Getting Your Boss To Buy Lava Lamps

jarich writes "Mike Clark's blog provides directions and code on how to wire up lava lamps to your build system. When a compile or test fails, the red lava lamp gets switched on... The delay in the lamp heating up gives you a few minutes to fix things before it becomes obvious to co-workers that you broke the build. His example uses CruiseControl but you could easily modify it. Very cool stuff and inexpensive to setup."

Yeah Sure...

[romper]

They'll look great next to the bean-bag chairs and the espresso bar.

I'll ask my boss when he gets back from playing golf with the VC group.

Apple Cube solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Place any lamp on top of one of those hyper-hot undervented Apple G3 Cubes, and in no-time it melts into lava.

/.'ed

[KJE]

I hope they have one hooked up to their webserver...

Workaround...

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

10 Remove Bulb 20 Work at my leisure... 30 Make as many errors as I want... 40 GOTO 20

A Better Mod?

[grunt107]

Wire each builder's seat with a voltage generator. Keep the timer aspect (x minutes/hrs to fix), but add voltage increasers for number of errors detected.
Really bad coders would get lauched like a rail gun 'bullet'.

Instead of Lava Lamps...

[jmcmunn]

I think we should have an air raid siren hooked up to it. Not only would it alert you to a problem, it would also scare the crap out of everyone and wake them up for a nice productive afternoon.

It's either that or electrodes into your chair.

Very Cool, Cat

[ackthpt]

To be smooth, baby, shouldn't you change 'kill' to 'chill', too?

Room 101

[mark0]

Most environments in which I coded would prefer a Room 101 model. A cage is placed on your head. When the build is broken, rats are released into the cage. The time it takes the rats to run down the tunnel and into the cage to eat your face gives you time to fix your mistake.... The lava lamp version sounds double-plus good.

Conficting reports

[happyfrogcow]

So you're saying the lava lamp switching on means it's time to fix things, as apposed to taking a kind smoke break?

conflicting reports are rising from the break room.

better idea

[StevenHenderson]

voice of Gilbert Godfrey screaming out "I suck at programming! Fire me!" over and over. That would make you debug before you compile...

Coffee maker

[GraWil]

What about the hack that starts the coffee maker everytime a build fails... it is usually a *long* night when that happens around here.

Slashdot effect....

[Kenja]

Guess the lava lamps just blew up.

firewall mod?

[drmancini]

Wow ... think of a firewall mod with a lava lamp for each open port ... my god!! the lava is boiling ... hackers coming in!!!

Re:A Better Mod?

[antifoidulus]

I can just see the police reports now:
Cause of death: missing }

Re:cool, but...

[romper]

Dude... it's about getting your boss to buy useless crap for your office, not about productivity.

It'll go nicely with my nerf guns, huge pile of empty soda cans and my blacklight-lit office!

Er, wait, I don't live in the college dorms anymore. Nevermind.

Re:/.'ed

[AnswerIs42]

Lava Lamp color codes:

Off = No Bugs
Yellow Lamp = Warnings
Red Lamp = Broken Code
Exploding Lamp = Got linked off of /.

Seems counterproductive

[LeahofRivendell]

I would definitely write bad code on purpose with this set up just to watch the lava.

Low Tech Works

[kcdoodle]

We had the problem of concurrent users locking up a tape drive.
We tried a white board, we tried a sign in/out sheet, it got so bad that we held a meeting and the manager decided we would use the ownership of a certain file to show who was allowed to control the tape drive.
The same manager broke his own rule immediately after the meeting.
My solution was the one that worked.
We used a really cheesy Mardi Gras necklace. Who ever had the necklace in their possession was allowed to access the tape drive. We never had a problem after that.
If you left the necklace on your desk it was perfectly okay for someone else to steal it. If you wore the cheesy thing around your neck, everyone knew you were using the tape drive.

Sometime low tech is easier, more reliable and best of all, funnier.

I live the greatest adventure anyone could wish for. - Tosk the Hunted

More practical

[spidergoat2]

Would be a beer cooler. If your code/project/whatever works, beer gets cold. If it fails, beer gets warm. That's real incentive. Ur, except in England.

Virtual lava-lamps.

[mikael]

We've got a similar system, but it uses the lava-lamp screen saver.

If the keyboard or other input device isn't used within five minutes, a lava-lamp appears on screen.
That way, we can tell if someone hasn't been working within the past five minutes.

Personally, I prefer the futuristic virtual Lava Lamp office, where you're cubicle rises and falls according to how productive you have been.

He should have made one for webservers

[digitalgimpus]

He should have made one for webservers when the apache process hangs.

His datacenter would be groovy right now.

Re:Low Tech Works

[Anonymous Coward]

Did coworkers flash each other when they needed a new volume mounted?

Re:Yeah Sure...

[Maestro4k]

• They'll look great next to the bean-bag chairs and the espresso bar.

For full effect you should put a disco ball on the ceiling of the conference room and have polyester fridays.

Re:Low Tech Works

[QuijiboIsAWord]

And best of all, was the people shouting "Hey Steve, show us your T*TS!"

Re:Room 101

[Anonymous Coward]

So, hot lava-lamps will be placed under the rat's feetsies?

Re:cool, but...

[nizo]

Once the lavalamp works, you should be able to upgrade to shock collars for all the developers pretty easily. Talk about incentive to not screw up. After this upgrade plastic covers for everyone's chair might not be a bad idea either.

Lava lamps are supposed to be soothing man.

[edunbar93]

Leave it to corporate America to find a way to make Lava Lamps something to stress out about.

Break time

[ro_coyote]

Don't forget the sticks of pot and discount snack machine, so our fellow techies can mellow out after a stressful rush of fixing things in a hurry. (For medical reasons, I assure you.... honest!!)

Re:cool, but...

[Smitty825]

I can see how it could make you more productive...you could have it lite up green whenever /. is not throwing up 503 errors :-)

Re:Instead of Lava Lamps...

[glpierce]

I like the idea of the classic movie defcon alert - main lights go down, red flashing lights and siren come on, loop of calm female voice stating "The build is down" comes on over loudspeakers.

Re:Workaround...

[Anonymous Coward]

or
10 cut cord
20 attach hot wire to the left testical of the hot head who put these in the office.
30 write bad code
40 compile
50 GOTO a new job

But will it light the bong for me?

[Wile_E_Peyote]

This would be more useful, if it lit up a bowl at 4:20 if the green lamp was going.

Hmmm... All I need is an automated valve and a mini blowtorch...

W.E.P.

Re:0mg j00 m4d3 t3h M1cr0$0ft j0k3!!!

[StalinsNotDead]

Knock, Knock.

Who's There?

Microsoft.

Microsoft who?

Microsoft sucks.

Re:Apple Cube solution

[ggvaidya]

However, IIRC a lava lamp works with just a 40W bulb. With some of the latest CPUs throwing off >200W of heat, you might need a whole row of lava lamps on top of the machine. Maybe the entire side of the case could be filled with gloop and made into a wall of lava.

Wow ... the iLamp ;).

Re:nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Help! lp0 on fire!

Re:Instead of Lava Lamps...

[lizzardo]

I'd go for Strong Bad singing "The System is Down" instead, but the red flashing lights would be cool.

It's better the other way ;)

[mystran]

Indeed. If you do that, everybody starts breaking builds just to turn the damn lamp on. Better make it so that when a build breaks, the lamp get's turned OFF so people get angry from not being able to watch it. That way nobody dares to break the build, and somebody does, other people might even come to help fix it, so they can continue their trip^H^H^H^Hwork with proper lighting..

Improved terror threat level

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone call Tom Ridge quick and tell him to get 5 colored lava lamps: red, orange, yellow, blue and green (may be able to hold off on the green for a while). Hook it up and let it rip

I think that the public might be more receptive to a terror threat level from a lava lamp- be on the alert for suspicious activities but, hey man, don't get stressed out about it....

Well... you can always...

[unikron]

Get your boss to buy Java Lamps :D

Re:Room 101

[autophile]

When the build is broken, rats are released into the cage. The time it takes the rats to run down the tunnel and into the cage to eat your face gives you time to fix your mistake....

Better make sure you specify wild rats. If they were fancy rats, they'd probably just lick your nose or snuffle in your ear or something. Then you might want to break the build on purpose just for giggles.

--Rob

Re:Room 101

[SmittyTheBold]

Exactly. I sit here thinking, "Oh, it's time to let the ratties out to play! Let's break the build!"

Re:Disco?

[damien_kane]

[insert obligatory Disco Stu reference here]

Why? Didn't you get the memo? Disco Stu doesn't advertise...

Reminds me of Dilbert's "lost token"

[Chemisor]

> Who ever had the necklace in their possession was
> allowed to access the tape drive.

Reminds me of an old Dilbert cartoon:

Dilbert: (holding a cable) we have a token ring network.
Boss: So why is it not working?
Dilbert: the token fell out. It must be somewhere in this room...
Boss: (gets on his knees to search)

Re:Yeah Sure...

[prell]

What the practice of software development really needs is some way to assign blame to people and keep them under pressure to get things right. Right?

Hooking a computer up to a lava lamp is neat (however not as cool as the Ambient Orb [ambientdevices.com]), but treating programmers like Pavlovian dogs is ridiculous.

Re:Yeah Sure...

[SatanicPuppy]

In professional radio, they always have lights hooked up to the phone line, because, obviously, it would sound like shit to have the phone suddenly ringing when you're on the air.

My boss had a thing with people not answering the phone, so the phone light moved from being a modified desk lamp, to being a strobe light, to being two strobe lights, to being two strobe lights and a red rotating police light.

All this being said, and since I know for a fact its a pretty easy electrical hack, why stop with a silly lava lamp? If my old General Manager was in IT these days, a failed build would result in a temporarily blind and deaf dev team, and an office space that would occasionally have the lighting and decible range of a metal concert.

Re:Apple Cube solution

[shepmaster]

Do you mean to say: "A beowulf cluster of lava lamps"? :)

I, for one, hail our new lava-lamp overlords.

Only if we do it Enterprise style!

[Anonymous Coward]

The project manager will sit in a replica USS Enterprise Captain's Chair (Kirk style).

The build officer will sit behind him at the "Build Station" inspecting CVS commits through a binocular microscope feed.

Ensign, set course for compliance and engage at gcc factor -O3!

And we must not forget this last one. Attractive young females wearing short skirts will deliver messages and coffee to the bridge, and generally stand around looking hot.

Note to self: corporate work sucks donkey balls.