Hi guys, how you doing? This is Rich from Rich TV Live. I have some breaking news. There is a brand new IPO Okay, it is on the New York Stock Exchange today It is a strong by strong by strong by strong by strong by it is up 75% is not a cannabis stock This is being considered the Tesla of China up 75% brand new IPO at 11 dollars and 60 cents Being talked about on Bloomberg and it is just fire now up 78% at 1180 I had to bring it to your attention is one of the hottest stocks in the universe and let's find out why Neo Inc announces pricing of initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NIO a pioneer in China's premium electric vehicle market today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 160 million American depositary shares ADS at a price to the public of US $6.26 which is bringing everybody huge gains today It is now at $12.30. It's up 86% I can't continue to read this because I gotta bring drop this video now before it goes any higher. It's crazy This is on fire. What do you think smash the like button share it everywhere?  Please share this video everywhere. Did you buy this stock? Are you winning on NIO? It just keeps going higher. My goodness. Do you see it now? Do you see what it's doing? It is a new IPO. It is absolutely on fire up 88% at $12 and 50 cents Neo Inc NIO if you're not winning. You're not watching. This is your boy rich. It was on Bloomberg They said it was gonna be huge It's a billion dollar company folks a billion dollar company It's true What do you think about this guys? Let me know Here it is for a total offering size of approximately US $1 billion Assuming the underwriters do not exercise their option to purchase additional ADS Each ADS represents one class a ordinary share of the company The ADS are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on September 12th under the symbol NIO They actually started trading on the 13th. The offering is expected to close on September 14 2018 This is huge. This is your boy rich, and I'm out NIO. It's fire Now at $12 up 81% Peace


Alright, so what we'll do now is consider another second version or technique for optimizing a function subject to a constraint. So we've already considered the first more algebraic approach of using the constraint to eliminate one variable. We did that on this example here and just to give away the final answer, we found that when we optimized this function, found the minimum of that function subject to this particular constraint, the solution, the answer was x and y are 5 and 1. The goal now is to do that via a different approach. So let's say we want to find the maximum or minimum of some function. Maybe it's a two-dimensional function that depends on x and y. Maybe it depends on more variables than that. But to keep things simple for right now, we'll do the example with just two variables of x and y and we want to do that with some constraint and the constraint is also a function of x and y, so x plus y, that's a function of x and y, but that function has to have some particular value. So our constraint takes the form, maybe some different function of x and y has to be equal to some constant, some constraint. So the trick here is instead of thinking about the original function, let's make up some new function, I'll call it f prime. That's going to be the original function f of x and y, but I'm going to add to that function, let's say, c minus the constraint equation. So the value of the constraint minus the constraint equation, c minus g of x and y. If the constraint is obeyed, any time x and y take on values that make this constraint true, then g of x is equal to c and this difference is zero. So all I've done is add zero to the function, I haven't changed the function at all, if I'm obeying the constraint. In fact, I can add zero to that function not just once, but I could stick a two in front of here or a five or any constant that I want.  So again, if I'm obeying the constraint, I've just added zero to the function some arbitrary number of times. And this method that we'll use is going to be called the method of Lagrange multipliers and this lambda is the thing that's called the Lagrange multiplier. So as long as I'm obeying the constraint, I haven't perturbed the function at all. So the minimum of the function subject to the constraint is also going to be the minimum of this function. So I can look for the places where the partial derivatives of this new function f prime are equal to zero. That will find the places where this function f prime is at a minimum or a maximum. And we can write down, even if we don't know for a generic problem what f and g are, I can write down the derivative of f prime is the derivative of f and then the only thing the derivative of fx in here is the derivative of g. So derivative of f prime is going to look like partial derivative of f with respect to x plus lambda times a negative sign. So that's why I left this as a negative sign, derivative of g with respect to x. So I've got lambda gg dx. And if I'm at a minimum of the constraint function, then that derivative must be equal to zero because the derivative of f prime has to be equal to zero. Likewise for the derivative with respect to y, derivative of f with respect to y minus lambda derivative of this g with respect to y, that has to be equal to zero. And both these things are true when I'm at the minimum or the max of this function. So we have a new set of expressions. For my constraint function, we're not necessarily at the minimum of the original function f of x. We will be at the minimum of this function f prime. So this df dx minus lambda dg dx must be zero. Similar partial derivative with respect to y must also be zero. So this technique, using these two equations, that's called the method of Lagrange multipliers. And that'll make more sense perhaps after we work an example. So let's go back to this example. So we minimize this parabolic function x squared plus 2y squared minus 6x plus 5 subject to this particular constraint. So I've written down the constraint, our constraint function x plus y, that's g. So if we solve this problem with Lagrange multipliers, we just need to use these two expressions. We know what f is and we know what g is. So I'll take, just plug into these equations, derivative of f with respect to x. So I'll go ahead and write down what I'm doing. df dx minus lambda dg dx, df dx is 2x minus 6. I need to subtract lambda times dg dx. This quantity x plus y, that's the constraint function g of x and y. The derivative of that with respect to x just gives me 1, so lambda times 1. That's what must be equal to 0 at the minimum. Likewise, for y, df dy minus lambda dg dy, derivative of my original function with respect to y just gives me 4y. If I subtract lambda times, again, dg dy, the derivative of this constraint function with respect to y just gives me 1. That must be equal to 0 when I'm at the minimum. So these equations can be solved. If we notice one additional thing, at first it looks like it can't be solved. We need to know the value of x. We need to learn the value of y, and we need to know the value of lambda. Right now we don't know any of those, but we only have two equations to solve for those three unknowns. To make that clear, let's just rearrange these equations. The first equation, 2x minus 6 minus lambda equals 0. So I can rewrite that as 2x minus 6 is equal to lambda. So I've just brought the lambda over to the other side of the equation. Likewise, the second equation, 4y minus lambda equal to 0. So 4y is equal to lambda if I rearrange that second equation. But these two lambdas are both the same lambda, right? So lambda is either equal to 2x minus 6, or it's equal to 4y. In fact, it's equal to both of those. Those two things have to be equal to each other. 2x minus 6 is equal to 4y. And that's all the further I can get with what I've written on the board from here to here. 2x minus 6 is equal to 4y. But there's a lot of ways that can be true. Lots of different values of x and y I can pick that make that true. The next step is to remember that we still have this constraint equation. x plus y has to add up to 6. So y has to still be 6 minus x. So if I use the constraint equation in here, I learned that 2x minus 6 is equal to 4y, which is equal to 4 times 6 minus x, which is 24 minus 4x. And if I bring all the x's to the left, so I've got 6x's. If I bring all the constants to the right, 24 plus 6 is 30. And I find that x equals 5. And the constraint equation tells me that y must be 1 when I am at the constrained minimum of this function. So exactly the same answer, 5 comma 1, as we obtained when we did it using the more familiar algebraic approach. So for this particular example, it may not seem like I've saved very much effort by using Lagrange multipliers to solve this problem. Really, this is just an illustration to get us comfortable with using Lagrange multipliers. But it's certainly useful to point out that we get the exact same result by Lagrange multipliers as we did when we did it, the more familiar approach. Where this will become useful is in problems where the standard method is a little bit tricky. So as a first step, let's take the method of Lagrange multipliers and apply it back to our coin flip problem. So what we want to do in this problem is maximize the entropy. In particular, let's say we're going to maximize. So the entropy is minus k sum of p log p. So I'll go ahead and maximize s divided by k. So I don't have to worry about the value of k.  But I don't just want to maximize that function all by itself. I want to maximize that function subject to a constraint. I want to guarantee that whatever my probabilities are, heads and tails have to add up to 100%. So I don't want to accept solutions like 37% heads, 37% tails that don't add up to 100%. I want to find the maximum entropy. The most random, I can make this coin flip while requiring that heads and tails add up to 100%. So this s bar over k, that's the function I want to maximize. P heads plus p tails, that's the constraint that has this particular value. And the solution to this problem is going to come when derivative of f with respect to p heads minus lambda derivative of the constraint with respect to p heads is equal to 0. So that's what Lagrange's multiplier tells us what to do. And likewise, a very similar expression for p tails, but let's go ahead and do the one for heads. So the derivative of this expression minus p heads log p heads minus p tails log p tails, derivative of that with respect to p heads. So again, product rule for derivative of minus p heads log p heads with respect to p heads gives us minus log p heads minus 1. And the p tails part goes away when I take the heads derivative. I subtract from that lambda times derivative of this constraint expression with respect to p heads. So the derivative of p heads with respect to p heads is just 1. So I've got minus lambda times 1. That's what has to be equal to 0. Or what this expression tells us is that log of p heads is equal to minus lambda minus 1. So essentially take minus log p heads, move it to the other side of the equal sign. Log of p heads with a positive sign is minus lambda minus 1. If I do the exact same thing for p tails, the derivatives work out exactly the same. So I'll just write down the result. Log of p tails is also going to be minus lambda minus 1. I guess we can convert those to solving for p heads. So if log of p heads is minus lambda minus 1, p heads is e to the minus lambda minus 1, likewise for p tails. So what do we do now? We could solve for the value of lambda using the constraint equation, perhaps. But we don't actually need to. Another word, another name for this method that's sometimes used instead of calling it the method of Lagrange multipliers is to call it Lagrange's method of undetermined multipliers, because it turns out we don't actually care what the value of lambda is. We're only interested in p heads and p tails. So if p heads is equal to e to the minus lambda minus 1, whatever value that has, p tails is equal to e to the minus lambda minus 1, whatever value lambda has. We're not interested in the value of lambda. But we do know that p heads and p tails must be equal to each other, according to this expression. Whatever lambda is, e to the minus lambda minus 1 is the same here as it is here. So that means p heads is equal to p tails. And if I use the constraint equation, p heads and p tails must add up to 1. That means p heads and p tails are not only the same as each other, but because they add up to 1, they must each have the value of 1 half. So this is the correct answer to the original expression. How do I make a coin flip as random as possible, as high entropy as possible, not by making it 100% heads and 0% tails or not 75, 25, but by making it 50, 50. An even, fair coin flip is as random as we can get it. And that gives us the correct answer this time because we correctly used the constraint equation to guarantee that the probabilities added up to 1. So what we'll do next, now that we understand how to use Lagrange multipliers, is use that to solve for the probabilities that maximize the entropy more generally, not just for flipping coins, but for an arbitrary problem.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards. We are ripping 22 23 elite court contender six box NBA mixer number six random team style. Stop Carl. There's a look again at your random results. As always, you can find these on the website under the results tab as well as the Lincoln chat. Good luck everybody. Let's do it. Carl is this contenders court. So two boxes each. Perfect. Start with an EAT. Shreyum. Spelldown. We got some bragging rights, baby. I can still play basketball. Power formula is spicy feet. Let's go, baby. Is there another, there's gotta be, oh yeah, Lakers and Timberwolves tonight, right? I think. Price McGowan's. I'm pretty sure there is tonight. Well, it's double header nights. So it has to be. Yeah, Lakers T-wolves should play in, dude. Bro, I have to imagine that the Lakers stomp them. Lakers lose. There's Jimmy Butler. I would be pretty surprised that the Lakers lose. I would be like, well done. Timberwolves, well done. Spelldown, McGron. Yeah, I mean they got a couple of rookies. EJ Liddell and Dyson Daniels are both in here. Orange, PJ Washington. You an Indiana guy, then Patrick. There's a Ochag body. Cade, Clarity. That is Tyrese Halliburton. Oh, he went to a house. Duh, my bad. So I got something in Shreyum. There's an orange Zion, Spelldown. Fair, fair, Randy. Very fair. Donovan Mitchell. And guys, just nine to go in that first Star Wars break. We got two of them left on the night. Just two group breaks with spots left. Both Star Wars, Sig series, random hit style. Blue, Danny Green for the Grids, the 99. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. High school in Illinois, gotcha, gotcha. Makes sense, makes sense. Nice, Walker Kessler, rookie yearbook auto for the jazz. There we go, Utah. Very nice. Very nice. Whoa, whoa, what just happened? What are you doing? Ten box Tuesday basketball is now off. The middle of nowhere. And Juseph Nerkich. Big Nerk. Power formulas, Yanis. Purple, full throttle. Dane. There we go. There's a numbered full throttle. I know somebody was asking about that. Bruinset the new NHL point record. Oh, Lord. Spelldown, Luca. The most like points in NHL history. In a season? In a season, yeah. They had the most wins, I'm pretty sure. Keon Johnson, impact impressions 43-49 for the Blazers, second year KJ. That horse is heavy. Yeah, definitely. That was his gift for Bruinset. Chase and Tatum, yeah, there you go. See if I can still pull you some fire in random team. Yeah, Pacers are good. Ryze cars just started to disappear, I know honestly. Yeah, Pacers are good. I mean, the Thunder are pretty good. Oh, Grant Hill, turn of the century auto for the Pistons. That's sweet. That's when they're D-town. Very cool. Yeah, the Rockets are good. The Kings are good. Andrew Wiggins, Jazz are good. Spurs are pretty good. Blazers are good. There's a lot of good teams. Trey Young, Spellbound, Orange Bam, Trevor Kiehl's rookie. I mean, Pelicans have volume. Pelicans have a little bit of volume, which is good. Got a redemption. No, we don't have a redemption. Jalen Green for the Rockets. What is it, 18, Bob and Crow? Orange star status, Devin Booker. Tatum star status. Zaire, Pascal Siakum, 9 of 10. Nice one there for the Raptors. And guys, down to still just nine to go on Star Wars. Breaking a little bit later on today, nine to go. Grab your spots up. Everybody is guaranteed a hit. Yeah, Pistons are solid too. Pistons are really good actually. That is Dan Izzel going to the Nuggets. Blue turn of the century to 25. Nice vets coming out of here. And a good rookie. Again, another two good boxes of elite. There's always a six box mixer, so we can sneak. That just got nuts, dude. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's what that burrow golden ticket came out of. It was. Six box. It was like three elements and three gold standard or two of something else. Nuts, dude. Orange, Zion. Keegan Murray's good. Murray's solid. Murray's really solid. David Roddy rookie. Rick Hamilton. The title ways. Ja. Spelldown. No, to be honest. I don't know if it got sold. Tyrese Halliburton. I don't know if it got fulfilled. I really don't know, to be honest. Purple, Steph Curry to 49. Spelldown for the Warriors. Trendon Watford. Red, Roy Hachimura, 48 of 92. The Wizards and base. All right, two court kings, next. Two boxes of 22, 23 court kings. Tabalousis. I'd maybe send a box wrapper. Yeah, to the Wizards. Just that bottom left corner. Oh, good call. Yeah, bottom left corner, a little bit damaged. Good catch, Donnie. Sending empty box wrapper with the Wizards. Sorry about that, Wizards. Good catch by old Donathan over here. Yep, got eyes like an evil. It's a Josh Giddy watercolor to 149. Thunder, we've got to 99. Ty Ty Washington. Fresh paint auto for the Rockets. It's Karl-Anthony Towns. Art Nouveau. Game used Jersey. T-Wolves. T-Book watercolor, AJ Griffin. There is a level one Palo. And Sohan, level two. Yeah, level two for the Spurs. Nice. Jamal Murray. Red to 149. Again for the Rockets, the 199. Ty Ty Washington. Fresh paint going for that rainbow. Congrats, Houston. Got Johnny Davis. Rookie expression. Jersey for the Wizards. Johnny Davis. Jason Tatum watercolor. Benedict Matherin. Level one, Jaden Hardy. And level three, Johnny Davis. Yeah, why yikes in XFL? I've actually been enjoying it, to be honest. Yeah, it's been fun. And guys, nine to go in Star Wars. Time to go. The only thing that bothers me with the XFL is like, when they do a challenge and they're like, have like the dean in the booth and like reviewing it and like, I can't, I don't still see enough. And it's just clear as day. There's interference. He's like, Oh, see it. It's like, how do you not see it? Like, we don't have a clear angle. It's like, okay. That, that annoys me still. There's a boy on McDonald's to 199. Jalen Williams rook. Sweet shot. Trae Young. Yeah, overtime's exciting. It's interesting. Now I've got random sweet shots. LeBron. So if you've got premium auto, Dalin Terry, let's go into the bowls. Grat bowls. I think it'd be cool if they did overtime seven on seven. Colin Sexton, shooting 49. Final stick it. Or no, Mike Conley. Mike Conley. They do seven on seven. No blitz and the quarterback can't run. Interesting. I don't hate it. Cracked ice. 18 of 25, ticket to the hall. Kevin Durant for the Nets. Nice one there. Superstars of Ianis. We got a cracked ice coming up here. That is going to be cracked ice. Mark Williams. Go into the Hornets. Nice one there. Charlotte. What a Michael H. Congrats, buddy. 14 of 25. Mark Williams can make that. Great, Randy. That is the extreme part. We missed it. I know. 16 on 16. No pass interference. Donnie would like to change the rules. Donnie would be a big rule change guy. Let's go, Michael. I would. Let's go, Hobbs. We changed a lot of rules. Not teams. Marvin Bagley to 199 for the Pistons. That's very nice cracked ice for sure. Benedict Matheran. That's awesome, Mike. Let's go, dude. That's a sweet Mark Williams. He's kind of a stud, too. His per 36 are crazy. Ochaic Bhaji. Superstars Ja. Kawai. Auto Ryan Rollins. Let's go into the Warriors. Base Rookie Ticket Auto. Making a game of 500. Hail Mary's only. You imagined it. There's no way you'd ever be able to catch anything. Still by his Harris to 249. If it was 500, I'm 500. Bro, it'd just be a wave. It'd just be a mad, like, mosh pit. They picked their team out of the fans of the crowd. Yeah, right. Well, that's the only bigger. Honestly. Nicola Jokic. Final season ticket variation. Palo Bancaro. Got another rookie ticket. Mark Williams again. There you go. Congrats on that one, Mike. M-Hobbs, baby. Two Mark Williams out of contenders. Do a quick recap, guys. It's going to be Johnny Davis. Carl Anthony Towns. Mark Williams. Ryan Rollins. Dallin Terry. Ty Ty Washington. Ty Ty Washington. Dan Isle. Grant Hill. Keon Johnson. Walker Kessler. And a Cracked Ice is Mark Williams. That will do it for... That'll do it for the break. Thank you guys again for the film. Next up, content...


Santa knows where all the best toys are and this December many of the hunter's smartphones are just a penny with service in Appalachian Wireless. Stop by your local Appalachian Wireless to check out all of the great smartphone deals that consistently top the nice lists. This Christmas is truly going to be bigger and better than ever. Better service, bigger savings, that is. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. You know, I thank God every day for these kids and coaches and community that we live in. This has been a fantastic group to work with in a great area of school, you know, to be a part of. They are, I'm just kind of overwhelmed. I mean, I think winning the championship is always big. To do this four times is a very few teams have done that in the state of Kentucky. Before December 3, 2016, only two teams in the Commonwealth of Kentucky could call themselves four Pete State champions. And now there's three as the Pirates add to their trophy case. Four in a row and six overall for the program after defeating Louisville Central by a score of 52 to 31. Oh, it feels great, man. We're going to come back and get a five, man. We did it. We did it all, man. We did it all. We ate out here. Man, I love all the scenes, man. Man, and the line did great today, man. We did it all, man. We just bless, truly bless by everybody, man. I just love it. It feels great, you know. I mean, we came in champions. We're going out champions, you know. It's no better feeling. We just played our hearts out and did everything coach taught us all through the week. It's the best feeling in the world. Oh, this is real. I never think that coming to high school, I think I get one or two. But four or something crazy. I know by Eastern Tuckies ever did. It feels amazing. When I moved here three years ago, my goal was to win one-stack championship. And knowing we put up that many points against Central makes it ten times better. To win my third, it's unbelievable. I feel blessed, honestly. It's an unreal feeling.  I'll walk down any alley with them. It just means the world to know we're backed up by these stands right here. I love them to death. And I love all my coaches because they pushed me. I couldn't think of a better way to go out. We've got tremendous fans for it.  It's overseas and everything. I get emails and texts all the time about how many people, you know, just follow us so well. And it's just fantastic. And our kids appreciate that too. You know, I mean, look at the support we got. I mean, there's... I don't even know the attendance, but all these people came out here expecting it. And, you know, we're happy to bring it back for them. It's just like this every year. They travel anywhere in the world. We're just going three hours or 30 hours. They're the best fans. Reporting in Bowling Green for EKB Sports, I'm Mikayla Colley.


QuickBooks Desktop 2024 Customer Pre-Payment Estimate Sales Order Receive Payment Forms Get ready and some coffee because we're locking into some non-stop QuickBooks Desktop 2024. Here we are in our QuickBooks Desktop sample company file. We set up in a prior presentation using the enterprise version of the QuickBooks Desktop software so we can practice the new unearned revenue feature within it. Under the view drop-down we have the hide icon bar selected, the open windows selected, open windows open on the left-hand side. In the company drop-down we have the home page open. Now we're going to go to the reports and select the two major financial statement reports like we do every time company and financial. Let's start off with the balance sheet report. I'm going to customize the report up top changing the range from 010127 to 123127 and then go to the fonts and numbers changing the font up to 14 as we do every time. Is that okay? Yes. Okay then. Then we're going to go to the reports drop-down again company and financial. This time the profit and loss the income statement. First a word from our sponsor. Yeah, actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers they don't want to be seen with us.  Like our accounting rocks product line. If you're not crunching cords using Excel you're doing it wrong. A must-have product because the fact as everyone knows of accounting being one of the highest forms of artistic expression means accountants have a requirement the obligation a duty to share the tools necessary to properly channel the creative muse. And the muse she rarely speaks more clearly than through the beautiful symmetry of spreadsheets. So get the shirt because the creative muse she could use a new pair of shoes. If you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com. And let's change that range this time the range going from 010127 to 0606327 because we want to see it side by side month by month not the total only in other words but the month by month breakout our first scenario was run in January second scenario in February the third scenario took three months from March to May this next scenario is going to be in June. Let's customize the reports fonts and numbers changing the font size back on up to 14. Is that OK. Yes OK then. All right so then let's go back to the homepage quick recap of what we have done in the past where ran three scenarios so we can do some comparing and contrasting the first one the normal scenario where we don't get a prepayment we just enter the estimate the sales order remembering the sales order would only be there if you're in like the enterprise version. There are both transactions that aren't recording any actual journal entry to the financial statements then we created an invoice and we also went up and created a purchase order in order to receive inventory because we imagined it was for an inventory item and then we received the payment and make the deposit that's the normal process. However we might have an under revenue situation or a customer deposit where we receive the payment first which could come in like two major scenarios one being where we sell a large product in our case it was the psychedelic surfboard where we would want to deposit in advance to us delivering the surfboard to make sure that we're going to receive the payment to lock the customer in to the transaction whether being if we have a subscription model classic subscription models being magazine newspapers more modern subscription models being like online application services in which case we receive the entire payment up front we are we when we recorded these two types of transactions we hit we entered the estimate we entered the sales order but on the customer side we then jump to the receive payment it recording it and the old method that we used to do which is a negative receivable which works pretty well from a bookkeeping standpoint but isn't quite right from a reporting standpoint and that's where the problem lies so this time we're going to we're going to do the new method where when we get to this receive payment we're going to record not a negative receivable not income but rather a liability which will call in this case customer deposit because we're imagining we're in that surfboard situation where we're selling a fairly large or expensive item and we want to get the deposit first before we complete the sale possibly because we have to order like a custom surfboard and then our next scenario will be one where we have the subscription model where we might rename the liability account as unearned revenue okay so let's go through the process if I if I go to the the customer drop down and let's just take a look at what we did before customer center this is where our customers hang out and in the last one when we did the negative AR it looks really nice internally what we did is we made the estimate and then we made the sales order and then on the sales side of things we use the sales order to create or we then created a payment so we received a payment for it and then we created an invoice to finish it off this payment however was recorded as a negative receivable but it looks pretty easy to follow just from a internal bookkeeping perspective to try to just get the facilitate the transactions right so now let's do the new one we're going to go to the homepage let's start with a estimates and we're going to have an estimate and I'm going to call it this time four and this is going to be customer prepayment which is a weird name for a customer but the idea is that I'm going to try to separate everything to this being scenario number four that's going to be our customer name I will quick add it we're going to say it happened on 060127 tab tab tab tab I'm going to make a new item which is going to be by the same name although I'm going to imagine it's that psychedelic surfboard scenario again so someone a customer is in wants to order a surfboard it's going to be an inventory part we don't have it on hand he wants some crazy psychedelic airbrush on it or whatever and we're like okay we're going to have to order it so we're going to order that but we're going to want the down payment first to make sure that this crazy looking guy is actually going to pay us right so we're going to say that the cost let's say is $100 to match the scenario we had before sales price 175 same scenario we had before sales taxes turned on within the system good we're going to set up an account here so this is going to be a new account that we're going to set up set up the account and I'm going to call it an income account let's just call it an income account and I'll call it customer prepayment for the customer prepayment let's say income something like that so I can see a different account so we can again separate our scenarios that we're running so we're going to say okay there it is I'm not going to say any inventory on hand because we will enter a bill at a future point when we order the surfboard so there it is down here $100 the markup is 75 so we're charging 175 $13 is the tax and if I was to record the journal entry there is no journal entry yet because it's just a request form just as we've seen in our prior practice problems let's go ahead and record it and then check it out if I go into my customer center we're going to say there's our customer there's our estimate no impact on the financial statements at as of yet so let's go back to the home page the next step would be estimate we create the sales order this also being an internal form you wouldn't have this possibly if you didn't have like the enterprise version in which case you would go directly from the estimate to the invoice possibly but the sales order we can think of as in essence locking in the customer so this person wants it a surfboard and we're like okay here's the estimate and now they're agreeing to it so we're going to finalize the estimate creating the sales order and then from the sales order we're going to connect to the receive payment however when we go to the receive payment we're then going to turn on the prepayment feature so that we end up with a positive liability instead of a negative receivable alright let's do it customers let's go into the estimate and we're going to create a sales order this is a sales order so so the estimate has been copied to the sales order good that's looks good it's telling us we don't have any inventory on hand which is fine because we're going to use this simply to request and then we'll use this the sales order to to make the bill at a future point as well because we're going to have to do the custom order from the from the vendor for this particular customer that wants this kind of airbrush or whatever so then it says you can tell QuickBooks to block any transactions to what would result in a negative okay so let's do it this is going to be as of 060127 let's say 0602 just so we can have a different one day up and so everything looks good this is pulling in we have the same kind of numbers down here but like with the estimate nothing new was really happening in terms of the financial statements no journal entry right same thing sales order no journal entry happening internal document if I save it and close it we can see then we have the estimate we get the sales order from an internal perspective we can now say the sales orders locked in I'm then going to collect or get the prepayment if that's applicable or we would continue on doing the job or whatever we're going to do from here in our case we want to collect the deposit from the customer so we're going to go into here and I'm going to go to the receive payment to connect it now when I do that it says receive customer payment on sales orders you can now receive prepayments from your customers and add them to your current liability account all you need to do is go to preferences and select prepayment settings so we could go there directly from here and that takes us to the prepayments company preferences if you didn't get that pop up for whatever reason and you or you just want to go there directly edit dropdown preferences and then payments on the left you want the company preferences as opposed to the my preferences if you don't have the prepayments thing on the right hand side you might not have the latest version or the enterprise version they might roll this out you would think possibly to all the desktop versions but if you don't have it you won't see this thing on the right right so if you do then you got the prepayments over here so we'll select that we're going to turn on the prepayments and then it says select a current liability account to record your prepayments as a liability has to be a liability account because that's the point we're collecting something before we earn the revenue we don't want to record this revenue we don't want to record it as a negative receivable we want to record it as a liability usually a current liability so if I select the dropdown let's add a new account and I'm just going to call it customer deposit notice the default is as a current liability type of account we could call it unearned revenue which I might change to and do next time because I think that's more appropriate in a subscription model situation customer deposit seems appropriate in this situation when we're getting an advanced deposit on the work that we're going to basically complete later so I'm going to keep it at that save it the name exists because I was messing with it before I'll put a dot next to it and I'm going to say okay let's do it so there it is and then it's going to close all the windows I think which is annoying yeah quick it's going to ah man quick books now you're going to make me open it okay whatever let's go to the reports and open up all the stuff again balance sheet company financial balance sheet customized going from<PHONE_NUMBER>27 fonts and the numbers changing it to 14 is that okay it is fine then okay maximize reports drop down company and financial profit and loss change in the range<PHONE_NUMBER>27 and oh no yeah that's right and then I want to go from total to months and then go to the customized fonts and numbers and change it to 14 to okay yes okay and then company drop down let's open that home page back up alright and so there's our home page so now we went from the estimate to the sales order and now we're trying to create a receive payment but we didn't finish it yet because we had to turn on the prepayment and now we have a liability account to post it to instead of a negative accounts receivable so let's go back to the customer center customer center they're hanging out over there by the water cooler the customers are they're just chilling so we're going to go over here and we're going to say let's go into the sales order again and let's say we're going to receive a payment so now it says you won't be able to make any changes to this prepayment once you apply it to an invoice so be careful if you need to change it then you're going to have to actually delete it I think you can still I believe delete it if you needed to and then do it again but you can't just adjust it so you have to be you know be careful be careful so now this form looks like the other receive payment form but now it has this prepayment thing on it so what is us the form usually do when you have a receive payment or customer payment form it usually decreases accounts receivable that's what we know that form always does this one however does not because it's marked with the prepayment and that means it's going to hit the liability account that we selected which is the customer deposit note down here to that under the last method that we used we didn't have anything down here and therefore when I selected like a $50 deposit there was nothing to apply it to because we didn't have an invoice we still don't have an invoice what we do have is a sales order you don't usually apply a payment to a sales order because the sales order is an internal document but QuickBooks is using that sales order kind of like it's an invoice so that we can apply the payment out to the sales order here so that's kind of how it's how it's working if I go back to my my worksheet on the on this side I can say okay this time we have a receive payment form and what's happening with the receive payment well cash is going to go up because we're getting a deposit and I created this other account called customer deposit now so now we have this customer deposit account that I have added now and that's going to be 50 and negative 50 so if I post that cash is going to go up by 50 this time which is right and then here's the key the customer deposit is going to go up the customer deposit is not revenue because even though we got cash we haven't yet earned it and it's also not a negative receivable because we don't want it because it should be a liability we owe the money back to the customer at this point in time or we owe the customer the work under the old method it was a negative receivable that was kind of the glitch in the system even though it worked well kind of from an internal standpoint from a reporting standpoint external reporting we would typically would need to do an adjusting entry basically to make it correct as of the end of the period so that's going to be it now I'm going to make this a little bit smaller so I can see the record button at the bottom so there's the record button I'm going to save it and I'm going to close it is everything at all wait a sec change the date you're so lucky you fix that because you can't really so this is going to be from 060127 cash okay everything else is good let's save it and close it the payment date should be on or before the sales order date but what was the sales order date on for crying out loud let me close this out let me let me let me close this something has gone horribly horribly wrong the pen I'm going to clear this and then close it so the sales order date says okay it's on 6227 okay so let me let me say I'm going to say receive payment you won't be able to okay I know that and then it's going to be 50 and let's say this happened on 060327 is that okay with you quickbooks is that okay with you alright so $50 let's do it alright let's put this back up to 150 and then we have it so we can close this back out okay so let's so here we have the internal documents look good there's our payment we expect later that we can go and order the surfboard and then enter the invoice that we can apply to the payment if we go to the balance sheet what happened over here we went into undeposited funds instead of into our checking account but it's still kind of like cash I'm not going to get into the undeposited funds thing right now but the other side did not go to a decrease of the of the accounts receivable which it did before because the sub ledger dealt with the customer instead going down here to a liability account that we set up where to go customer deposit there it is so that's great that because now it basically posts it down here properly reporting it from an accounting standpoint however it is still a little bit more confusing because now we have to have two sub ledgers to deal with the customers in other words if I get on my reports up top and I go to my company and financials no my customers and receivables and I look at my what is it customer balance detailed report customer balance and detail then I don't have anything in here for that customer yet because I haven't entered an invoice I entered a payment only so that's kind of fine because it you would think well it shouldn't be there because we don't it's not an AR yet it's not an account receivable related thing but look at the last customer we have this for where we have this payment happen first and then we apply the invoices to it the negative AR is wrong but from just an understanding what's going on side of things a bookkeeping side of things this is pretty clear right it's kind so that's kind of nice whereas when you look at this when you have this other liability account then there's going to be another sub ledger related to the liability accounts not it's not going to be in one place right so so now I've got the customer deposit is also going to have a sub ledger although this is a liability it's tied to the customers whereas usually liability accounts have sub ledgers that are tied to vendors right so now we're going to go into the customers and say this is going to be the where's it there's open prepayments somewhere around here there it is open prepayments so there's our $50 there so that looks so that looks good but it's basically that added step so if we compare this to the last process if I go back to my customer center and think of it from an internal perspective what's the difference between these two processes well internally in here it looks much the same when I'm trying to finalize my transaction I can see what's happening right I made an estimate I made a sales order I've got the payment the payment looks like a prepayment when I make the invoice I should be able to apply the payment to it in a similar way as when we have that negative receivable which we often like call a credit right that we're going to apply to the invoice you can see that over here where the other method internally looked very nice as well same kind of concept estimate we've got the sales order and then we have this $50 payment it's just that this payment was marked as a negative receivable instead of a instead of a positive liability but from this side of things the bookkeeping is pretty similar because then when I make the invoice I could apply the payment out to it so from this internal screen perspective just facilitating the transactions both of these work pretty well so I like that so if you can do that so I kind of like the new thing that works quite well however it does also still lead areas for confusion for people to do funny things so for example if I go to the balance sheet over here like you'll if you have any experience with this undeposited funds you'll note that that's a clearing account it has its use it has its functions it's useful but a lot of people will mess things up because of it it has another step which will mess people up sometimes so anytime you have an added step it could mess people up right the same thing is kind of true with this accounts receivable being broken out now between accounts receivable and then this this other account down here for for the deposits the liability account now I can't find it the liability account for the deposits right there this the fact that we have this other account that's kind of related to receivables adds another level of kind of complexity because now somebody could post something to that account without actually going through the normal kind of process and that would make mess it up right and the sub ledger would could possibly get messed up and when people are trying to figure out what is happening from a reports standpoint related to a customer usually they're going to be looking at things that are related to the accounts receivable so people have to understand that this is a liability account that is still tied to a customer also when we move it when we actually make the payment and enter the invoice quick books is going to create a clearing account to facilitate that transaction which will which will create which will college cause a journal entry to be put in place so again will have another clearing account which is another area where people could could cause havoc right they could post something to that clearing account not as big a problem as this undeposited funds because the clearing account that they're going to put in there is just used for this one purpose but again it creates another transaction just which adds one more kind of complexity into the system as a journal entry and it adds this other clearing account that they could add more to the complexity as well so I'm just trying to point out the pros and cons between the two system it works quite well we don't have to do an adjusting entry at the end of the month this way because you should have the liabilities properly recorded it looks very nice internally into in order to facilitate the transactions from a bookkeeping standpoint but you know the downside is of course that we have these two accounts we've got some clearing accounts we haven't added journal entry which could add some complexity and leave you know room for people to mess something up possibly that's so but we'll continue with this transaction finish it up next time


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This is an introductory video on how to use all of the variety of resources that I've provided for using finger patterns to teach upper positions, major scales, and shifting. This is a system that I've put together over the years that is not entirely my own ideas. This grows from the ideas of George Bornoff, the great pedagogue, and came to me really more firmly through the work of Dr. Marvin Rabin back in the 1980s at a seminar that I attended that he taught, and he gave me some information that I could really use, and I've taken it a couple of steps further and created a whole bunch of YouTube resources for you to use. These resources are designed for teachers to use in the classroom without a doubt. They can also be used for students to practice at home, and really they can also be used for parents to watch so that they can help their kids understand how the videos work and help them along. This system is sequential. It starts with concepts that we then build on and we kind of make them more difficult as we go. So it's a sequential system. Number two, it involves solid nomenclature. In other words, I've devised a naming system for these finger patterns that I think makes a lot of sense. And thirdly, a good system really needs to provide context. And in this case, that context is a harmonic underpinning for the notes that we play. And as you get into the video resources that I have, you'll hear that harmonic underpinning very clearly and firmly. I really believe that when we're learning something like playing in upper positions, that it's a complex process. And what we're really trying to do is to break that complex process into easier components. Think about playing in third position. It involves so many things, including reading notes in a way that we haven't read the notes before. It includes shifting. It includes all kinds of different patterns and trying to figure out where the notes are. So what we do here is we eliminate the shifting element. We eliminate the note reading element and really teach the upper positions in a way that we're really focusing on just the element of playing in an upper position and getting our fingers in tune. I really believe that when we're learning something new, it's good to learn, number one, how it feels. I'll call that hand. Then we'll learn how it sounds and how it feels. That's ear to hand. And then thirdly, we learn how it looks, how it sounds, and how it feels. That's eye to ear to hand. And again, this system provides that sequence. In the system, we're going to learn and utilize four finger patterns that we'll use in the finger pattern exercises. Those finger patterns are as follows. First we'll use the three-four finger pattern. The three-four finger pattern is a series of four notes that involve a whole step, another whole step, and a half step. First from the first to second note will be a whole step. From the second to third note, another whole step, and from the third to the fourth note, a half step, therefore, three-four finger pattern. The second finger pattern that we will use is the two-three finger pattern, whole step from the first to second note, half step from the second to third, and whole step from the third to the fourth, the two-three finger pattern. Next, the one-two finger pattern. Whole step from the first to second note, whole step to the third, whole step to the fourth. And finally, the open finger pattern, which is all whole steps. Whole step from the first to the second, whole step from the second to the third, whole step from the third to the fourth. In the next video, we'll discuss the finger pattern exercises and how the sequence works beginning with finding third position.


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Welcome everyone to the session Stuck in Limbo with Magical Solutions by Isabel. It's going to be an interesting talk and we are glad Isabel can join us today. Thank you very much. Thank you for lovely hosting and thank you for having me. So this is a session called Stuck in Limbo with Magical Solutions and I'm Isabel Evans. So who am I? Well I am somebody who has been in IT since the 1970s. So I did my computer science degree in the 1970s, worked for a bit as a programmer. During the 1980s I came into testing, I was a tester, test manager, quality manager and then from 1990 onwards I was still working as a practitioner but also I was contracting, I was consultant, I was teaching and speaking and that included towards the end of that time a visit to Agile India in 2017 which I have to say was one of the loveliest conferences I've ever been to and I found a couple of pictures. There's me chatting in an interview with somebody about Agile processes and another picture which is I remember there was a session where somebody came and taught us all drumming. So this is me attempting to drum and you can see a look of slightly worried concentration on my face as I learn a new, I'm not going to say skill, it didn't get that far but very enjoyable. Lovely conference and it's a real pleasure to be back. So also what happened in 2017 was I'd started to reflect on my career and I'd started to reflect on some of the things that I was noticing in my consultancy and contract work and as a teacher which was that in the 1980s in the testing work that I was doing at that stage we were using test tools to help us execute tests and in that particular company that was very standard way of doing things and the test tool was built alongside and as part of the software that was under test. So the things were very linked together and we did a lot of exploratory testing and then coming out of that exploratory testing when we got the software stable to a point that the tests were passing we would then automate those tests so that we could keep running them as regression packs in the background and then through the 1990s and 2010s in other organisations I was seeing that people were struggling with test automation perhaps with tools they'd bought in perhaps with scripting of different sorts and not just with the automation of executing the tests actually running the tests but also with test management tools and other tools and I was seeing a lot of debate about what automation was whether it was possible to automate tests and so on and so forth and a lot of problems and I was wondering what are the causes of these and I started researching into this and therefore became a student again so I went back to university and I'm now a student at the University of Malta and I'm doing postgraduate research into the human aspects of test tools with an expected completion date of 2025 by which time I will be 70 and there's a thing to think about so that's who I am and sometimes people say to me why University of Malta and here's a picture I took in February 2020 which was of course with the pandemic the last time that I got a chance to go out to Malta I actually live in the UK and Scotland and I go out to Malta occasionally this was my last visit before the pandemic and I think that picture of the beach in Malta tells you why if you live in Scotland which is chilly in February it's cold in February why going to Malta is a nice idea but actually also importantly they have a big ICT faculty they're doing a lot of research into software testing already they're doing a lot of research into the human aspects of software and human aspects of software testing so it just fitted really nicely with what I was interested in looking at and it's been a real big learning curve for me learning to become an academic researcher after so many years in industry so back to the beginning what was my motivation I said to you didn't I was noticing challenges that people were having with with test automation and one of the debates that was going on around 2015 2017 that sort of time which I think is still going on actually is is this because the testers don't have good enough skill sets or is it that the tools need to be more usable that they've not been designed very well and because of my background which had included quite a lot in usability work I was inclined towards the tools need to support the people and was thinking right so what can we do to make tools more usable and of course that little cartoon there actually sums up many problems that we have in the IT industry in software are the users stupid no they're not there's problems with the software and this is true perhaps for test automation tools and test management tools as well so there was this debate I was interested in the debate what evidence was there I decided to become a student and research this academically so that I've got a basis for my research if you're like I've got there's some rigor behind it I was interested in getting that academic rigor and not simply having an opinion one of the reasons that that's interesting I'm just going to go back again one of the reasons that's interesting is because if you've worked in something for decades and if people see you as being an expert and if you're doing training and so on it's very easy to just think that your opinion is the thing that's worth hearing and of course as soon as you get into academia no evidence is required it's no good me just having an opinion it's no set within my experience this happens that's not good enough I have to go look for other evidence my opinion is not the thing that's driving it and I think that's really valuable for this research that actually it's about it's about gathering evidence so if we think about the purpose of the software industry for all of its history as long as people have been building software and where we put the beginning of that history is a whole other discussion it's about automating tasks and activities we want to save time and money we want to be able to do things we can't do ourselves we want to remove repetitive tasks as human beings aren't very good at that we want to be safe and there's lots of benefits and actually there's effect some people benefits and disadvantages so even if you go back to industrial revolution one and two back in the victorian era back in the 19th century you've got people automating things like hand looms becoming power looms it affects people there's benefits because you can do things faster and there's disadvantages because of the effect on people's jobs so that's in very quick summary so if we think about our own activities within the software industry then we start asking can those be automated because we want to save and turn money and so on so forth remove repetition but is it possible to do that and what is the effect on people there are benefits and there are disadvantages and interestingly if you look at the history of the IT industry we talk a lot in testing about test tools and the automation of test execution and whether that's possible or not but actually there's a long history of people trying to automate programming so I can remember back in the 70s and 80s people saying oh we're going to reach a point quite soon where we're not going to need people doing programming because we can replace that by tools and people are still saying those types of things so it's interesting isn't it that we can see that we could get benefits if we can use more tooling and use more automation but is that possible and what's the effect on people and as an example of that here's a picture of not actually my first washing machine but the model of washing machine that I first had very very simple you filled it up with a hose had a hose on the side that you dropped to let the water out of the bottom you just had a hole in the bottom of it very very simple just an on-off switch it was really amazing it was amazing tool to possess after I'd been washing sheets and so on by hand but simple and it's not automating the process of doing the laundry so let's look at the one on the right which is a modern machine and it works off your mobile phone you offer your mobile phone up to it and it switches on and off and programs it and so on so forth it's a clever solution that works as easily as a contactless payment system that's what it says in the advert and it's called an automatic washing machine but it's not an automatic laundry machine it doesn't pick up and sort the dirty clothes it doesn't do the ironing it doesn't fold the clothes and put them away it doesn't make decisions about what needs washing and and what needs washing together and what needs separating it can do one little bit of the whole process of laundry that's all okay so automation it has benefits and this is a quote from julian hearty who I know is an old friend of this conference no matter how valuable in-person testing is effective automation is able to increase the value of overall testing by increasing its range so what he's saying here is there are some things we can do by using tools to help us that we wouldn't be able to do if we didn't have the tools and even if you look at really quite simple tools like say a screwdriver be really hard to put a screw into a piece of wood without a screwdriver so tools help us that's our purpose and some things like the automatic washing machine we can automate and when we can do things that we perhaps couldn't do before however if you look at barken bolton james barken michael bolton they wrote a they've got a website context-driven approach to automation in testing and they talk about a shallow narrow and ritualistic approach to tools use and they talk about the idea there's a false belief that testing is a mechanical repetitive processing and saying instead it's a challenging intellectual process and i remember talking to michael about this once and saying to him you know people are talking about automating programming and he just rolled his eyes and just yeah that's going to happen and that's the thing you see which are the tasks where we require a human brain and which are the tasks that we can actually automate so there's a lot of things to to debate there and i think there's some interesting things happening with machine learning and AI but even with those you know how do we know that they're going to work where are they going to be mistakes in them is it really driven by the AI or is it driven by the people who are building the AI yet lots of things to talk about there which are beyond the scope of this talk but i think interesting debates so going to do this as academic research it forced me to start asking some really fundamental questions and one of those is well what is testing is it a repetitive mechanical activity or is it a highly cognitive or human activity is it defined by its activities or by its goals and do you know what all four of those things are true it's really complicated just defining testing is not easy so how can we talk about automating testing if we can't actually define easily what it is so that was the first set of questions going through my mind what we know what am i really talking about here and if it's mechanical and repetitive it could be automated but if it's highly cognitive does that mean it can't be automated what happens if it goes wrong um why does it go wrong is that a problem with usability so my my academic supervisor is saying to me you're claiming it's a problem with usability do you know it's a problem with usability i think well i think it is but i haven't really got the evidence i do know that we want to improve it in some way but how do we do that how do we improve it can we pick off some activities to automate and then not automate others if it's highly cognitive human activity is this one reason that we end up with shelfware in other words we buy tools we find they don't quite do what we wanted what are the reasons for shelfware so again my supervisors push me and say you're talking about that there's shelfware is there is there really shelfware do you know what the reasons for it are do you know whether actually there is still so suddenly you realize that the questions you're trying to ask already contain their answers so they're not good research questions so they pushed me and pushed me and pushed me and in the end what it came back to was a simple open question that didn't contain its own answers actually what are the experiences of testers with their tools and automation because they might not be the same as my experiences lots of people might be getting quite different experiences so starting with that really open question I then went and asked testers to tell me their stories just tell me a story about an experience you've had with test tools and automation and this was a piece of qualitative research so you don't look for a very large number of participants but you look for very in-depth answers that you spend a long time analyzing and I had people from across the globe multiple countries multiple business domains over a hundred people took part it's getting on for 200 and for various reasons not all of those came into the final final data and I'll explain that as we go through but they were very wide range of backgrounds and experience and they very often had complex roles with multiple responsibilities so they weren't simply doing testing they were doing a whole range of activities so they might be a project manager who's also doing testing or a developer who's also doing testing or a tester who's also a product owner they're all sorts of different different roles that people had and complexity of roles and responsibilities and I just wanted to thank everybody who's taken part and you can see the range of conferences in Europe ANZTB is Australia and New Zealand Star West Star East and Canada are North America Odin days is Scandinavia so people from all over the world took part in this and the contributions really significant in shaping the reports I came out with and were surprising so that was that that was the thing about the surprising results and I interviewed a number of people experts I ran a number of workshops and I also ran anonymous surveys and then I had some testing experts review the findings and discuss them with me after I'd done the analysis and I mentioned that not all of the participants data was used in all of the analysis I used the interviews and the workshop attendee information with some of the quotes that I've used and some of the backing up if you like some of the analysis but I took my main results the numbers from the survey respondents that were anonymous and the reason for that is that some of the people in the workshops privately said to me afterwards that they weren't comfortable about expressing what really they felt their experiences have been in an open forum so I went to an anonymous survey so that people could really say what what their experiences had been and that's that's where the bulk of the report back and analysis comes from and my findings have come out in three academic papers stuck in limbo with magical solutions scared frustrated and quietly proud and an illusion of usability you can find these papers if you look on google scholar and search under those names so what were the key findings coming out of this the first one is the same old problems and challenges so some of this if you look for example at the test automation patterns wiki that doc graham and sereta gambler put together people have been talking about some of these problems for decades like management support and maintenance of the tests and the tools the shelfware problem is still there people are still buying tools and acquiring tools and then in the end not using them and these basic problems with management support not being able to install the tools successfully maintenance of the tests security usability seamfulness i.e groups of tools not giving you a seamless experience groups of tools being very clunky to work together those are still there decades after they were first being reported that's worrying I think so to give you examples of that here are some quotes from people who filled in the surveys so something looks cool but took time to set up it was it was difficult to configure people getting stuck in limbo when they were asked to do automated testing we'll come back to that one difficult part is maintaining the tests so we can see those are the sorts of quotes that were coming up over and over again usability was a concern so my initial hypothesis that usability was a problem certainly it was at the frequency of comments column you can see there the usability comments coming out about 511 of those across the surveys followed by technical problems a lot of that was around portability performance and maintainability those were the three most critical areas where people had had problems or had concerns and then the management and organizational interestingly fewer comments although sometimes it was bigger problems and of the 111 people who filled in the survey 82 had issues and challenges with their tools and automation 82 so the first new finding is that people are stuck in limbo with magical solutions and that they're scared and frightened quite often and this is about people's lived experiences so how they feel about about the tools what are the tools doing to them in their real lives and the critical thing here is people's in in level of emotion in their responses bearing in mind this is an anonymous online survey 35 percent of people shown emotion and sometimes very high levels of emotion and I wasn't asking them about their emotions in the questions the questions were unemotional and I didn't ask about that I didn't even ask them I didn't even couch it as tell me about problems you've had I you can see the questions there the only question that didn't get an emotional response was sq7 where most people were putting c question six answer which actually helped me learn something about how you design a survey and I analyzed this by the survey participants and by the questions to see we know is this just one or two people who have been very emotional is it a particular question and no it ranged across the people and it ranged across the questions and some of those emotions were very positive positive and but a lot of them were quite negative a lot of people were really quite distraught is not too strong word people were upset and here's some of the some of the just some of the quotes some of the many many quotes and you can see people are actually so angry so frustrated so upset upset people saying that I'm just going to leave I'm just not going to do testing anymore it's too frustrating these tools are making my life difficult it's confusing it's a jungle out there so if you get the papers you'll see all these these quotes are out there but the point here is person after person expressing these high levels of emotion which were actually having a knock on effect into how they were living their lives people people just say they wanted to give up completely and this was backed up by some of the interviews that I did and some of the conversations that I had with people not so much in the workshops but around workshops and at conferences around this time where people were in tears people were in tears about what the effect that the tools were having on their their working life it was quite extraordinary I simply wasn't expecting that that was not what I set out to look for um and then the stuck in limbo is a direct quote and the magical solutions is a direct quote and that is in a way quite a calm set of quotes but they're showing an underlying set of problems and certainly the the security problem it came up several times and then it's come up several times since as I've been discussing these results with people that people are mandated to use a particular tool and then the security set up in their organization doesn't allow it and the level of frustration you know that that's just I mean it's crazy stuff why are we doing this to ourselves or letting it happen to ourselves the second big finding is that usability is a problem but the way that we go around resolving those usability problems is actually illusory that what we're doing to try and solve usability problems doesn't work and then we think we've done usability and actually we kind of made the situation worse so three things about this and one of them is in some of these tools the people designing them had focused on the attractiveness of the interface over its usefulness so the tool looked cool but you couldn't actually do anything useful with it it wasn't supporting people's workflow it was simply looking good and this is something which I think is really interesting that you can see demos of tools and they look really good are they actually going to support you to do the work you want to do and who is being beguiled by that attractiveness is it a purse holder rather than the person who's actually going to do the work the second thing was that it seemed that all of these tools simply focused on one user group and so you've got a concept of learnability which is part of usability and you've got a concept of flexibility which is part of usability and they were sometimes in opposition so you either had people with strong coding backgrounds but couldn't accomplish what they wanted because the attractive interface was holding them back they weren't the options there or you had a situation where the tool had been built for people with very strong development backgrounds and the testers felt excluded and felt that it was too hard to learn now if you're doing usability design or user experience design even more so one of the things you look at is the personas who are going to be using a particular tool so when you design a particular tool you also as part of that you just you look at the personas and what their needs are and what the different personas are which ones you're serving but then when you buy a tool if you don't think about who is going to be using it and that there might be a range of people you might try and get a tool which is one size fits all and it simply doesn't and the third thing was with some of these tools that they didn't support change and growth of the personas and their requirements so as the people using the tools are going to change and their requirements are going to change and if the tool has been built simply to meet them their needs at one particular stage of their career of this project it's not going to last over time so my analogy for this is about the difference between a pianola or player piano and a concert grand you see if you don't know how to play the piano and I put you in the Carnegie hall with a concert grand you are not going to be able to play it and you're not it's going to take a long time to build up the skill to become that concert pianist but once you've done that once you've mastered it you're working at the sort of Angie Jones level you know there's somebody who's a concert pianist of test automation but if you're me no I can't play that that piano it's too complicated I can't play the the concertos and so on so forth but if you look up the pianola or player piano you've got a role there that's going to play the music you just slotted the role it plays that music and it the keys are going up and down but you don't have to be touching them and the point here is it's only going to play that tune you've got no flexibility and you're not going to learn how to play a piano and somewhere between those two there's a set of experiences and types of keyboard which would enable people to move from the pianola not all the way to being the concert pianist at the Carnegie hall but as far along that route as they need to go and I think there would be a way that with the test tools and the test automation that we could sit between those two extremes and have things which allow the people's knowledge to grow and their experiences to grow and the way they use the tool to change and also to allow for growth in their requirements in terms of what the software is that they're testing and what the tests are that they need to use so you're not being confined to something that's automated in a way that it can actually only do one thing so usability is sometimes an illusory goal so the other thing is it's necessary I think I have evidence from this research that it's necessary that people who are designing test tools think about usability but it's not sufficient you also need to think about maintainability performance security portability reliability and so on so forth key it's not just attractive interfaces so just because something looks nice doesn't mean it's the thing that you need to use so don't be beguiled and key it's not just about making it simple usability is not about ease of use that's a tiny tiny part of it it's about making it appropriate it's about making it meet people's workflows so people reporting back about installation you do an update which looked cool but everything's hard to find I love this one I like how the feature works but getting the information back out once it's been entered is not easy isn't this brilliant a store only a piece of information systems you put your data in you can't get the data back out again hmm something wrong there I think so the key thing out of those findings so far that's really important is that test automation does have benefits test tools do have benefits but it's affecting motivation and testers are becoming disassociated with their roles because their job task mix is changing and because the tools aren't supporting them properly so one of the effects on motivation is around job task lists and I've put some references at the bottom there but the earliest one of those Hackman and Oldman talked about how you design people's jobs and people need a mix of tasks some of which are challenging and some of which are more mundane because our brains need that mix different people that mix is slightly different but if you have a job that's just mundane you're not being stimulated enough and it's demotivating and if you have a job that has no mundane parts in its tool it's overstimulating and overstressful and Warden and Nicholson when they did their motivational study of IT staff which was back in the the mid 90s they commented that the testing role was simultaneously the most boring and the most stressful role because of what we're doing so we're doing a lot of repetitive stuff and a lot of fine detail within that repetition which you feel like is a candidate for automating or using tools with and also we're dealing with things going wrong and people getting angry about stuff and deadlines and and a lot of stress about having to give people bad news so one of the things here is if you automate all the mundane bits you actually end up with somebody who's got a role that's just the stressful bits and what's the effect of that going to be actually you know so that sense of job task mix is really important but simultaneously with that you've got testers who are worried about being made redundant who are feeling disassociated from their role because they're being told that the test testing is being done by the tools when they know that's not the case and also and here's a key thing guess what more things need testing than the software under test so the picture on the left there is the worm areberus that eats its own tail so we have software that's under test and that requires testing we have to design tests for it and we design those tests even if we're just thinking them up even if we're just sketching things down we might be doing a really formal process here or really informal process but our tests themselves are artifacts that we have built and as human beings we make mistakes so our tests require reviewing and testing have we done those tests right have we fully understood what we're doing here and if we build automation scripts or tools that is software and software needs testing so now the software test under test is the automation script that we're going to have to build tests for that will require testing and maybe we should automate the testing of the automation scripts oh my goodness we've got more software we're going to have to test it so we should go around in circles when do we stop because at every stage of everything we do we will be making mistakes there's no point where you can say we can trust this absolutely but we have to do that all the time where do we break this cycle and that in itself is a frustration one of the things that was was frustrating for people was seeing test tools and automation being trusted when it was flawed and then having to pick up the mess when things go wrong so I think that's this is very demotivating when people trust the tool more than the human which brings me back to artificial intelligence you know people are talking about the singularity aren't they and that the artificial intelligence will start building more artificial intelligence and each time it's getting more and more intelligent but you know at the bottom of that at bottom of that heap are human beings making their mistakes those mistakes are going to get built into the AI and we know as human beings that the cleverer you are the bigger the mistakes you make hmm there's something going to go wrong here I think anyway that's speculation uh one of the comments I had an interview with somebody saying that the manager hadn't realized software's a bloody difficult thing to build he was building this guy was had built an automation tool and it took much longer to build this automation I hadn't been planned um it actually it was planned for three months I think this project to build this automation and it actually took three years to get it working because it was so complex the automation was actually more complex than the software under test and that's another interesting lesson testing is complex automating testing may be impossible because of the level of complexity and again you know what does this do to people and their motivation and their ability to deliver and one of the things there this is uh from a friend who's a historian he's not in it at all and I was telling him about the research and he emailed me and said you know people change people change to new products um but quite often they prefer not to change to new products not to upgrade because you know it's going to be bad all the software out there is bad the choice you've got is not between problematic and ideal but between different sorts of problems so why why change your software there's a certain despair in all of that it's a lesson for all of us isn't it we're just struggling with messes and our customers are struggling with messes so there's some pragmatically what can you do now two things better people management don't let you watch out for people's uh the effect of of tools and automation on people and better tool selection um so I'm not going to read that slide out to you but you know think about the things I've talked about it's not as simple as just buying a tool and and telling people to use it it's not as simple as just giving them a training course you have to think about the effect of the tool on people's jobs and what it's going to do to them and you also have to think about the attributes of that tool in terms of its usability workflow support but also things like portability performance maintainability think about taking a UX approach to actually tool selection think about the change in growth that's going to happen over time now what am I going to do I've got to finish my PhD I'm about halfway through and so having done those three papers it was time to take stock and say what's the rest of my PhD going to be about and I could have gone and looked more about tester's emotions and lived experience which is incredibly interesting but it's a huge area it's multidisciplinary so park that for the moment it's too big for a PhD however some of the aspects of illusions of usability is possible to look at and the first step of that is to actually think about who is doing testing because if we don't know who's doing the testing and how they're doing it we don't know what tools they need and we don't know what the tools need to be like so my next stage in my research that I'm in the middle of at the moment is to collect information about who is doing testing and how they are doing that and to do that I've got a survey open and the link for that survey could you pop that into the chat for me at earlier could you do that that would be kind so I would urge you all to fill that in and that survey is like an online interview so it's not a short three or four question survey it'll take you about 30 minutes 45 minutes to fill in I'm asking for a lot of detail I need that detail in order to do the analysis that's next I would urge you to take part so my new hypothesis is that people aren't in the center of test tool design and if we could put testers in the center of test tool design we could support a wider range of people to do a better job in testing so that's a hypothesis okay I haven't I haven't demonstrated that hypothesis yet that's my current starting point is this the case and it's based on looking at the previous participants and I said to you before wide range of background and experience and multiple responsibility so I want to find out if that's true in a wider group of people than that initial 100 industry practitioners I'm interested in hearing from you if you do testing as part any part of your role to find out your background your qualifications what you do in your work how you go about testing what sort of person you are to help get an understanding of what the persona groups are within the testing industry and within it and once I've got that data then I'm going to start mapping that and going through an iterative process that's a bit like a sort of a bit like an infinity diagram I'm going to circle around and as I get the data I'm going to try and synthesize a tool design model and and then try and trial that and review the results and then come in and collect more data so there's the link here again for the the the survey your experiences stories really matter for this to work you're going to help academic researchers understand more about software testing there's sort of gaps there I think you're going to help me design a tool design model actually you're going to help your future future self if this works if I can make this work we have a chance of actually better tools in the future but it's going to take a while so three key points I've given you some insights from the research so far about people's experiences I've given your understanding that there's usability in human blockers to successful test tool implementation and indeed the tools themselves block people and I've asked you if you'll help me in the future research please complete the survey so thank you for listening I'm going to stop sharing my screen now and we'll go to a Q&A there we go thank you as well thank you very much for sharing the insights of this case study thanks for having me


Hi, I'm Captain Dick Simmons from the popular and virus-free web series Red vs. Blue, and this is Lopez. Today we're here to talk to you about the only protection you need in this modern day and age, cybersecurity. Hey Dickhead, what'd you do? I'm trying to get into the base's Wi-Fi and it keeps telling me I have the wrong password. That would be because I changed it to something more secure. More secure than password 123? Did you know that just the word password is the eighth most used password in the world? Yeah, I did. That's why we added the one, two, and the three. A good password includes a random combination of letters, numbers, symbols, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, a few strings of Morse code, a small piece of Ascii art, and at least one Haiku. The less likely you are to remember it yourself, the better. Whatever. Oh, and FYI, your changes kicked Lopez off the cloud. Oh well. Provided that you have a strong enough password to keep those pesky PC pirates out, you may think you're completely safe, right? Wrong. Even with a strong password, just the things you willingly download could still contain computer contaminants. The best way to prevent this is to install a firewall, which could be represented by this literal wall of fire I've constructed all around the entrances to the base. You see, with this firewall active, we can still send good things out into cyberspace, like my Firefly fan fiction script, yes, Serenity. But we can block bad things like all those mean comments calling my script a bad typo. Hey Simmons?  What's that griff? I can't hear you through my super awesome firewall!   Sorry, you're gonna need the password to get in. Well, what's the password? I can't just say the password out loud, griff. That's rule number one in password safety.  What? Still can't hear you from inside the firewall.  And just like that, another intrusion attempt defeated. In addition to a strong virus protection software, you also need to be careful about who you share your information with. One thing to look out for are email fishing scams. This is where hackers will email you posing to be a Nigerian prince, or a model that shares all of your interests and is super into you, but just needs you to send her $4,000 for a plane ticket out to your box canyon. You'll know these are scams by the blatant spelling errors, poorly conceived premise, and the fact that it's someone communicating with you via email. Psst, like anyone does that. Hello, Simmons. Yes, it is your very good friend, Caboose. We share the same interests and also live basically within the same area code. Anyway, I have some very personal and intrusive questions to ask for you. Remember, never give away personal data to an unverifiable source. Yes, I would just like to know if you want to go fishing. No, Caboose. Fishing with a P. Do you want to go P-fisting with me, Simmons? But fishing scams aren't the only way a hacker can pry information from you. They can also disguise harmful software inside of seemingly friendly software. This is called a- Hey, Simmons!  What do you want now, Griff? Oh, Lopez. Si. Soy yo, Lopez. El robo americano favorito de todos. Wait a minute. Griff said you were kicked off the cloud. Hi, Escuchaste. Ah, ESA. Gorda, Gorda. Tanta? You're right, Lopez. Clearly, I just needed to wait for you to reboot and refresh your IP address. Esto es demasiado fácil. But now you need to get inside the base to help me beef up my security even further. Claro. Vamos con eso. Here, let me just lower the firewall for a minute and... oh, wait a second. Say, Lopez, do me a favor and point to every square that has a stoplight in it. No, I lose as de parada. Aha! Lopez is a robot and wouldn't be able to pass the captcha. Get out of his armor, Griff. I know it's you.  Just let me in. What we have here is a classic Trojan horse, one of the many ways hackers try to get into your system. If they have enough time on their hands, they could also try. Good boy. Here, machine.  Simmons, some amateur arsonist must have hacked into the base's mainframe and set everything on fire. I'm going to need you to stop dropping, roll your way out of here and help me put it out. Sarge, stop. It's a firewall. I put it up to keep intruders out. What? You did this? Oh, good thinking, Simmons. I've always said that it's best to fight fire with absolutely nothing because fire can't be beat. Glad it's on our side. Now, let me in. It's almost time to upload the newest episode of my podcast. You have a podcast? Yeah, it's called Sarge Speaks. With Sarge, I just kind of ramble on about things I'm interested in, like close range weaponry, my favorite shades of red, and the exact coordinates and floor plan of our base. That was the architecture episode. What? That's wildly unsafe. I'm sorry, sir, but I can't let you in.  I guess I can knock Maroon off my list. You see, you also need to be careful of what you're posting online willingly. You never know when a word of your upcoming trip to Kokomo could fall into the hands of criminals looking to rob you blind. As such, you should never post anything ever about any facet of your life online for fear of being compromised. In fact, just stay away from social media in general. You'll thank me. Well, this thing's busted. What, you're just giving up? Of course not. I'm merely going back to base to call in reinforcements. But this is the base. Fine. All right. Look, I give up, okay?  Huh? What was that? That sounded like the start of an apology, but I didn't quite hear those two magical words. Light me. Eh, close enough. Welcome home, Griff.  I told you I'd be back with reinforcements. The base? No! All my VPNs, my Norton anti-virus, my pop-up blocker with those little notifications telling me how much work it's doing. Oh, it's all gone. So, any security tips for what to do if someone just destroys your base? Yeah. Always have a backup. Do you remember what the password for Blue Base was? Oh, no! You're not locking me out of this one, too!  Wait a minute!  Hey, Sammons! We're gonna need better security on the Pronto!


Twitter supports Malama's call to rename Cape Town Airport after Mamawini. Durban, EFF leader Julius Malama left Twitter a buzz with his parting message that the governing party honor Mamawini Madicca Zellamandela by renaming the Cape Town International Airport in her name. He made the call as his parting shot in a fiery 18-minute speech during Madicca Zellamandela's funeral at the Orlando Stadium on Saturday. Social media erupted instantly, with some taking to amend a Cape Town International Airport's Wikipedia page and others photoshopping pictures to change roads signage to support Malama's call. Malama's plea was even acknowledged by the government, as he left the podium, with the official government account tweeting, Julius Malama leaves the podium by challenging SA government to rename the Cape Town in airport after Winnie Mandela. This was followed by the floods of Twitterati including celebrities in support of Malama's call. Digital radio entrepreneur TVO Touch, whose real name is Thabo Molf, also supported the proposal, saying it would be one among many legacy projects under President Cyril Ramaphosa's leadership. Five FM DJ Frankie, Moho Loseva, also showed support for Malama's call in the context of transformation. Some have started to call Cape Town Airport after Winnie Madicca Zellamandela before it being officially renamed.