Wading the Shelves

Post-Script: Really, since acquiring the iPad, several years ago (or has it acquired me?), I've not been nearly as voracious a reader of books as before. Hopefully that will change, as you can't beat the price of renting books for "free," the only issue being availability.

Should you be interested, here's a link to the Tony Hillerman Library's website, on which is a tribute page describing the writing career of this famed novelist of southwestern mysteries.

In this piece I mentioned Hoffmantown Shopping Center, another place I used to hang out at, due to Campbell Pharmacy (who had a good soda fountain) and Pen & Pad Stationary. Alas, the pharmacy is long gone, but Pen & Pad are still in business. I've been buying from them since my teen years.

Typecast via Underwood Universal. I haven't put the Hermes Rocket to bed in the closet, it's sitting besides the Underwood, but I wanted to get another machine in rotational use. A fine typer it is, with a great touch. Photo via Lumix G5.

Errata: 2nd to last paragraph should read "affected."

Also, my choice of the word "stimuli" was a last-minute change from the original draft's "stimulation," brought about by running out of space on that line and, not wanting to start another, saw that the shorter word would fit at the end of the line.

These are the kinds of structural problems one encounters when typing for final output, such as in typecasting, where the physical layout of the words matters to the finished product. Secretaries of old had to manage these kinds of changes as a matter of routine, but we've now been spoiled by three decades or more of word processors doing the physical letter arranging for us.

2nd to last line should read "the time spend reading..."

(Parenthetical thought: having to spend an extra few paragraphs of electronic text to provide error-corrections of the original typecast image serves to illustrate the intrinsic inefficiency of typecasting as a means of conveying text across the Internet - but which therefore reminds one that typecasting isn't about efficiency, per se, but rather that there's more information being conveyed than the content of the writing contained herein. There's also the appearance of the paper, the imprint of the machine onto the paper, the quality and color or ribbon ink, the condition of the particular machine, etc. There's more here than mere writing itself, which is the whole point of typecasting.

A typical typecast scan of mine, uploaded to Flickr at 800 pixels wide, will be around 800kb-1Mb in file size. That represents a lot of ASCII text, in comparison. Yet that hypothetical ASCII text will convey nothing of the character of the typewriter being discussed. In this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words!)