Author: Rita de Heer

Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.

Mongrel, 31

Three punt pole shoes of cast aluminium, with a screw into the wooden pole, swallow tail in varying states of wear By Cmglee – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50325485

“The basic technique of punting is to shove the boat along with a pole by pushing directly on the bed of the river or lake. In the 1870s, when punting for pleasure first became popular, the normal approach was for the passengers to sit at the stern on cushions placed against the till, and for the punter to have the run of the rest of the boat. The punter started at the bow, planted the pole, and then walked towards the stern, shoving the punt forwards. This is known as “running” the punt. It was the normal technique used to move heavy fishing punts. As pleasure punts became lighter, it became more usual for the punter to stand still – normally towards the stern – while shoving. This is called “pricking” the punt. Pricking has the advantages that the punter is less likely to walk off the end of the punt inadvertently, and that more of the punt can be used to carry passengers.[6 from Wikipedia.

31. Rita de Heer, MongrelDownload

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.

Type setting

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

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, MongrelDownload