The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo.

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In my previous post I mentioned I had ordered "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko".

So I read it this afternoon.

I loved it! Now this, like Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother", this is a book I would love to be able to give to teenagers everywhere. This is a great bit of guidance for younger people.

Much like Little Brother, this book grabbed the 18 year old that lives inside my mind. Together these two books are a little guide as to how to think in the modern world.

Recently I have been talking to people about coaching Judo to Digital Natives. Both these books would be on my official reading list if I was to run a course. :-)

So, yeah, buy the book. read it first, then give it to a young person you know as a gift.

Finally, thanks to Dan Pink for commenting on the previous post about his book. How cool is that!

Lance

Linkage:

http://www.johnnybunko.com/
Buy Johnny Bunko from Amazon UK, or Amazon USA.
Buy Little Brother from Amazon UK or Amazon USA .
Cory Doctorow's website.

The No2ID campaign has released a video this week called "Take Jane".
You can watch it here: http://www.no2id.net/TakeJane/ where there is more information on the video and the campaign. To save you a click here it is embedded in this post:


I at one point faced the possibility of being involved in delivering the ID card scheme from a technical perspective. I tell ya, I was please when the firm I was looking for did not get a contract. For a start it was a huge project that SCL could never have delivered, secondly I had pretty serious moral concerns about being involved.

On that topic... employers involved with the project, please talk to your employees about if they actually feel comfortable working on the ID card scheme.

Two reasons for this. One, you don't want to have employees working on a project that they disagree with. The reasons for this are various, they are not going to give their all for a start.

Two, unhappy employees are more likely to make the system even less robust, either unintentionally or intentionally. The system is pretty risky anyway, we really really don't want flaws in the technical side.

Anyway, watch the video consider the points being raised and decide what you think about the ID card scheme.

Want more info: http://www.no2id.net/TakeJane/

I have just ordered this book "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need", it looks great. In fact it has it's own video trailer:



How can you not love the idea of a career advice book in the style of a Manga comic! They have a website too, http://www.johnnybunko.com/ you should take a look.

The book contains 6 rule for a career in this day and age, and the website is kind enough to share them, and here they are:

1. There is no plan.
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses
3. It’s not about you.
4. Persistence trumps talent.
5. Make excellent mistakes
6. Leave an imprint.

Rule number 6 grabbed my eye and imagination. It echoed some of the stuff Seth Godin talks about in Tribes. Doing a dull 9-5 is not going to leave an imprint. Working a 9-5 CAN leave an imprint, but you have to be in the right environment.

You need to be working somewhere that you are excited about, that has the potential and vision to leave an imprint on the world. If it offers that then 9-5 is great; if not then time maybe to move on?

Perhaps rule 6 is also why people get involved in charities, clubs and open source?

Anyway, if you have read this book and love it, let me know.
If you hated it... well tell me, though I have already placed the order.

If you want to get a copy, you can get new and used copies from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.


Lance

Over the weekend I was looking up Maori words for my daughter (Maori for those of you scratching their heads, is the native language of New Zealand where I am from).

I came across http://animations.tewhanake.maori.nz/ and it is pretty fun, I plan on letting the kids play on there this week to see how they respond.

The site has some Computer Generated Animations of people speaking in Maori. Which looks nice, the lady to the left is an example character from the animations.

It reminds me in part of the "Muzzy" series of language learning animations produced by the BBC. which My kids love, despite it being really old hand done animation.

I am hoping that these animations will help my kids (stuck here in the UK with me) and myself to gain some Maori experience.

Time will tell if it has any effect.

Lance

Fanfare Software ( http://www.fanfaresoftware.com/ ) have just released the 3.3 version of their iTest product.

I know a little about iTest and am a big fan. When I first saw what it does I had one of those "OMG! Where was this 6 months ago!!!" moments. (and NO I don't work for them.)

iTest automates testing, if I put it simply.

What iTest does is let you take all your manual test procedures do them once, then be able to run them automatically from then on. So for example if you have something you are developing (as was my case) that is accessed via a TCP connection like Telnet, iTest can run that test for you.

So you capture yourself logging in, going through the menu options etc. Then that becomes an automated test. When it is run, you can check that say a software version is right, that a command returns the right result, etc etc.

iTest lets you pull in your existing Perl/TCL tests too. So it is not a one or the other decision. iTest compliments what you have already done.

The new version adds:
# Intelligent Response Parser (IRP) - Automatically parse common responses, then easily perform query-based analysis of identified values or strings.
# Automatic Response Mapping - Enable IRP analysis criteria to be easily maintainable across several releases, even with software changes
# iTest Assistant - Get step by step assistance and learn time-saving tips across the spectrum of testing and automation tasks
# HP Quality Center - Publish iTest test cases and results to Quality Center and or initiate iTest execution directly from Quality Center
# Call Procedure - Easily add cleanup or other procedures based on certain events or analysis results

and a bit more. They are holding a Webinar on Wednesday the 10th of December if you are interested in seeing it in action. I would, it's really powerful!

With the work I did in the first half of this year, iTest could have saved me hours and hours, no days and days, possibly months! We did a lot (and my client did even more) manual testing of the various components of the solution, iTest could have done it better faster and with great reporting of issues. It would have saved the whole project a bundle of time and money!

So do check it out.