The Cost …

I’m typing this on my mobile, so it may become an article in parts, because difficult to do justice, tricky to insert illustrations. For me, anyway.

Like have you noticed how on a mobile you can only “insert” images by tacking them on at the bottom of the article?

Just read an article about Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of emailing, on Facebook. Link below. Written in the OMGA! style, punctuated with runs of short sentences that try to wring drama out of every word.

Bet you tripped over OMGA! Just invented it, of course. That ever spreading style needs a name … I’m sick of reading a three hundred word blurb padded out to a ten paragraph drama. Oh My Giddy Aunt!

Howver, I was going to try and find out what a thousand words of fluff costs us. Back in the days of typesetting … you might’ve read about it … how each little brass letter was laboriously set into a frame, the frame set in a press, all the frames inked, paper laid over the frames and then the press screwed down. That was printing back in the 1800s.

You could almost see the cost per letter , and you can understand then why the newspapers then had maybe four pages, close typed columns, barely and illistrations. Every word counted.

Now? All of that is invisible.

Wow! I’m amazed I could even get this image! It’s from Wikipedia, as good an image of the laborious process as can be found …

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Movable_type&wprov=rarw1

Bosley’s Builders, 20

Boz leaves Tim in charge, seen here getting Ms Bee’s opinion on the coming changes … read Part 20 here

Mongrel, 30

The bamboo grove I was thinking of when I wrote this chapter, looks just like this … though I did shift it a bit. There’s that bit of land by the creek near Azalea Bridge, across the water from Mullum High School. A lovely sunny spot in the afternoon. …

30. Rita de Heer, Mongrel, 30 Download

Bosley’s Builders, 19

Nin gives Boz an idea and Boz goes away to follow it up … New installment here

Mongrel, 29

Opening a can of worms here, I think. Or I should say I’m opening a kennel of cyber and or robotic dogs? There’s more of the latter in the real world than the former who still appear to be creatures of fantasy.

This image from a site selling actual, friendly, robotic dogs. https://keyirobot.com/blogs/buying-guide/top-5-electronic-dogs-that-are-just-like-the-real-thing? Anyway, they don’t call them robotic dogs, these are electronic dogs.

That’s to distinguish them from the nasty headless robotic dogs that shoot people, the so-called cyber dogs clearing mines, and all the other industrial type jobs they’ve been applied to. Dogs in name and that’s all.

I told you, a can of worms. But the pack below is how I imagined the cyber dogs in this chapter. And they definitely cannot be classed with electronic dogs.

29. Rita de Heer, Mongrel Download

Mongrel, 27 & 28

27. Rita de Heer, Mongrel Download

This image is from Live Science … is to help you imagine how the tree bug in Tardi started to grow roots all along his side when he lay in the creek. (Chapter 28)