Hiccupps

The Fieldstone Method is Jerry Weinberg's way of gathering material to write about, using that material effectively, and using the time spent working the material efficiently. Although I've read much of Weinberg's work I'd never got round to Weinberg on Writing until last month, and after several prompts from one of my colleagues. In the book, Weinberg describes his process in terms of an extended analogy between writing and building dry stone walls which - to do it no justice at all - goes something like this: Do not wait until you start writing to start thinking about writing. Gather your stones (interesting thoughts, suggestions, stories, pictures, quotes, connections, ideas) as you come across them.  Always have multiple projects on the go at once.  Maintain a pile of stones (a list of your gathered ideas) that you think will suit each project. As you gather a stone, drop it onto the most suitable pile. Also maintain a pile for stones you find attracti...

This week, Maaret Pyhäjärvi published How to write 180 blog posts in a year .  Maaret's blog is one that I make a point of reading whenever Feedly tells me there's a new post there. Why? Because her posts are thoughtful, often deeply thoughtful. Here's a couple of paragraphs from Thinking you're the best : For years, I prepared in the previous night for every relevant meeting. I went in with a ready-made plan, usually three to prep my responses for whatever might emerge in the meetings. Back in school, my Swedish teacher made me translate things out loud every class, because of my "word-perfect translations". Truth is I had them pre-translated with great effort because I was mortified with the idea of having to do  that work on the fly.  Through my own experiences, I've grown to learn that the pre-prep was always my safety blanket. I did not want to look bad. I did not want to be revealed. I was the person who would rather use 3 days on a half-an-ho...

This is the 100th post on Hiccupps. I started the blog just under two years ago with the self-challenge of writing 50 posts in a year and a manifesto of sorts: to blog primarily about testing and related areas to explore and document my thinking to try to offer something different from other blogs to be truthful to write well to be myself ... ... but not come across as (too much of) a pretentious or pompous  pillock to protect the confidentiality of my company, customers and colleagues, where mentioned to have the freedom to write anything I want to, within the other constraints I was inspired most directly by Abakas  and QA Hates You which were both being updated frequently, spoke with a distinctive voice and were provocative in their own separate ways. Catherine Powell would frequently cover topics away from testing, with an eye to making a point relevant to it and always clearly from a practitioner's perspective. Brian Noggle's persona was - and is - mo...

You're reading a blog about testing (cheers!) I read them too, and in addition I try to find cheap ways to expose myself to material outside of the area as well. I'm looking for easy routes into content I might be interested in, that might be relevant to me or the technology I use or that my company develops, teach me something, provide a useful resource, make a connection, spark a new thought or sometimes just make me chuckle. An efficient and productive way to do this, for me, has been to find a few trusted guides, guides that report regularly, with reliable quality and the breadth that I'm looking for, who consistently point me at content I wouldn't otherwise have come across. Here's a couple: If I only read one blog in a day, it'll be Four Short Links . One of the posts this week led me to Ray Dallo's Principles  (PDF)  in which he enumerates a couple of hundred rules that he applies to life and, particularly, management. These are extracted from ...