Brad Rees

Apparently our dev team gets angry if weddings are mentioned. Don’t believe me? Well let me explain.

In February and March 2008 I took some time off to visit Australia as I was going to attend a few weddings. On my return my desk had been covered in aluminium foil. Actually, to say my desk had been covered in al-foil is a massive understatement. Everything had been wrapped up – the Weetabix in my cereal box, all the loose change in my drawer, the drawer itself, the pens, pen lids and so on.

My desk covered in al-foil March 2008

The pictures don’t fully do it justice, but you get the idea. It took me about a week to unwrap everything, and even now, over 2 years later, I still have my monitor stand and a bowl on my desk as a tribute to the 3 weeks of effort the dev team put in. It was truly epic. I was convinced that this would be the best office prank I would ever see…..

So recently one of our engineers, Steven, took 2 weeks of annual leave. When he was asked why the reply was “just for a holiday and a ski trip” or something similar. He forgot to mention it was for his wedding and honeymoon. Needless to say this riled up the dev team again, and a plan was formed. This one had to be be more epic than the al-foil prank and by a long way.

A group meeting was organised and the details fleshed out. This time construction would be required; we were going to build a wedding chapel on his desk.

Work got under way and even from the start this was going to be huge, so big in fact that wood, nails and tape would be required. We had the frame done by the end of the first week, which was a good start. I was then off to go snowboarding for a week, so that is where I left the project. I had no idea the result be be so grand.

The frame being built here by Jason and Greg

On my return I was greeted with the same sight as Steven when he arrived on Monday morning. A huge 10 foot tall chapel on his desk complete with:

• bell tower
• fresco ceiling with flying spagetti monster artwork
• red carpet for his chair and keyboard
• wedding music from a gift card that plays when his mouse is moved
• illuminated signs for ‘Steve’s Wedding Chapel’
• internal fairy lights
• wedding car cans on his chair
• blinkbox-themed stained glass windows
• custom Slogfather artwork made from one of the wedding pictures (Steven’s last name is Sloggett)

and the list goes on. I’ll let the pictures to the rest of the talking, however Jodie has more info on the chapel construction here.

The view from my desk

Front view with stained glass window

Office gathers around to give Steve a wedding gift

The Slogfather poster

Chapel Sign - usually illuminated

The Spagetti Monster Fresco

Recently blinkbox pushed a new release of the site onto the live environment which adds a number of quite cool features that we have been working on over the last few months. As the UI lead engineer I’m quite excited by these so I thought I would share.

Perhaps my favourite change is that now any of the free movies or TV icons have a ‘Free’ overlay applied to them automatically. This is great at calling out how much free content we have, which is actually quite a lot now (loving the snowboarding titles we have)! We also are using the same system for showing off trailers, in case you notice the similarity. Additionally for trailer titles we also show the date they are to be released in the cinemas, or if they are currently showing, underneath the player (for example Avatar).

Free titles shown with a blue overlay

For those wanting more than free content we have a number of improvements for purchasing our premium content. Firstly the browse catalogue now supports price filters, which is quite handy for finding cheap flicks. Secondly we now have box sets and bundles – so you can buy a whole TV season or a movie bundle (Godfather Trilogy perhaps?). And lastly we are now securely storing credit card details for repeat purchases, much like Amazon. Using this I think you can go from browsing to watching in under a minute if the title is available for streaming – which is much quicker than trekking to the local rental store.

We have also updated the Games area and added a new video jigsaw. This is good fun on the easy a medium skills, although the hard setting can take a little while – you’ve been warned. All the current competitions are now listed on a dedicated competition page for all the competition junkies.

Last but by no means least is the member referral system – pass on your invite code after a purchase and you’ll get £1, while your mates will get £5 credit each! That is more than enough for even the latest rentals. I think this is a great deal for everyone so get it while it’s hot.