First, I need to thank Paul (thanks Paul) for offering to host my blog on his site. I probably would have eventually gotten around to putting one together myself without his nudge in the right direction, but it definitely would not have happened this quickly. I’ve been thinking about writing a testing blog for a few months now, but never did anything about it. At the end of November of this year, I had a Twitter conversation (can you call them conversations if they only take place via 140 character long strings?) with Jari Laakso about possible blog topics. Somewhere in that discussion, I halfheartedly mentioned needing to set up a blog. The next day, I had a DM from Paul stating “If you are seriously interested in blogging, I could probably set you up on my site. Let me know and I can I investigate the logistics.”
Let me digress a tiny bit here. I may have been in test for over 13 years, but I still feel very new to the context driven community (even if I was unknowingly agreeing with them for some time). Going to CAST2012 and then researching testers on Twitter and blogs, I came across a tier of people in the community that I saw as the ‘big names’: Michael Bolton, the Bach brothers, Dr. Cem Kaner, Lynn McKee, Scott Barber, Matt Heusser and others. From my time working with Eric Proegler, I had also heard of, and come to respect Paul Holland. Sure, I played ‘the dice game’ with him at CAST and shared some scotch, but I was still in little bit of awe.
So here I was, with an offer to be hosted by none other than Paul Holland. What could I do? I’d look stupid if I said no, and then eventually gotten around to putting a blog up somewhere.
So here I sit, with a blog all configured, several topics in my head (OK, they’re in a mindmap really, my memory is pretty much rubbish), and I have no idea what to call the thing. So I do what many people do nowadays. I asked for ideas on Twitter.
I got several things back:
- use puns
- make a play on words with your initials
- write a blog post about trying to name your blog (thank you Martin)
- an entire chain of silliness revolving around the maximum number of times “enterprise” could be used in the title
I then moved on to the internet for ideas. How about words containing ELD?
- unwieldy – That means I’m either fat, or awkwardly pointy
- sheldrake – Cool sounding word, but I am not duck that masquerades as a goose
- chield – young man or fellow, it’s cool because it’s Scottish in origin, but I may be too old to be a “young” man
- Testing Minefield – dramatic, catchy, serious, I’ve just made my blog into the NBC Nightly News, or this
- wergeld – wow, the monetary value assigned to every person in every class of society to be paid upon their death by the perpetrator
- Dieldrin – oh awesome, a deadly insecticide that biomagnifies as it moves up the food chain? No thanks
- Aceldama – OK, I gotta stop this. The field of blood so named because it was purchased with the money Judas got for betraying Jesus
I look at songs. Chemical Brothers “The Test” is a great song, but it’s a but too drug referency for a blog about testing. Maybe movies would be better? I love Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail. There’s even the scene with the bridge keep at the bridge of doom, “answer me these questions three” and all. How do I turn that into a blog title?
For now, I think I’ll have to fall back on a derivation of an idea that Jari threw out in our chat back in November. Sowing Seeds: A Testing Blog
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