Who is Bruce?
Bruce is me! I’m super passionate about personal development and lifelong learning, and I’d love to share some of the stuff I learn. I also draw all the pictures/headers for my posts, because it gives me an excuse to get the tablet out!
Some words I use to describe myself:
Welsh
This is very important, because many people who meet me assume that I’m English. Some people don’t even know the difference! I won’t put a lecture here, but suffice it to say there’s a long history behind this and so you must always refer to me as a Welsh person, not English, or I will be very sad and slightly offended. xD
Bloody-minded
This is usually a bad thing, but I promise I use my evil traits only for the power of good. Such as doing things that are supposed to be impossible to do on your own.
Non-Binary
(aka not a man or a woman, but some other type of… thing.) I have no pronoun preference, so you can use he/him, she/her, they/them, xe/xer or appache attack helicopter. Although if you really honestly want to know, my secret preference is for mixed pronouns, using a bit of all of them. It’s a bit unfair to expect other people to do something that confusing though, so I don’t.
Learner
Well I mean, everyone’s a learner. We all go through life learning things, but I make a special point of it and derive all of my value as a human from my ability to learn things. I can’t even have a simple conversation without obsessing over what I should improve about it next time.
Asexual
Not relevant to anything, but REPRESENT am I right? I had no idea this even existed until I was in my 20s, and just assumed I was a terrible and broken person until then. Now I’m totally fine!
Introvert
I feel the need to tell everyone I meet this, because I have a very high charisma stat so people assume I must be an extrovert. I love meeting new people and talking about anything under the sun – but it drains me and I have to spend three days in bed recovering afterwards.
A Total F*cking Legend
To be clear, it is not me who calls myself that. It is a quote from loads of other people, some of whom have insisted that it be included here. Context is that I did a 99second talk at TestBash Brighton 2019 about testing yourself. You can find it here if you like. Mine starts at around 14:50 but I’d recommend watching them all.
Why is Bruce Undeveloped?
Because I haven’t done enough development, obviously! And by development, I mean designing and coding and testing, along with a lot of the other things I really want to learn. I grew up in the countryside, in a very big family. We didn’t have as much computer time as my niblings seem to have today, and I was too busy falling out of trees to get on this whole ‘internet’ thing apart from some literary roleplaying forums (oh, cringe). Now I’m on a quest to catch up, because what better environment is there for someone who loves to learn, than one in which they are forced to always be learning?
I hope that by writing about my journey of personal development, I’ll be able to network with other people like me – and maybe even help them, or vice versa. Explaining my methods and reasoning will also help me to understand what I’m doing adequately enough to explain it to others.
What kind of content can I expect?
I’m a year in now, so you can just go check out the previous posts for a hint, but some general topics I have been covering are:
- Software testing and test automation
- General thoughts on learning
- Progress mapping
- Running workshops and roadmapping
- My experiences at conferences and events
If there’s anything you’d like me to write about then let me know on twitter @bruceonlybruce (my DMs are open) or use the Contact Me page, or just comment on any of my blog posts.
Undeveloped Bruce 