Live at the Leeds Testing Atelier: MCP and Glue Work
In a daring experiment that could only be described as "asking for trouble," Ian and Ash take their rambling tech discussions to the stage at the twelfth Leeds Testing Atelier! Marvel at their technological inequality as Ian gleefully controls all the buttons while Ash sits helpless without even a mute switch. Witness real humans actually listening to them in person - proof that their podcast isn't just shouted into the void!
First, Ian waxes lyrical about Model Context Protocol (MCP), which (despite sounding like a villain from Tron) is actually how AIs connect to your apps to book endless holidays during the inevitable robot apocalypse. Then Ash tackles the fascinating world of "glue work" - those invisible tasks that mysteriously fall to testers and minorities while everyone else pretends not to notice the team slowly disintegrating.
With audience members bravely volunteering their opinions, this special live episode proves that What A Lot Of Things can indeed survive contact with actual humans, and that you can never have too many Clangers references.
Our thanks to Ivor Caldwell, Emily O'Connor, Bryan Jones, Faisal Sultan, Melissa Rocks and everyone else who shared their thoughts, questions and opinions. You are awesome, and you make the world a better place.
29 Apr 2025
Vibe Coding and Bluesky
In this episode, Ian and Ash plunge headfirst into the wild world of “vibe coding” - where developers surrender to the AI gods and trust whatever code they spit out! Watch in horror as our intrepid hosts debate whether letting AI write your code without checking it is just weekend fun or a recipe for cybersecurity disaster. Marvel as semantic diffusion transforms innocent terms into tech industry nightmares before your very ears! Will Ian’s adamant defence of the original definition save the term from the clutches of corporate jargon, or is he just fighting against the vibe?
But wait, there’s more! The dynamic duo then migrates to the fresh pastures of Bluesky, the social media platform where exiled Twitter users now frolic freely. Gasp as they navigate the thorny thickets of free speech absolutism, moderation policies, and Jack Dorsey’s digital flounce! Between debating buttons that lead to nowhere and dreaming of Figma-specific content filters, Ian and Ash once again prove that in the chaotic landscape of tech, sometimes you just have to read the diffs, and sometimes you have to vibe your way through it all.
But what do you think? Have your say on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s5fhhud67j62pzjcjamq3fto/post/3lnwirhudsl26)
Links
The Clangers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clangers) and the clip from the episode "Goods" whence sprung our name (https://youtu.be/6mYX5dXfk1o?si=6UUAiK8GtryYGKKs&t=223) (2m 40s watch).
Leeds Testing Atelier (https://testingatelier.community), at which we are recording a Live Episode of What A Lot Of Things!
Andrej Karpathy on X: Vibe coding (https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383)
Claude Code (https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code) and Cursor (https://www.cursor.com) (and Github Copilot (https://github.com/features/copilot))
TechCrunch: TurinTech reveals $20M in backing to fix problems in ‘vibe coding’ (https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/18/turintech-reveals-20m-in-backing-to-fix-problems-in-vibe-coding/)
Simon Willison: Semantic Diffusion (https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/23/semantic-diffusion/) (and Wikipedia article on Semantic satiation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation))
ThoughtWorks: Fuzz Testing (https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/techniques/summary/fuzz-testing)
YouTube: Interview with vibe coder 2025 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeNS1ZNHQs8)
leojr94_ on X: “guys, i’m under attack” (https://x.com/leojr94_/status/1901560276488511759)
Wikipedia: Fuzz testing (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzing)
Bluesky (https://bsky.app), the AT Protocol (https://atproto.com), and Bluesky starter packs (https://bsky.social/about/blog/06-26-2024-starter-packs) (and Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/explore)).
Fast Company: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber on her company’s ascendant year and what she’s planning next (https://www.fastcompany.com/91271080/bluesky-most-innovative-companies-2025) or you can read a more ad-free version of the article including Ian's highlights (https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01jppn244pr68q9aq09e1zm4km).
Ian Dunt, now on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/iandunt.bsky.social)
Wikipedia article on Freedom of Speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech)
Quote Investigator on "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/13/einstein-simple/) and "My Customers Would Have Asked For a Faster Horse" (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/28/ford-faster-horse/)
8 Apr 2025
Presentations and the Demise of Skype
In this episode, Ian and Ash embark on a thoroughly British adventure through the land of presentation software, complete with the obligatory post-implementation complaining. Marvel as Ian delivers a monumental discourse on PowerPoint crimes, Keynote superiority, and why Comic Sans should be punishable by “a damn good encouragement.”
Meanwhile, Ash provides a heartfelt eulogy for Skype, Microsoft’s once-beloved communication tool that’s being put out to digital pasture this May, only to be replaced by its demonstrably worse offspring, Teams.
Between passionate debates about slide etiquette and whether “post-amble” should be a real word, our intrepid hosts ponder why big companies buy innovative tools only to slowly suffocate them, contemplate the future of VR meetings with battery life measured in minutes, and propose a spin-off podcast called “Terrible Product-Type Meetings.” All delivered with the quintessential British approach of having an idea, implementing it, and then complaining about it afterwards – just as nature intended.
Links
Presentation Zen (https://www.presentationzen.com/) by Garr Reynolds
Rethinking the Presentation (https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/rethinking-the-presentation/2501260): Ian’s presentation opus astonishingly preserved on Slideshare from 2009.
Apple’s Keynote (https://www.apple.com/uk/keynote/) and Microsoft’s Powerpoint (https://powerpoint.cloud.microsoft/en-gb/). Oh and Google Slides (https://workspace.google.com/products/slides/).
Fonts: Arial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial) and, er… Comic Sans (https://comicsanscriminal.com/#)
Sir Ken Robinson’s iconic TED talk: Do schools kill creativity? (https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity)
Toastmasters (https://www.toastmasters.org/)
The Thick of It (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thick_of_It) (watch on iPlayer (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b006qgrd/the-thick-of-it)) and In The Loop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Loop), both by Armando Iannucci, and featuring Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker
Difficult difficult lemon difficult. (https://youtu.be/7mAFiPVs3tM?si=E1UyxaEkO5g0sXbT)
The Register: Non-biz Skype kicks the bucket on May 5 (https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/28/skype_for_consumers_eol/)
BBC: Microsoft announces Skype will close in May (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn7vxlrvxyeo)
Weekend Testing (https://www.weekendtesting.com/)
Microsoft with the world’s highest cookie consent form to press release size ratio: The next chapter: Moving from Skype to Microsoft Teams (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/02/28/the-next-chapter-moving-from-skype-to-microsoft-teams/)
The Team Guide to Software Testability (https://leanpub.com/softwaretestability) by Rob Meaney and our very own Ash Winter
Meta’s Horizon Workrooms Virtual Office and Meetings (https://forwork.meta.com/gb/horizon-workrooms/) and Ian’s VR experiments in using it with Dan Hammond (https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/working-in-the-metaverse)
Lawyer cat filter mishap (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlPGPupdd8)
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