My theme: something about books, something about poetry, and something about tech – QA in specific. And P is Playful: P is for Percy Jackson, Pantoum and Positive

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.
– Eckhart Tolle

Entertainment Corner

P is Playful: P is for Percy Jackson & Olympians: The Lightning Thief

The Book:

I loved, loved, loved the book. Mythology and the modern world meld together to create magic in this book. To be honest, I read it years ago but the thrill of reading it has stayed fresh with me. This is a great way to introduce Greek mythology to kids (and adults too!). Every character, be it god or demigod or human, is full of charm and with a unique personality.

I don’t recall enough of the book to write a detailed review but as I said earlier, I loved, loved, loved this book!!!

The Movie:

The movie was – well – one that someone who did not read the book would enjoy; but for those who read it first, like me, the movie disappointed. Too many deviations (some are always there and permissible but…) from the story-line of a book that was already rich in details, and would have made a really wonderful movie if it had stayed more faithful to the book (granted, not a mirror image, but not so far off too).

The best things about this movie were the bits and pieces that were true to the book; and the cast.

The book, in this case, definitely. I now find myself wanting to re-read this book and then finish the series (did not finish all of it the first time around).

Vote and let me know your choice below:

[yop_poll id="16"]

Poetry Corner

P is Playful: P is for Pantoum

What is the Pantoum poetic form?

I wrote the ovillejo just yesterday and today I had decided on the pantoum. And it was only as I started (re)reading about the pantoum, that I discovered one similarity – the reuse of lines in both poems (well many forms do reuse lines – it just struck me as odd since I was picking them back to back).

The pantoum is a poetic form derived from a Malay verse form called the pantun (specifically from the pantun berkait, a series of interwoven quatrains). It was adapted by French poets; and bears resemblance to forms like the rondeau and the villanelle. It gained popularity with French and British authors in the nineteenth century, including Victor Hugo.

How to write it?

The pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of a series of quatrains in which the second and fourth lines of a quatrain recur as the first and third lines in the succeeding quatrain. The second and fourth lines of the final quatrain are the third and first lines of the first quatrain; in effect creating a reversal of sorts.

While rhyme and meter/syllable count are not followed as rigidly in the modern/Western version of the pantoum, the Malay pantun follows a strict rhyme and rhythm. When rhyme is followed, it goes like this – abab, bcbc, cdcd, ……… xaxa.

So, the pantoum:

• is stanzaic – any number of four-line stanzas or quatrains
• repetitious – where every line is repeated once. L2 and L4 of each quatrain are repeated as L1 and L3 of the next one; while L1 and L3 of the first quatrain are repeated as L2 and L4 of the last one, but in reverse so that the first line of the poem is also the last line.
• no strict meter but normally lines of equal length (the original pantun is between 8 – 12 syllables)
• when rhymed, rhyme scheme is an alternate rhyme scheme like – abab bcbc cdcd ……… xaxa

More reading and h/t:

• PoetryMagnumOpus
• dVerse Poets Pub

My Example Pantoum:

I am reusing again – this is a pantoum I wrote a few years ago for a dVerse prompt. I have it here as is. Note that this particular one is unrhymed and has lines of unequal length…

A Slant of Sunshine
Where the slant of bright sunshine hits
It slits through the room
Cutting across dust bunnies
As shadows disappear.

It slits through the room
It brightens dark corners
As shadows disappear
Hidden treasures emerge there

It brightens dark corners
Cutting across dust bunnies
Hidden treasures emerge there
Where the slant of bright sunshine hits
– ©2019 Vidya Tiru/LadyInRead@LadyInReadWrites

 

Life gives you plenty of time to do whatever you want to do if you stay in the present moment. – Deepak Chopra

QA Corner

P is Playful: P is for Positive Testing

What is Positive Testing?

A couple of days ago (exactly), I talked about Negative testing. Positive testing is just the opposite (well, duh, you say!). While negative testing tries to break the system and try to ensure that it is not doing what it is not supposed to, positive testing tests the system to ensure that it does do what it is supposed to do. Where on the one hand, negative testing uses invalid inputs and unexpected user behavior for testing, positive testing uses valid data inputs and expected user behavior.

Examples of positive testing scenarios/cases can be:

• Entering text data into text fields/numeric data into numeric fields
• Entering the allowed range/value of data into the fields – for eg: if a numeric field only takes values from 1 to 100, then a positive test will check for random values from 1 to 100 and ensure the system allows that data.

Wrapping up the P post

What are your comments or questions about today’s post? I would love to hear from you. Check out previous posts in this challenge using the links below.

Day 0 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6Day 7  Day 8Day 9Day 10Day 11 Day 12 Day 13  Day 14  Day 15

Day 16 Day 17

Linking up to BlogChatter A to Z, A to Z Blogging Challenge, and the Ultimate Blog Challenge