A Cartesian Analysis of My Sticky Below Window Area.

A question from myself and my father in law:

Facts

1. My car, 7 years ago, had company decals on both front doors.
2. Just over a month ago I tried taking them off. 
3. The first one came off a breeze, in one go. I think I even have it in my shed. A decal intacticus.
4. The second one, I tried to take off right afterwards.
   1. It was a disaster.
      1. It would not come off except in tiny bits.
         1. Even after trying:
            1. WD40
            2. Furniture polish
            3. Elbow grease
5. The second, the passengers side decal, remains in a state that can only be described as a disappointing attachment.

1. Questions about the above state of affairs:
1. How is it possible that two identical decals can have two radically different dis-adhesions?

Our speculations and deductions:

• The Cause Of Difference must must occur in time.
• The COD can be:
  • Formative
    • When decal P was made, decal D was made differently with regard to its adhesion.
  • Applicative:
    • Decal P was applied differently to decal D:
      • Perhaps the technician had a cup of tea before the driver's side, and after the passenger side, and this delay changed the properties of the glue.
  • Instantiative:
    • The COD is caused by change in the instances after application.
    • These changes can be:
      • Environmental:
      • Perhaps one side gets more weathering from wind or sun.
      • Internal:
      • Perhaps one side gets more heat from the engine than the other.
  • The domain of the COD is most probably to do with heat.
    • As opposed to:
      • Electrical
      • Aerodynamic
      • Gosh, what else?

Answers on an e-postcard please....

The Death of Google Reader reminds me of the Death of Newsraider.

A long time ago in a development house, far, far away we were working hard on our cross-platform application called "NewsRaider". It was an advanced program that would go to news websites, find the unread articles, strip them of all the adverts, junk and irrelevancies and then output them to a bespoke application on a handheld, desktop, PDA and website. In its time NewsRaider (published by Proporta), was pretty advanced and, for a while, it gained that popularity of momentum that our TomeRaider app had for many years, at least in SW lifespan terms. We were proud of it.

Then...

I remember the day well. I was in the office in Columbo when Dilan, the director and lead coder, called me over and said, to paraphrase, "look at this, this kills NewsRaider, doesn't it?"

What We were looking at was Google's Brand new "Reader" website. Dilan was right, the web based approach meant that our bespoke install based approach, no matter how innovative, couldn't compete with great free gifts in the cloud..  Pretty much there and then, we realised the game was up, for "Newsraider." Another one bites the dust(this principle gives software development a vibrancy that most wouldn't expect).

I loved Google Reader as much as a grown man can love a web-based news aggregator, and with no bitterness, I was an avid user, right from the start. In many ways, I felt its greatest fan, for many years. 

Today(ish), Google Reader itself got disinterized by Google. That which creates, also destroys. The cause of the anhiliation of the loved newsaggreation remains largley unspecified. Google Reader has joined Newsraider and Diggfeeder in the place where dead software goes, and there is a mystery as to the motive, to my mind.

Like the Mccafees, I am not bitter. But I am a little surprised.

Tech On Down

Planned Disergonomics

Ergonomics is the study/practice/art that sees the harmonics and aims to optimise them. In chairs, this would be comfort, space, physiological... etc. In a computer program it would be memory use, processor use, interface efficiency, portability, and so on.

If something is "disergonomic" then it negativises the the ergonomics of a system (ergonomics is an architectonic(system) property). Traditionally, diserganomics come about due to bad design or bad implementation skills, but there is a demonstrable sense in which diserganomics has been, and will be, intentional, that is, planned diserganomics.:

Consider the Godaddy Control Panel: you don't need to have seen the GCP to be able to understand the planned diserganomics of the GCP. It is designed not to be ergonomic but to be disergonomic; it approaches maximally awkward - it wants you to spend as much of your eye-time on its adverts and upsells as is ergonomically possible. That is business rational (Duh!), but it means that the Godaddy customers get their precious time wasted.