Someone has asked me to see if I can get Selenium working in anger over the next week, a good challenge.

I think they use it on Windows but I’ve read that it is a plug-in for Firefox and therefore I assumed only works on Firefox. No doubt that will become clear soon. I downloaded Selenium RC and installed it. Got its java server working, well it fired up a couple of things and is sitting there waiting for something to happen. I’m supposed to be using Perl but as I’ve found some idiot notes on checking whether the Selenium stands up using Python, then that’s what I tried. Downloaded Python and installed it. Copied some python code into a file, changed the path to include the Selenium python client, started the python gui, opened my test .py file and ran the critter. Of course I get an error message that it’s expecting an indented block. Does it really mean that it wants indented code. I can indent some code but that probably isn’t the problem and I’ll probably end up messing with this for too long and I’m supposed to be using Perl so I’ll stop playing with python.

Tried to download Active Perl to my XP PC but that failed to download by timing out so tried it on Vista and that failed as well. Eventually got it via a torrent.

I got a horrible virus on XP and even Microsoft’s Onecare didn’t trap it. The virus was delivered via an unequested pdf file. It displayed a message that I had some security problems and wanted me to use their virus checker, which popped up from nowhere. I tried using Task Manager to stop it running, but I got a message about a corrupted file. Tried running a few other things and they all reported corrupt files. Also lost my internet connection. Nothing worked. Don’t panic (Why not? Sounds like a good strategy to me. Ed). Rebooted into safe mode and restored back a day and everything was OK.

Some people that don’t know how to deal with these issues probably do panic and probably mindlessly thrash about for several days trying to sort it out and talk to all sorts of experts who give them all kinds of conflicting advice and eventually they give up, bin the PC and buy a new one. There must be money to be made fixing these problems.

Got my result for my ISEB Intermediate exam and I passed it with only two incorrect answers (Who’d you pay to get that result? Ed).

Finally took the ISEB Intermediate exam in software testing and though it was multiple choice I don’t get the result for 4 weeks, which is a bit annoying.

I’m glad to see the back of the darn thing. Dunno if I can go through that torture again if I fail. The course and exam are the theory of what I have been doing in practice for way too long so it was a shock trying to learn the theory of what I do with my eyes closed. I’ve been studying for this exam for weeks and had seen and taken many example exam questions which I got right sometimes and wrong at other times. The good thing about being able to try the example exam questions is you get them marked on-line and shown the correct answer when wrong. The bad thing was that many times I just didn’t agree with the correct answer. This was quite often where my suggested answer and the correct answer were quite often so similar as far as I was concerned that both could be right and it was a guessing game. Other times I just did not agree with the correct answer and the remaining times I was just wrong.

Next up is the ISEB Practitioners exam in Software Test Management. I’ve got a lot of reading to do on that and often I write up what I’m trying to learn so I’ll do that via some blog posts here (Sounds boring. Ed) and give them their own category. In a weeks time I should have the whole syllabus as a lot of small blog entries posted here.

Had another look at this blogs viewing stats and I’ve still got a whole load of hits from people looking for images of Palm Island in Dubai. I removed that picture last week and hoped that when Google sent along one of their iddy-biddy spiders for a trawl it would remove me from the results of a search for Palm Island. Hasn’t happened yet. Downloaded the beta version of Office 2010 and installed that on the non-activated Windows 7 laptop. I had an activation key for Office so that works though somethings gonna give with the non-activated Windows 7.

I’ve been studying to take the ISEB Intermediate Certificate in Software Testing for the last couple of weeks and it hasn’t been easy. Having tested software for a very long time it should be relatively straightforward, but not so.

What they teach you on the Intermediate course is the best practice and the theory of testing software and mapping that to what I do and probably do reasonably well doesn’t really work. The Intermediate Certificate also builds on the original Foundation Certificate, which I passed the exam of about 4 years ago, but not the ISEB version that I took and passed but the ISTQB version and the version of the last couple of years. If that wasn’t enough to make it hard I didn’t actually do the ISEB Foundation Certificate course, I just sat, and passed, the exam. My thinking at the time being that I should be able to pass a basic software testing test.

That background has firmly jammed the chickens back in their roost but I have at last started to make some progress with the course and in the next week intend to do the exam. Failing the exam isn’t worth thinking about as their is another little scenario knocking about just to compound the whole thing.

I have also in the last couple of weeks been on a course for the ISEB Practitioner Certificate in Software Test Management. The entry criteria to get onto this course is that you have passed the Intermediate Certificate, which I haven’t yet, but which the course providers assume I will. This course is even more theory but I have learnt quite a lot about test management which is something I have never had any interest in before. I’ve been reading some of the example exam questions for both courses and sometimes I can barely understand the question. Don’t think there is much chance of anyone passing these exams if English isn’t their first language (Hell, English is your first language and you’re having trouble. Ed). The confusion continues.

There is yet another version of the WordPress software – 2.8.6 – that I use for the writing of this blog and as usual they are begging everyone to update to it. I think the WordPress people have the mentatility of students, or definitely a level 1 CMMI company, as most of their software releases are buggy, invariably loads of plug-ins don’t work and templates shudder at the site of a new version before falling over in a wobbly heap, but so do most templates when run against any version of the WordPress software. This is why the template I use for this blog is so darn boring, coz it usually still stands up after yet another cack-handed WordPress upgrade. This company need to be bought by a professional software company and have their software regression tested before release. That’ll induce some culture shock.

Been listening to Them Crooked Vultures, a supergroup made up of Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, Dave Grohl of The Foo Fighters and John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, and they make quite a good racket.