To Automate or Not To Automate…Is that the Question?

We all know that test automation i.e. the ability to run a bunch of tests automatically, not manually, and then release based on the results, is a good thing, don’t we? Effective automated tests provide insurance that the areas of your product that are tested are not broken from one build to another. It doesn’t … Read more

Agile Testing Days 2012 – My Thoughts

Way back in my first post about Agile Testing Days 2012, I tried to explain my thoughts and journey leading me to attending this conference. I didn’t really know what, if anything, I would get out of this, but felt that I should at least try it once! Was it worth it? You bet your … Read more

Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 3 – Agile or agile?

Another early start for my last Lean Coffee of the conference, and again it was not wasted. We had some really interesting discussions around how to determine what test automation is useful, if agile is not faster, why do it? and a rather existential discussion on whether unicorns exist! First keynote of the day was … Read more

Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 2 – Learn through disagreement

During Day 1 I kept on reading tweets about Lean Coffee that has happened earlier that morning. It intrigued me and I figured in for a penny in for a pound, and set my alarm for 6:45am. Following the award night the night before, it was _really_ hard getting up when it went off, but … Read more

Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 1 – The birth of the #unicorn…

Still riding the high from the tutorial day, I arrived at the conference venue eager to get cracking with the days talks. The opening Keynote was “Disciplined Agile Delivery: The Foundation for Scaling Agile” presented by Scott Ambler. The general ideas behind the methodology such as not re-inventing the wheel, and being goal driven, not … Read more

Agile Testing Days 2012 – My First Conference!

I’d like to give you a bit of background first… so please bear with me! In 1996, whilst studying for my final year of my degree, I applied for a job as a C++ Developer at a small software house in Hertfordshire After bodging up the technical part of the interview I didn’t get the … Read more

Antenna Aligner Part 10: Updates and emails…

Since my last post back in July, I’ve not done huge amounts of work on my app for two reasons. Firstly, no time! Secondly, I wanted to leave it out in the wild for a while and see what happened. Well, what happened? over 1,300 users, that’s what’s happened! This uptake is beyond my wildest … Read more

“It’s only test code…”

“Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, … Read more

Antenna Aligner Part 9: Progress and Updates

It’s been a while since my last post, and things are going well. I’ve currently got over 260 users, and some really positive feedback! I’ve also had a few support emails what I have addressed in version 1.0.2. The most interesting issue was the behaviour of the app when the gps was not enabled. In … Read more

Antenna Aligner Part 8: It’s Alive!!!

Finally the day has come, Antenna Aligner v1.0.1 has been uploaded to the AppStore and . “Waiting for review” .. . fast forward 7 days and much checking of emails later WOO HOO! Now what? So I set my facebook page to go live https://www.facebook.com/AntennaAligner, and started by sending messages to my mates that have … Read more

Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It’s mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512×512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description … Read more

Antenna Aligner Part 6: Little Robots

A week ago I took temporary ownership of a HTC Desire S so that I could start testing my app under Android. Support for Android was not in my original plan, but when Nomad added support for it recently, I starting thinking why not! So with some trepidation, I clicked the Build for Android button … Read more

Antenna Aligner Part 5: Devil is in the detail

“The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time and the last 10% takes the another 200%” (excerpt from onista) Now that I have a working app (more or less), it’s time to make it pretty and slick. I can’t stress enough how useful it is to get other people using your software, … Read more

Antenna Aligner Part 4: Role’ing in the deep

Since last time I’ve been trying to sort out the general workflow of the app. It’s fundamentally not hard, there is a list of transmitters, you select a transmitter and it shows the compass view. Having done quite a bit of ajax/asp.net/html in the past, I immediately started off by creating two divs within my … Read more

Antenna Aligner Part 3: Kaspersky

Quick one today. Since starting this project, I’ve been encountering times where Nomad fails to build my app. It would then take repeated attempts at building to then see a build go through successfully. Rob, who works on Nomad at Red Gate, investigated this and it showed that certain parts of the message required to … Read more

Antenna Aligner part 2: Finding the right direction

Last time I managed to get “my first app(tm)” built, published and running on my iPhone. This was really cool, a piece of my code running on my very own device. Ok, so I’m easily pleased! The next challenge was actually trying to determine what it was I wanted this app to do, and how … Read more

Antenna Aligner part 1: In the beginning.

Picture the scene, it’s 9pm, I’m in my caravan (yes I know, I’ve heard all the jokes!) with my family and I’m trying to tune the tv by moving the aerial, retuning, moving the aerial again, retuning… 45 mins and much cursing later I succeed. Surely there must be an easier way than this? Aha, … Read more