Guerrilla Stickers Stick It to the London Tube

It looks like the guerrilla subversive spirit of GCaP tactics has reached across The Pond to the London Underground in the form of patron-placed alternative signage.

The small irony here is that I refer to the London Tube map in my GCaP classes as a paradigm for performance models:

2.4 More Like The Map Than The Metro

When I was writing the GCaP book, I asked the London tube authority for permission to use their classically dense map. In incredible bout of British bureaucratic officiousness, they offered the tube map at £100 per impression—an offer my publisher was only too keen to refuse. Hence, the map you see on p. 9 of the GCaP book is that of BART, an authority who were pleased to see it further advertised by a taxpayer, as long as it was sourced—an offer my publisher was only too happy abide by.

Human Metro Map and Performance Management

In my Guerrilla classes, I like to compare making a computer performance model (e.g., in PDQ) with model train construction. In the latter case, the goal is to make a scaled replica that includes as much realistism as possible (Aside: I'm assuming this is true, since I have no interest in making model trains). The goal for a performance model is the exact opposite, viz., to throw away as much detail as possible, while still maintaining the essential performance characteristics of the real computer system.

This notion leads to Guerrilla Mantra 2.4:

A performance model is more like a map of a metro rail system than a scaled replica of the metro railway.