Dont love your product too much, rather hate it

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As software testers, we have to find faults in our own creations. Even though its lot of fun and a lot more sadistic pleasure to send a RED report every week to management on how buggy our own software is, we can’t be holding on to it till eternity. This is more of a problem for software managers like me then what I was few years back, a Test engineer. Somehow it never occurred to me as a Test Engineer that all my RED reports are actually not a good news to my manager and nor to company in general.

So as we like it or not, there is a time when there are very few bugs which deem a fix and we have to ship the product. Once a version is shipped, the whole game reverses. The same shortcomings which looked so much on the face are now ‘Known Issues’ or ‘Cosmetic’ and suddenly the average test engineer Mr. Joe starts to take full ownership, the same feature which he scoffed at since it was sort of developed by someone else is now something which he blessed. Any fault which gets reported later is looked at with suspicion and an explanation is tried then gladly logging them in the ‘Bug Reporting System’. Over time, the whole problem of maths-n-science and of finding logical bugs becomes a OB (Organizational Behavior) and psychology thing. What is now happening is that a tester has started to love his product too much and not able to see faults.

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The Kite Runner – Book Review

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After a long time, probably after I read ‘The Life of Pi’, here’s another book which keeps you engaged till the end. Its a sad and tragic story of a boy from Afghanistan. Its a work of fiction by Khaled Hosseini and his first one, did this in 2003. He is from Afghanistan.

The book starts with a story of a boy in Afghanistan in a well-to-do family with access to English DVDs, good food, Mustang, a influential father and most importantly a divine friend. The book is named ‘The Kite Runner’as this divine friend is a great kite runner. A kite runner is someone who runs and loots the cut kites. Amir, the rich kid and the Hasan the poor kid. The story moves easy and well in the beginning with details on Afghan life and mostly about Kabul before Russian war era.

It all funny and good-read till Khaled makes the first blow where Hasan gets badly treated by a group of rowdy boys. Wont tell you the actual thing but I was very shocked and I actually stopped reading this for a while. It seemed like a big effort to again pick the book and resume. From then on the story turns and more tragic thing start to happen. Amir gets into that guilt mode since he could not save Hasan. Then the war happens and they have to flee to Pakistan and then later to US. Amir has lost his mother very early and his Dad was never too excited about Amir for he was more of a creative kind with little or no interest in sports or more manly occupations.

The story then moves leaps n bounds with Amir finally moving to US, finishing his school there, finding a girl, comes back to Pakistan to meet an old friend of his Abba. Its a not a thick tome but Khaled has been able to add so much that you keep engaged and connected. Infact in last 100 pages, there are many new twists and discoveries. Its not only a story of a boy by now and rather takes you to society and a country. In last few episodes so much happen that you start to get nauseating at times.

The finish line has not been decorated too much, it sorts of end on a subtle note. Nothing great happens in the end, probably a realistic end to a heroic story. If you dont like reading tragedies then avoid but if you are interested in reading human relations, those secret aspects of ourselves, the innates then do read.

There is movie on the book and is getting released shortly so read the book first before watching the movie.

Overall Rating - 4/5

Fluid Lounge Bar – Mosaic Noida

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There used to be this old hotel called ‘Shipra’ just opposite sunehri market or Atta as more popularly known. In its place has come up a new one called Mosaic and withit comes a new lounge bar for Noida-ites called ‘Fluid’.

Its on the back side and has a very trance-party kind of entrance. Not a very large place, at two levels. Its all white with plush sofas strewn around giving that top luxury feel. Infact there is not much furniture apart from these plush sofas and chairs/stools. Basement is more suited to have a private party but I doubt whether they would give you the whole space.

I always had beer so really can’t say on how they do in terms of cock-tails but the collection is decent and you get all the usual ones here. I went as part of group and for a conformation of 35 persons, we got it at 1050 per head for unlimited drinks + snacks (two veg, two non-veg). Staff is polite and responsive. For additional 250 you can also club in the dinner but for a normal walk-in they wont offer the dinner and you would need to walk-up to their another restaurant called ‘Latitude’ to have food. Snacks were average.

They play all kinds of music, usually loud but nothing special about the music so Superstars would still beat them fair-n-square on music and food quality.

All in all a place with a different decor, same liquor, expensive but worth one visit.

How to reach - Reach Sector 18 of Noida, NCR. Ask for Hotel Mosaic and then ask for Fluids.

How to make a Good ‘Test Plan’ – 10 steps

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A good ‘Test Plan’ is often that well bound book on your glossy shelf which you never read. I must have created many test plans in my stint at Newgen Software, Legato and lately at Adobe and probably never consulted them again during the course of the testing. But its a well needed document. I was fortunate to not work in a highly process oriented company but we still need to make a plan, at least in the beginning of the project. Most of times I have seen people scouting for websites and what not to get that golden test plan template which they can just fill in and sort of get away.

I think we all do it in our youth and as I look back it all looks not-worth it :) , the template hunting part. So let me take you through a decent or a good-enough test plan format w/o binding it in any template.

1. Think about the project for which you are going to create the test plan and explain it in few lines. Name this section as ‘Backround’ or ‘Context’ and have it as one of the first things. If you are testing a web-portal specializing in travel-experiences like www.ghumakkar.com (sneaking some publicity for this site) then mention something like “ghumakkar is a travel blog platform for traveler community and is primarily meant for sharing travel stories and to inspire the world……” and so on.

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Om Shanti Om – Review

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Rating - 3.5/5

Ok. So finally I managed to watch this movie. Probably one of the most talked movies in recent weeks. SRK himself admitted that there is not a single TV Channel, Radio Station, News Paper, Magazine etc etc where he has not given interview or has not missed any opportunity to promote the movie. So much so, that when he was there in T20 World Cup Finals early this year, there was hue and cry on him using (abusing) every appearance of his as a promotional event, he was reported to have been distributing music CDs, which is fine I guess. I always happened to find this amusing piece on Saakshi’s blog which I feel may not be enough researched. To read it click here.
http://sakshijuneja.com/blog/2007/11/23/marketing-strategies-featuring-shah-rukh-khan/

Anyway lets come back to movie. Movie is doing very good. After beating ‘Saanwaria’ heads-down its doing brisk business and would do better then SRK’s last movie viz. ‘Chak De India’. I also wrote a review on that. Seems like I am getting to watch all this new movies :)

OSO starts with a well edited song sequence from ‘Karz’ where apna SRK is watching the shot being done by Subhash Ghai, it was really delightful to hear Kishore in his full steam, singing ‘Om Shaanti Om’ (the old, more popular tune). First 30 minute of the film go really really well, the quality of production is excellant, Farah seems to have a good control in the beginning, Shreyas is impressive, SRK is all overwhelming. Good comedy. So far so good. Next 30 minutes or so are sort of average. I personally felt that during this part, they were trying to establish this point of ‘…..you want to do something really from your heart….entire world conspires to make it happen….’. Paulo Cohello must be a happy man. During this time, when SRK has a close-time with Shanti (Deepika, she is fabulous) , somehow those real deep emotion handling was , you know, not really happened well. I was expecting to be SRK during this time, a time when actor does something really close to what you feel and then you start to live this life. Farah just gave away, SRK was not giving much time to Shanti and the whole ‘………when you love something…..’ philosophy doesn’t stick too well. I think this is the time when the movie would ideally have stuck with the audience but it was sort of lost.

The next 1 hour or so is pretty Bollywoodish, not much fun except that song where you are served with so many of yester year starts. Its really fun and satisfying to see Dharam Paaji, Jeetu, Rekha and almost all the new breed, wonder where was AB. SRK dies, comes back, is a star, usual stuff.

And then finally time for good to win over evil. So the villain is trapped, old Shaanti comes back as new Shaanti, those spooky stuff. Last reel. The actor-Shaanti is caught by villain as the fake Shaanti so he challeges her and finally the real bolywood happens. Old Shaanti who died comes back and makes the chandelier fall. You tend to real wait to have a finish.

so all in all a decent entertainer, more so because of SRK, Shreyas and Deepika. Some of the things which were really odd were

1. SRK1 dies when he was young but not very young. So his mother must be 50ish. He comes back after 20-25 years and his mother doesn’t look more then 60.
2. Shanti1 is a super star. When Shanti2 comes, no-one really says that she looks same as Shaanti1.
3. SRK2 is at least 30 years younger to Villain, his prev-janam Mom, his old friend. But after couple of reels he start to again talk-behave-boss like SRK1.
4. Villain kills Shanti because he fears that he would be bankrupt. Later he makes more money by getting much more insurance cover and marrying Mittal’s daughter. Mittal was shown to have agreed to get his daughter married because he has put tons of money in the movie. So if he is killing Shaanti (which means he is also killing Mittal’s hard earned money), how come he gets all.

If you can think of more, add your comment.
But then its bollywood :)