][+ Geek

Why fixing a bug may takes longer than you think?

2007-01-19T02:31:00Z

When a bug is confirmed and reported, it will be entered into our work item database and everyone got its own list of bugs to track and fix. There are two primary product cycle management system in Microsoft, one is our internal and legendary Product Studio (or PS), another is Team Foundation Server (or TFS) and it's what I am working at. As a team member of TFS, it is no secret that we use TFS as primary SDLC system and we dogfood the latest bits as well. (Dogfood means "eat our own food", or in other word, we use the system we are building. If we break it, we fix it.)

Bugs are tracked in TFS and nomatter if it's a real bug, or just annoying thing we found, we will file it as a bug with different severity and priority. So bug count is always high and we will try our best to keep it low. Some of you may heard rumors about the Vista bug count is 10,000+ in late 2006, but don't panic, many of they may not be a real bug.

When a bug is filed, someone will assign it to a dev for investigation and fix. If the cost for fixing the bug is high (i.e. fixing the bug may break backward compatibility), dev will discuss with program manager (PM) if the bug should be fixed or postponed.

After a bug is fixed and before checking in, we will shelve the changes and ask for some buddies to do a code review. This process reduce the chance that new changes will introduce any artifacts and ensure code integrity. Afterward, we will inform the QA owner of the bug and let him/her know about the changes. Depends on the changes, devs will then do a kinda full-scale test on his/her changes to ensure everything is still in a consistency state.

First, devs will get the latest bits along with shelved changes, compile all the stuff and make sure nothing break. Then we will then run unit tests to make sure new changes don't break other components. While running unit tests (as it may takes a long while), devs will send their bits to a scouting machine to do scouting. Scouting is a manual QA process to play the bits and see if any abnormal behavior is noticed.

So after a half day long of testing, devs will then check-in their changes. Since someone may already checked in newer code while the dev is doing sync-ing/compiling/unit-testing/scouting, we will use a specialized system to do a check-in, and we call it Gauntlet.

Gauntlet will do an official run of what devs and QA done: get the latest source, unshelve the changes, compile source as bits, and do all tests including unit tests and QA test. After all tests are completed, Gauntlet will check in the code for the dev and let him know everything goes fine. Dev will then pass his/her job to QA and testing the new build, writing new tests for the bug, etc. If anything breaks, dev and QA must fix the problem before nightly build starts.

Except scouting which is a manual tests, most of stuff I mentioned here is automated. And even though they are automated, it took at least an hour to do all the steps for TFS. Nonetheless, as you may notice these steps are pretty straightforward, we just want to ensure every build is a solid build, as solid as we can dogfood on.

Microsoft campus in snow again

2007-01-18T10:57:00Z

Here are the photos of Microsoft campus in snow (again).

I shoot this photo from north side of building 50.

Snowing in Redmond again

2007-01-11T22:45:00Z

It is snowing again in Redmond. And this time, the snow looks heavier than Thanksgiving snow in late November. I bike and took a lot of photos this morning, but unfortunately, I left the card reader at home. So I can't upload it right now.

I see there are few families enjoying their moment with their kids in the field. Many hobby photographers bring out their camera as well. Temperature is 30F or -1C, and weather is perfectly fine, clear sky with sunny.

Stay tuned for my photos.

Gears of Wars update is live

2007-01-10T00:09:00Z

No one could deny Gears of War is one of the hottest game in 2006. I was not a big fans of console, but I purchased one just days before X'mas. Not only to celebrate my first driver's license, first X'mas in Redmond (or 2nd in USA), but to play Gears of War online. I saw GoW promotional ads in Robbie Bach's show in Redmond campus (for Microsoft employee's only) and I loved it immediately. After hearing IPTV is coming to XBOX360, I feel that my hard-earned bucks are well-spent.

Most XBOX360 developers are not aware of console owners running their games on 4:3 LCD panel using VGA cables, characters in GoW appears to be slimmer (Fenix/Dom no longer looks pig) when running on VGA cable (i.e. upscaled 720p), instead of 16:9 LCD/Plasma/HDTV or 4:3 TV/CRT (480p). Wrong aspect ratio, boy.

Words from Joystiq.com that the new GoW patch is up with fixed aspect ratio bug (where's my PGR3 patch then?). I am going to install the patch when I back home today, tune my XBOX360 back to 1280x1024 (instead of 640x480, which workaround for the bug), and rocks the world! I am half-chapter away to finish Hardcore difficulty and going to kill RAAM again tonight.

[Update: I got it install when back home for lunch, confirmed aspect ratio is fixed, and now few checkpoints before RAAM's death.]

[Update 2: Hardcore RAAM is dead and it ain't too difficult. Now proceeding to insane, finished first act.]

Another Microsoft x Razer product

2007-01-09T23:16:00Z

Razer is well known famous for their excellent quality gaming hardware. In late 2006, Microsoft teamed up with Razer and created the famous Habu mouse. You can check my post here.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced partnership with Razer to create another gaming product, Reclusa gaming keyboard. It features: blue LED backlighting, faster repsonse time, 2 x jog-dials, 2 x bumper buttons, 6 programmable keys, on-the-fly profile management, detachable padded wrist rest, and gold-plated USB plug.

Perhaps gamer don't really like ergonomic design, Reclusa does not looks "natural". And no words on pressing 10 keys simultaneously without jamming any (a.k.a. anti-ghosting). But if they runs the engine behind Razer Tarantula, it should, right?

I here created a chart for unofficial feature comparison according to press releases of both keyboards.

Description	Razer Tarantula	Microsoft Reclusa
Anti-ghosting (pressing 10 keys simultaneously)	Yes	Unknown
Macro Keys	Yes	Yes
Fast Response	Yes, 1 ms	Yes, it's called Razer Hyperresponse
Profile Switching	Yes, 100 profiles	Yes, no words on number of profiles
Onboard Memory	32KB by Razer Synapse	Unknown, probably yes
Fully Interchangeable Keys	Yes	No
Keymaps	Yes, 2 keymaps per profile	Unknown, probably no
Gaming Hotkeys	10 hotkeys	6 hotkeys
Lighting	Yes, on some keys	Yes, blue LED backlighting
Jogdial	No	Yes, 2 jogdials
Bumper buttons	No	Yes, probably behave like 4 extra keys
Wrist Rest	Yes, not detachable	Yes, detachable
Battledock	Yes	No

Looks like both keyboard have some pros/cons over each other. Microsoft Reclusa will be released in Spring, and I will post updates sooner.

Microsoft Campus in year 2007

2007-01-05T11:16:00Z

Weather is not really good in the first few days of 2007. As usual, rainy in the morning and shady at noon.

While having late lunch around 4 PM today, I went by 156th Ave NE & NE 40th St as usual. Weather was surprisingly good and sunset was gorgeous. I took a photo at the intersection again, so you can compare Microsoft campus at autumn, snowy winter and new year.

Gift for my earnings in 2006

2007-01-02T22:11:00Z

After 3.5 months of relocation, I finally got my Washington State Driver's License before X'mas. So I decided to buy myself a gift to celebrate year 2006, it was a wonderful year to me.

I never own a console, but honestly, I am a heavy PC gamer. I bought my PSP shortly after its launch and really enjoy gaming everywhere. And now, it's the time for my very first console.

As a geek, I did some serious research on both XBOX360 and PS3 over past 3 weeks. I agree Wii was very nice for casual gaming and I loved WarioWare. But I like first person shooting and racing games, so I decided to get a cutting edge console instead.

I was impressed that the GPU inside XBOX360 outperforms PS3 one. According to some posts, it was an early design of ATi GPU which will be released when DX10 is done. And it also outperforms ATi X1900 XTX too. Yea, I know, the Xenos is not capable for DX10. But with $400, you can get a GPU from the future and Microsoft promised to get your games looks great for a few years, whaddya want?

Many games are now cross-platforms amongst consoles (and only few of them are also available on PC). So, I would prefer a console with great and smooth graphics, instead of great processing power. I don't think you would see Call of Duty 3 on PS3 would get a nice clothing engine utilizing few additional processors found in PS3. If both platforms are very similar to each other, why would the developer bother to spend more time to develop something dedicated to a single platform? So I guess you probably won't see headlines in the future looks like "GTA IV get natural clothing on PS3 and bullet holes on your jacket", and "Rival cars in NFS Carbon are smarter on PS3 than XBOX360". [Edit: GTA IV will be released on PS2, PS3 and XBOX360 platform]

Another strong reason why I choose XBOX360 is few of my friends also bought one before X'mas. XBOX Live is one of the coolest gaming network and I was amazed that the headset connects to the wireless controller, instead to the console (stupid me). And very soon, I can enjoy PC gaming with my XBOX360 Wireless Controller (and future controllers). Wow!

The connected experience is really great on XBOX360, I can stream songs from my Windows PC (non-Media Center) to XBOX360 and make them as background music for Project Gotham Racing 3. And I will probably move the XBOX360 to my bedroom so I can enjoy TV from my MCE too. Nevertheless, whether HD-DVD or BluRay wins, I think I can simply get a new disc drive and enjoy great movies.

I am simply too excited with this great gift for the fantastic year 2006!

Habu rules!

2006-12-08T01:39:00Z

As a hardcore gamer and developer, I always believe peripheral is a key to success. My very first ergonomic keyboard is the legendary Microsoft Natural Keyboard. I immediately addicted to it, it not only helped me to correct my bad typing behavior, it also increase my typing speed by 10-15%. Of course, it takes time to get use to a keyboard (and I also get used to Japanese layout keyboard). I also owned Natural Keyboard Pro, Office Keyboard (nice scroll and cut/copy/paste keys), Multimedia Natural Keyboard (with matching Optical Blue Mouse), and Japanese-layout Wireless Optical Desktop Pro. And now, the latest keyboard I got is Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, and is the most comfortable keyboard I ever used.

I dreamed to get a Razer mouse long time ago. Cool kids at Microsoft Hardware division teamed up with Razer to create a next-gen mouse call Habu, with proven ergonomic engineering from Microsoft and award-winning precision from Razer. What I can say is it would be my ultimate mouse (unless they made another one that is compatible with XBOX360 in white/green combination).

Surprisingly, Microsoft is not doing software/driver stuff this time. Instead, Microsoft is focusing on design, marketing and support, and Razer is doing software/driver and hardware stuff. This idea is new and, to me, it means "hardcore gaming mouse, excellent ergnomic design". I prefer software from Razer in this situation as it gave me confidence that my mouse is just another Razer mouse inside.

As a end-user point of view, installing the driver is not an easy step. If you are going to get a Habu mouse, there are three points to remember:

Newer driver are not backward compatible with older firmware. And Habu always have kind of "fail-safe" mode to fallback as a normal HID mouse. So, you must install newest firmware first, then install newest driver. Of course, at the earliest stage, you must use the stock CD driver to talk to your 1.0 mouse. And you can't find version 1.0 driver elsewhere except on the disc, so don't lose it!
Make sure the Habu application recognize your mouse and show the firmware version, otherwise, you can't take advantage of Habu.
Changing mouse frequency requires a system reboot. This is not mentioned in the application, but perhaps, it's known thru all Razer users.

After I get my Habu mouse working with Razer driver, I feel the mouse got super fast response time (it claimed to be 1 ms). Let's say, what do you feel when you install plain Windows ME on a Core 2 Duo machine equipped with 2GB RAM? (Nope, BSOD is not an answer). Right, lightning-fast response, that's what I got now.

I played it with a classical mouse rate checker application and what I got is an average of 1200-1300Hz. I also plugged in a classical Microsoft Optical Mouse Blue side-by-side (it is the "default" mouse of my team), but what I got is only 80-90Hz. Yea, I know I may able to boost it up to 250Hz, or use a PS/2 mouse and overclock to 200Hz. But they are nothing compare to my Habu.

The specification say (and let me convert to human-readable figures):

Maximum movement is 45 inches per second (or 2.6 MPH/4.11 KPH). Do you think you can move your mouse 1.1 meters or 3.75 feet within a second?
20G acceleration (that's 0-60 MPH within 0.14 seconds).
7080 frames per second (it would take 4.9 minutes of film to record just 1 second of mouse movement)
32KB on-board memory (requires firmware 2.01, now you can replace all 7 mouse buttons with multiple keystrokes in 5 different profiles and bring it anywhere)
1 millisecond response time (8 times faster than a normal USB mouse, or 4 times faster than an overclocked one)

The feel and response of that non-slippery mouse buttons are also great, I am pretty sure you can do double click much faster with Habu mouse than normal one. Habu also comes with Razer standard spare Teflon feet and two different thumb button layouts I like the stocked layout but it is always a nice to have an alternative layout, right?

If you like to pick up your mouse and "scrub around" for 360-degree view in FPS, Habu can still track its movement around 1 cm up from the surface. It is a little bit inconvenience for me but I get used to lift Habu higher for this "scrubbing" action.

If you are looking for a new mouse that's around $60, Microsoft Habu is the only one that I could recommend.

My very first foggy night at Redmond

2006-12-06T06:51:00Z

There are always fogs back in Hong Kong. But I never experience fog that is as heavy as in Redmond. I took this photo at the front entrance of building 50 on 2nd Dec. I guess visibility is roughly 50 meters.

Photos taken on the early snow day (29th November)

2006-12-06T06:37:00Z

I finally uploaded photos I took on last Wednesday at Microsoft campus. As you can see, there aren't too many people here, but I am sure some of them still work at campus to prepare for Vista launch on 30th November.

I took this one on 40th and 156th intersection, where I come by 6-7 days a week.

It is not easy to find a tree with reddish leaves on in the campus, and they are there at the southeast entrance of building 16/17 (left one is 16, right one is 17).

Employees are valuable asset to Microsoft and trees are just next to us. These are historic trees next to very first buildings of Microsoft.

On my way back to Microsoft Way, I took this sunset shot just next to our ball fields (on the left). This is the one I like most in this group of winter photos. Sunset, bald trees, snowy...

This is the outdoor part of cafeteria at building 25. It definitely looks gorgeous with snow.

Still at cafeteria 25, a close-up shot at the nice artificial waterfall. This waterfall runs 24x7x365, just like our business.

Hope you enjoy my collection of winter snapshots of Microsoft campus.