I've been an agent here since about 2001 and Tom (Nemesis) was already here when I got here.

One thing I always noticed about Tom's posts was that he had a real knack and talent for finding little pictures to illustrate his posts.

It's a bunch of extra work to do this and I appreciated it. As someone who spends a lot of time surfing the net and reading I have noticed that the inclusion of a few images goes a long way to reducing the fatigue of reading on a screen. It's sort of analogous to the simple common act of breaking text into paragraphs (which on the net usually includes inserting a single blank line). It breaks up what would otherwise be a giant mass of words into more manageable chunks.

[To see what I mean try taking a long text file and removing all the paragraph formatting. It becomes almost unreadable. It is difficult to keep your place. Imagine trying to read a whole novel this way! Paragraphs were a great invention!]

Tom always included some little relevant images to illustrate his ideas.

Today I followed his suggestion and went to look at his blog. What I found was just what I should have expected: a veritable compilation of interesting and often funny images illustrating whatever he is talking about. It is worth a visit just to view all the images he has collected.

Tom's blog is here:
http://ttbraun.blogspot.com/

Seeing all this I now understand why Tom does not post here as much as he did in the beginning: he has been pouring his creative efforts into his blogs.

I'm glad Tom posted here today as it led me to think through all of the above. It's a bit more effort to include illustrations but it's a gift to the reader to break up a mass of text into visible chunks.

After all, a picture is worth ...