Software Sleuthing : Random

Crashed Conference Room (ɯooɹ)

joshpoley — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:27:00 GMT

So we have these fancy touch screen displays on the outside of our conference rooms which will tell us when the room is booked (and by whom). They are definitely handy as they help resolve the inevitable conflict when multiple groups arrive at the same time and then fight over who owns the room. They also have the added bonus of allowing an individual to walk-up and immediately reserve an available conference room using the touch screen interface.

This is all assuming, of course, that the device hasn't crashed. In the past several weeks that our team has been in the new buildings I've now seen two conference rooms who's displays have crashed (on this floor alone).

And yes, not only do they crash with a splendid Blue-Screen-Of-Death, but they crash upside down.

The only reason I could think of for inverting the normal, run-time image, would be if you could access the unit from the back: if you flipped the screen down in a diagnostics mode, then everything would be right-side-up. Unfortunately these units aren't accessible from the back. They are truly embedded in the wall.

As I see it, there are two failures here. One is obviously in the uptime testing/certification of the devices. These things are on and running 24x7x365 and apparently something got missed. The second failure is a design issue. There is no user means of resetting the device. Every time these things crash, a technician has to come out, crack open the front panel and reboot the hardware.

Off to StarWest

joshpoley — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:13:00 GMT

I'm off at StarWest, so the blog will be a bit quieter this week. If you happen to be in Anaheim, look for the pale bald guy.

Digital LEGOs

joshpoley — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:35:00 GMT

So I recently ran across the LEGO Digital Designer, which is a free download enabling you to build your models all within the comfort of your own computer. I just need to figure out their file format so I can start building tests that way, otherwise I can envision this being a drain on my productivity (especially during boring meetings).

Overall the tool is pretty cool, but here are some nitpicks that I encountered while playing around with it:

· It isn't easy to define which layer you want your piece to go on, it will often try to stick it on the bottom of the model instead of the top (which you are looking at).

· No way to group a collection of pieces and lock them together.

· The available colors for each piece seem kind of random and limited.

· There were plenty of times when I wanted more pieces to work with.

· No ability to control where the light source is. When working with the darker colors, it is often hard to clearly see the model, so I found myself moving the camera around to where I could work in the glare of the light source, which wasn't necessarily the best view for where I wanted to work.

Compile First, then Check-In

joshpoley — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:12:00 GMT

We've had a recent rash of build breaks, so the team has been getting hardcore about requiring a co-worker review all check-ins and do a "buddy build" to ensure that everything is cool before the code gets inserted into the source control system. Well, yesterday we just had a build break where the code was reviewed and buddy built, but the developer evidently made one last edit to one line of code and then checked in without compiling first. So as "punishment" I printed out one of these for the developer's bulletin board.

New Old Group

joshpoley — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:25:00 GMT

Just a quick note to let you all know that I moved back over to the Xbox platform team today (the operating system and such). I will be fulfilling a different role, but it will be interesting to see how much of my old responsibilities cascade down to me for legacy reasons (1).

I guess it is a good thing my business cards still say "xbox" (2).

(1) Or how many responsibilities that current owners hope to send my way.

(2) The first letter of Xbox is intentionally left uncapitalized as the cards were printed back before the original Xbox logo was finalized.

The Ninjas Emerge

joshpoley — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:18:00 GMT

If a fellow employee looks me up in the address book, they will be informed that my title is "EMULATION NINJA". Regardless to say, this continues to evoke the common "what's with your title?” questions, especially since the original lore around this topic is quickly fading into obscurity. Interestingly, I've been getting this question a lot recently, so the below history represents a longer version of what I typically reply with:

Back during the development phase of the Xbox 360, someone thought it a good idea if the console was backward compatible, meaning that a customer could drop in an original Xbox game and play it. Unfortunately, the Xbox 360 is wildly different in its hardware compared to the first console. This means that it becomes a very difficult task to enable this functionality. Imagine trying to use your sink's garbage disposal as a wood chipper. Sure the chipper and the disposal unit do similar things, but even the coolest garbage disposal just doesn't have the right hardware to handle something as different as a tree branch.

So, given the extreme technical challenges inherent in this problem, they threw some of the team's greatest developers at the problem. On the inverse side of the coin, I had to throw some of my best / most technical testers at the problem as well. This team of dedicated individuals slaved day and night towards just getting a single game to run at decent frame rates. The lead developer kept a sign by his door which displayed the current frame rate (which for a long time remained in the single digits). Needless to say, this team had to pull out every trick they had plus do some amazing magic in order to meet the launch goals. Fast forwarding to the launch of the Xbox 360, the team surpassed the goals, and enabled users to play around 200 Original Xbox games.

Anyway, back to the address titles. On Wednesday, November 16, 2005 (at 3:47 PM) J Allard sent an email to 16 individuals thanking the team for their work and tireless efforts over the past long months. Near the bottom of this email, he goes on to say (in his standard non-capitalized prose):

you are each officially promoted to the rank of 'emulation ninja' in my book. thanks and congratulations.

Then several days later, the titles started to appear in the corporate address book. At that instant in time, developers, testers, PMs, and even a marketing guy all became unified under one (very cool) title; except, that is, for the dev lead who had the one and only "Lead Emulation Ninja" title.

Now, as people have left or moved around the company, titles invariably change, and people disappear from the database, leaving only a small handful of mysterious employees who still have the address-book title of "Emulation Ninja"...

Social Experiment

joshpoley — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 07:31:00 GMT

So I ran across Michael's post about being "Don't Known" on LinkedIn, which prompted me to try an experiment: I went and invited Michael into my network just to see if he would accept or not based on the extremely minor interaction we had: he referenced me (or rather my title) a couple of years ago on his blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/11/03/941420.aspx)

The result: He accepted. My faith in casual LinkedIn usage has been restored.