(no subject)

In the beginning, $oldThing exists and does something well. Until...

$newThing: Hey look, we have a shiny new thing!

$newUsers: Ooh, shiny!

$newUsers: *flock to $newThing*

$oldThing: Hmm, we're not getting new users these days. I know! We need to be more like $newThing!

$oldThing: *Changes everything*

$newUsers: *Continue flocking to $newThing, because that's what everyone else is using*

$oldUsers: *Abandon $oldThing, because it no longer does what it used to do*

$oldThing: Why are we losing users instead of gaining them?


For $newThing and $oldThing think, say, Chrome and Firefox, or Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr and everything that isn't Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr.

(no subject)

Today's amusing moment while out on a stroll along the creek is managing to end up on both sides of a locked gate. And no, I'm not talking about a simple farmer's gate or suchlike, but one in a tall chicken-wire and barbed-wire fence.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is - one side is the rec next to the creek, and the other side is a small private car park off a residential street which is also blocked from the creek by the same fence.

It reminded me of some of my exploration around university, with the odd inexplicably locked door separating two otherwise-accessible areas. Or when after emerging from a sequence of particularly twisty turny corridors I'd glance back at a door I'd just come through to sometimes find it plastered with "keep out" signs (which in one or two cases warned of an embarrassing demise for the unwary - the corridor next to the NMR scanner comes to mind). This is despite not having seen any such signs facing the direction I was going. Did this mean some corridors were only dangerous if entered from a certain direction?