Chris Marlow’s Diary

Wednesday 12th March, 2008

6:30 am. Alarm goes off, I barely wake up and try to convince myself getting out of bed and doing some exercise is a good idea.

6:35 am. Roll out of bed and start doing some crunches.

6:44 am. My two children wake up and decide to join in my exercises by sitting on me!

6:45 am. Abandon exercises for a quick shower

7:15 am. Dressed and ready for breakfast. Get the kiddies milk and cereal, and a bowl of chopped apple and cereal for me. OJ and peppermint tea made for me and the missus. Quick check of the email at home.

8:40 am. Finally manage to get all the kids fed, dressed and ready for school. Kisses all round and then off to work in the BMW. A 15 minute drive through the heavy traffic, up the A5 then in to the back of beyond – Twycross. Lots of fields and the occasional tractor (grrr).

8:55 am. Arrive at work. Pick up some OJ and Perrier water. Say Hi to the lads in the Multiplayer programming department of Banjo, in the top floor of one of Rare’s barns, where I am based. I find it useful in my current line of work as a Build Lab engineer to have my finger close to the pulse of a team. You get to see the tools in action, and overhear all the moans that would not normally make it back to you! Have a quick look on Facebook to see who poked me, and how many photos I got outbid on. Apparently I am one of the sexiest people on Facebook. Nice, and undoubtedly sincere. I’m sure I am the only person in the world who is told that. I really must uninstall some of these apps!

9:00 am. Read through and process the overnight emails on the work email address. Email out any useful links to various distribution groups at Rare. “Stuff I found at Lunch” for general nonsense, “Rare .NET discussion group” for all things C# and .NET (my bread and butter these days), and “Rare – Build” to badger my team mates.

9:30 am. Start working through my bug/feature list. Today we are preparing a new release of the Build Lab tools, the first one in three months, so there is lots of work to do. We have just implemented a few big new features, and rewritten from scratch one of the major tools used by the teams, so lots to go wrong, but lots of good stuff for the teams to use when it is rolled out. As I spot problems and snags with the tools, I either fix them on the spot or forward bug reports to the rest of my team.

9:45 am. Get emailed by someone in the company who has a problem updating to a new version of their team’s game. Manage to sort it out remotely by talking them through the work around using communicator – an internal version of MSN. Many problems can be sorted out this way. We strive to make it so that no-one ever needs to call out support, or have any problems as most tasks are automated by us. This isn’t always the case!

9:50 am. Lots of work done on tidying up the tools. They are all written in C# and are used to automate day to day tasks such as getting the latest working version of the game, managing code and asset check ins, and performing verification tests on submitted code. It all goes towards ensuring each team’s products are always in a good state. Our tools help to monitor the pulse of a project.

10:30 am. Some of the RSS feeds I monitor have talked about some cool new tech I think may be useful. I spend some time researching it on the net, downloading demos and trying it out. I email the findings to the rest of the team.

11:00 am. I get called over to fix a problem on a new machine being set up. I walk over to the other side of the building to where our Art Asset Team are based, picking up a can of Diet Coke on the way. The atmosphere is always relaxed and friendly over there, so it is sometimes fun to do support in person. I fix the setup problems whilst chatting with the artists. As I used to be a lead programmer before moving to the Build Lab, I have worked with many of the artists before.

11:15 am. Have an argument (sorry, I mean a discussion) over the merits of Firefox over IE7 + IE7Pro with other people in the room, and anyone else who will listen. This happens a lot, over various geeky topics, and is very good natured, if sometimes violent!

11:30 am. After fixing the problems downstairs, I pop upstairs to where STG, Rare’s Shared Technology Group are situated, and where the rest of the Build Lab are based. We chat about some of the things that were emailed about, throw around some ideas and discuss the quality of the current tools as we prepare to release them.

12:00 am. Lunch time! We head down to the canteen, where it is Tiffin Wednesday. Curry day! Tuck in to an interesting mixture of dall and curry, followed by a nice healthy pot of fruit salad. We sit on large tables where developers all mix and chat about various inanities of the day, or watch the news on the TV’s, or stare nervously at the raucous table of girls in the corner (only kidding they are lovely really – and only bite a little if you sit with them!)

12:30 am. Finish lunch and head out to one of the recreation areas for a game of table tennis. There are usually 6 to 8 of us getting sweaty on a couple of tables. After some hot ball action, I am ready to face the afternoon!

1:00 pm. Back at my desk, suitably buzzing with adrenaline and Coke provided caffeine. Rejuvenated, I get back to fixing bugs with gusto.

1:15 pm. Groan and try to ignore yet another discussion about some subtle aspect of World of Warcraft. Quests... blah, blah... PVP is great... blah, blah... 70 Mage... blah, blah... Argh!

1:30 pm. Walk up to the build lab to see how the integration of the new version is going. We decide it is looking good, and tag it ready for release to the teams.

2:00 pm. Head back down to the Banjo barn to start choosing guinea pigs to take the first drop of the new tools. Pick up another Coke on the way. Man, I need to stop drinking that stuff! It can’t be good for me.

2:15 pm. Find the first few niggles with the new version, which always appear when out in “the wild”. Tom, my fellow Build Lab engineer, nips back to fix them and create a new version for roll out.

3:30 pm. Start rolling out the tools to more people. Watch them weep with joy as they gain the benefit of all our new tool features! (I may have made that bit up...)

4:00 pm. Notice an interesting article mentioned in an RSS feed I have in Outlook. Make a note of it to research more later.

5:00 pm. Enough people now have taken the version for us to confidently leave it to be updated by itself. Sit down for a cup of peppermint tea. Update my all important Facebook status. Do a bit of research on that article I saw earlier. Looks like it has potential.

5:15 pm. With the new release of the tools out of the way, I can get back to implementing new features for the next release.

6:15 pm. Look at watch and wonder where the hell that last hour went! Decide to head home before my wife rips my knackers off! Say goodnight to the remaining people in the office, who all have their heads down and are playing World of Warcraft.

6:30 pm. Home in time to bath the kiddies, read them their books and tuck them in to bed.

7:00 pm. Dinner. Watch TV. Chill out.