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Don’t let them colonize your mind

In the disturbing film, A Clockwork Orange, the protagonist's eyes are being forcefully kept open, and he has no choice but to watch the most horrible scenes in order to “rehabilitate” from the awful crimes he has committed. I won’t attach a picture from the film, as

My thoughts about InCoWriMo

This is not a well-known phenomenon at all, but I stumbled upon the hashtag #incowrimo on Mastodon somewhere in January. Intrigued, I looked into what it was, and it stands for International Correspondence Writing Month. It happens in February, and the idea is that you mail a handwritten letter or

Best Reads March 2025

I'm writing down which articles make a lasting impression on me in my Hobonichi Cousin every day. Let's put them in this blog post, for you, and for my future self. The month isn't over yet, so hopefully I'll add some more

Why I don't want to be in a WhatsApp group with boomers

Almost everyone I know is in at least a couple of group chats on messaging apps. Here in Europe, WhatsApp (by Meta) is still the most popular choice to run a group chat. My second orchestra also put every member in a WhatsApp group, but unlike my main orchestra, they

An "AI" by any other name

"AI"? You mean......

Sad smoke alarm noises

At LLEWT book club yesterday, Sanne Visser said: "Nobody ever gave a smoke alarm an award" and I laughed so hard tears streamed down my face. I think it's recognisable for many testers. There are times when we are warning of what could happen if we

Local goodness

I managed to absolutely surprise myself with this one, but it fits. As most of you might know, I play the clarinet. It's very boring to play the clarinet alone, so I'm in an orchestra. That orchestra needs to be managed, so there is a board.

Thank you

Many thanks to everyone who liked and shared the posts on my blog and LinkedIn where I was announcing that I was searching for a new IT assignment and where I was asking people to not put me in a box. Don’t put me in a boxI’m trying

Harmful Software Collaborators

Looking for bugs in code that has harmful intentions is like trying to make a shit sandwich taste good. It's futile. It's the wrong focus. I get it, it's easy to be a harmful software collaborator. Maybe you are still at a point in

The real reason we need to invent a time machine

I was reading a very interesting article in The Guardian: 'All people could do was hope the nerds would fix it': the global panic over the millennium bug, 25 years on. At the turn of the millennium, I was a mere 14 years old, and did not know

Don't put me in a box

I'm trying to find a new assignment as a self-employed Test Consultant, and this confronts me with some facets of job searching that I don't really enjoy. My main complaint is that most roles try to fit you into a neat little box, and I don&

The cognitive dissonance pyramid: one hell of a drug.

We are all wrong from time to time, it's part of the human condition. Even smart people can be wrong. True wisdom is being able to admit you were wrong, and then actually change your mind. However, that is very difficult and mentally painful. Many people avoid it

Dear software testers, is your critical thinking ability even alive?!

First, there was test automation. People who were not particularly blessed on the critical thinking (and intelligence) front thought this would solve the pesky testing problem, once and for all. Manual testing would no longer be needed. There was lots of talk about the ROI of test automation as a

My future tech utopia

This is how I would like to interact with technology. It’s a mix of oldskool with a sprinkle of tech that does not yet exist. It's a utopia, so it's not realistic. Don't come at me in the comments with "trololo this