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."

Comments

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.

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.

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.

Re:Apple Cube solution

[Waffle Iron]

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

That might not be a bad idea for a casemod on some of the latest P4s. Run a heat pipe from the CPU over to a lava lamp.

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.

/.'ed

[KJE]

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

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.

Re:A Better Mod?

[antifoidulus]

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

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

Re:X10 Hardware?!

[Jadsky]

X-10 hardware and X10.com are not the same thing. The former is hardware based on a protocol that was invented in the early 70s. The latter is a company that just happens to make technology based on the protocol.

One doesn't necessarily have to come from the other, and it's a shame that the vendor has ruined a perfectly useful technology, even shaming it doubly by making poor-quality electronics.

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.

Here's a link that works:

[AndyHunt]

Very funny, guys. We weren't expecting to get Slashdotted today. Try www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/pa/pa.html and it ought to work a little better for you.

-- /\ndy