get pretty expensive.

Screen Shot of Spiceworks Dashboard

Both products would work well for production monitoring but for a test lab these seem a little overkill. PRTG is more powerful than Spiceworks since it allows WMI plugins but it also costs money for over 10 monitors.)

Free Windows Health Monitor by ManageEngine isn't web based, doesn't send alerts but is easy to install, has 5 minute refresh times (not horrible) and is free if you monitor less than 10 machines. You can see from the image I've got the "Dashboard" up - although it only provides summary on the top 3 machines in each category.

Screen Shot of Windows Health Monitor Dashboard

It's a little sad how few options there are for simple and free (or cheap) Network Monitoring Tools for Microsoft Windows. Looks like I'll be using Free Windows Health Monitor until I find something better.

Comments? Did I miss any programs that you found to work well?

Updated pages and using Disqus

2011-11-09T11:03:00.000-08:00

Changes are coming to mTF.

The first is an updated About This Blog page, which previously was just a trivial About page. The second change is a link at the top for Software Testing (looks like a page). This link will become more relevant over time as the number of articles I write focusing on Software Testing increases. In the meantime you can see the few things I've written about.

Lastly we are now using Disqus for our commenting system which is a huge addition. Be sure to leave comments! On everything!

Free eBook from Scott Berkun: Mindfire

2011-11-01T14:23:00.000-07:00

Scott Berkun's (writer of Myths of Innovation, etc.) new book Mindfire is free to download on his blog for the next 1 day and 22 hours in PDF, ePub and Mobi formats. All you have to do is sign up for his email list and you can download it immediately.

I already pre-ordered his book through Kickstarter and while I wait for my Kindle version to arrive I'll sign up and a copy in ePub format to read on my iPad. I will be mentioned in the book in the Acknowledgments section so take a look!

http://www.scottberkun.com/mindfiredownload/

Steve Jobs and the 60 minutes interview

2011-10-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

In preparation for his new biography entitled Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Isaacson went on 60 minutes to discuss Steve Jobs and his life leading up to his death.

The interview is broken into 2 parts and I highly recommend watching (may take some time to load):

Part 1:

Part 2:

There are also some good follow up videos on Steve Jobs talking about various competitors and successful tech companies:

I'm interested in reading the Isaacson book because it personalizes the man whom we know very little about. If you're like me you use his products every day: I have an iPhone 4 and am typing this blog post on my iPad 2 with the Apple bluetooth keyboard. I'm also a former owner of a MacBook Air.

In the interview Jobs comes off as someone who is a visionary but also had a distorted view of reality. He's described as being a terrible (micro) manager, cold to his employees, a rebel and surprisingly not very technical. Yet he had the drive and an eye for designs that combined technical aspects with the human touch, something the follow up video talks more about. The interview describes his distortion of reality as being his greatest success and his greatest failure in that Jobs thought he could overcome his cancer the way he overcame other barriers: by ignoring or find alternate solutions. This time it didn't work.

For me Steve's biography is more than just a peek into his past, present and possibly a hint at what he would have done in the future, it's about his drive. Often times I feel like I should be that rebel who doesn't want to work for someone else, who wants to build a real product and try and sell it. Maybe it's real or fantasy, I don't know but when I see Jobs life it becomes inspiration. Then again that's the point, I mean who sells books to depress people?

The 60 minutes interview is good. Hopefully the book will be great.

StarWest 2011 Keynote Presentations

2011-10-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

I've uploaded two Keynote Presentation's from this years (2011) StarWest conference.

The first is James Whittaker's Keynote entitled All That Testing is Getting in the Way of Quality:

The second is the Lightning round Keynote featuring a number of testing luminaries like Michael Bolton, Lee Copeland, Bob Galen, Dorothy Graham, Hans Buwalde, Dale Emery, Julie Gardiner, Jeff Payne and Martin Pol:

I hope no one (who matters) cares I posted these online. Enjoy!

Expandable Post Summaries for Blogger

2011-10-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

Expandable post summaries are the method by which each blog post consists of a short intro paragraph followed by a "Read More" link. They make for faster viewing and loading of web pages while still giving readers access to the information they want. Turns out blogger makes it very easy to do this.

Using a feature called jump breaks or "after the jump" summaries, edit a post and in the "Compose" mode there is a icon that looks like this:

Insert the jump break after the paragraph or line where you want the introduction to end and everything below that line will appear once the user clicks the "Read More" link. That's all there is to it!

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=154172

James Bach's Open Lecture on Software Testing

2011-10-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

I got to talk to James Bach last week at StarWest 2011 in Anaheim. I joined his Critical Thinking class for its final 2 hours on Tuesday after walking out on my boring afternoon half-day tutorial on Open Source tools.

I was surprised when I was able to catch up to and chat with him after the class. I asked about the books he recommended that were on sale at the convention at which point he gave me his copy of Captivating Lateral Thinking Puzzles he'd shown in class. (Thank you, although my girlfriend finds it amusing to open the book and quiz me randomly.) In our chat I told him I enjoyed this Open Lecture:

Some point during our conversation I asked when he would be doing another open lecture and where it would be (hoping it would be somewhere near SoCal). After detailing his itinerary he came to the realization everywhere else in the world except in the US he does open lectures. Sad. (In this instance an open lecture is where someone hires James to speak and then anyone who's interested can join by purchasing a ticket.)

In this video James is doing an open lecture at a Estonia IT College. He uses some new and familiar terminology that I've listed below. I need to work on becoming a professional skeptic!

A quick summary of the testing terminology used:

Decision coverage
Predicate coverage
All-Path coverage
Click frenzy
Rumble strip heuristic
Error message hangover
Shoe test
Brancing and backtesting
Follow up testing

James Bach and Michael Bolton both use critical thinking puzzels in their lectures. The two puzzles in this video are the flow chart and calculator. I think the calculator problem could be used to interview some to help identify someone's thinking pattern.

Learning about customers

2011-10-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

Working for a startup company you go through a lot of problems, potential solutions and more problems. I was reminded of my company in the article by Startup Lessons Learned entitled Validated learning about customers. Eric Ries, who writes the Startup Lessons Learned blog, describes two scenarios with two fictional companies.

My company is like the first company in his post: the metrics of success change constantly and our product definition fluctuates regularly. Our development team is always busy but those efforts don't exactly lead to added value to the product. We are pretty good at selling the one-time product but we have to put a lot of effort into each sale and so the sales process isn't scalable. Worse it's frustrating that management doesn't see this.

At the end of the article Eric lists some solutions to companies with this "stuck in the mud" situation and I think the third solution is something my company should try: build tools to help the sales team reduce the time on each sale and try building parts of our product that make the sales process faster or the investment afterwards less. (I added that last bit). How good is your product if it requires customers spend large amounts of time, energy and money in order to make it usable? Shouldn't the company make the use of your product as frictionless and automated as possible so it's easy for customers?

After reading this article I'm interested in reading his full book: The Lean Startup. (But only if they drop the eBook price to a more reasonable amount - $12.99 is expensive!).

Windows 8 Developer Preview Screen Shots

2011-09-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of screen shots of my Windows 8 Developer Preview running on VirtualBox. For information on how to install Windows 8 Dev on a virtual machine go here.

When I first logged into Windows 8:

The new version of the OS (at least the preview) uses a lot of solid color backgrounds which looks pretty good.

The new desktop looks like the Windows 7 desktop:

When you click the Start Menu it appears as this:

I logged into my Windows Live account when I signed onto Windows and it automatically populated some Apps with whatever information was stored in that account. I like the idea of using a Windows Live account if it means all my stocks, apps, settings can be transferred from one PC to another when I log in. You can see the scroll bar at the bottom so there are a ton more Apps available. Unfortunately there is no way to use the original Start Menu. I hope that feature is just disabled in the Preview.

The Control Panel has both a new interface as well as access to the old interface. Here's the new interface:

Explorer has the Office Ribbon look to it:

Internet Explorer 10 has two looks. The first is from the new Start Menu:

The address bar appears and disappears. If you touch or click at the top it brings up your tabs. Then you have the version of IE10 that runs on normal windows interface. It looks just like IE9:

Other things:

There is no direct access to any applications other than what's on the new Start Menu / tiles. Microsoft is clearly blending Windows Phone 7 tiles with Windows 7. I was able to get the run menu and the command prompt by pressing Windows Key + R. I also created a new toolbar of Program Files which gives you access to IE, Windows Defender, Windows Mail, Media Player, Photo Viewer and Sidebar.

Installing Windows 8 Developer Preview on a VM

2011-09-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

Microsoft released Windows 8 Developer Preview a few days ago to give developers and whoever else a sneak peak into the new Windows version. They released it in ISO format which can be burnt to a DVD and installed on a computer. How old school. The best way for most people to experiment with it is installing and running it on a virtual machine. The problem is both VMware and Microsoft Windows Virtual PC can't run it.

It's a little odd that Microsoft would release Windows 8 Developer and not give people the ability to download the Virtual PC based version in addition to the ISO files. Note to Microsoft, if you want to push Windows Virtual PC market share up, release your downloads in the format for quick running.

To install Windows 8 Developer Preview you need to use VirtualBox.

PCWorld has a good write-up on installing Windows 8 Developer Preview on Virtualbox: http://www.pcworld.com/article/240117/how_to_download_and_install_windows_8_into_a_virtual_machine.html

Blogger App for iOS

2011-09-14T18:16:00.000-07:00

I just saw this but frankly it's about time Google put out an iOS app for Blogger: http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/09/announcing-blogger-app-for-ios.html

To download the iOS Blogger app directly go here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blogger/id459407288

It's funny and sad that Google and Microsoft don't have more full blown mobile application's (think iOS, Android) for some of their biggest products. Not being there doesn't invalidate the market, so why not make some money and maintain some market share?

Access to the registry key 'Global' is denied

2011-09-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Recently I was getting the error "Access to the registry key 'Global' is denied" in a software program running on server with Windows 2008 R2 SP1.

A quick Google search revealed this article on Stack Overflow describing a problem in IIS with users not having the correct user permissions in the associated application pools of the running application which lead to a similar error. Further searching turned up this article on IIS.net describing Microsoft's changes to IIS 7.5 (running on Windows 2008) where they created a new, less powerful user to run application pools called "ApplicationPoolIdentity".

What's important to note is the previous Application Pool identity user was set to "NetworkService" which had greater permissions than the new user "ApplicationPoolIdentity" which caused the problem "Access to the registry key 'Global' is denied". This problem hasn't occurred to my other Windows 2008 SP2 servers, so maybe it's only a problem for newly installed SP2 or R2 machines.

To fix the problem just switch the Identity of your Application Pool back to NetworkService for the needed applications and that's it.

Align Your SSD Partitions for Improved Speed

2011-09-08T19:15:00.000-07:00

This is an good post from Lifehacker for those of us with Solid State Drives (SSD).

Turns out if your SSD's partition isn't aligned correctly it will under-perform. Luckily there is a very easy way to check if it's aligned properly for Windows:

In Windows' search bar (or command prompt) type msinfo32 which will bring up the System Information window.

Then go to Components > Storage > Disks > find "Partition Starting Offset" and using a calculator divide it by 4096. (Look for your main disk and main partition and not the small 100MB boot recovery partition).

If the result comes out as a whole number your SSD partition is aligned correctly. For example my drive is 105,906,176 bytes which when divided by 4096 is 25856 so my drive is properly aligned. If the result comes out with a decimal you need to realign your partition.

To realign your SSD's partition check out the Lifehacker article for details.

Google Correlate's throat job

2011-09-07T16:26:00.000-07:00

This is completely random and funny but I guess that's the point. I found myself on Google Correlate's Draw page where you can draw a search curve and Google will match whatever keywords followed that search pattern.

Here's what I drew and what Google correlated with it on my first try (not joking, click the image for a larger view):

For those who can't see it Google correlated "throat jobs" to line I drew. Pretty funny. Apparently it was big from 2004 to mid 2006 before it starting tailing off fast.

What interesting things has Google correlated for you?

Testing Applications on the Web

2011-09-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

This is my new testing book to devour: Testing Applications on the Web: Test Planning for Mobile and Internet-Based Systems.

It's a big book but I'm hoping there is a ton of useful information. I just finished James Bach's Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar which I hope to do a write up on soon. Before that I was reading James Whittaker's How to Break Software Security, which I also need to write up.

Eventually I'll get all the reviews posted here!