How they take you on

Websites.  A booming business.

Websites bring you business.  But most of all they bring business to the people who construct, update and maintain them.

Let’s say you run a holiday place at the sea.  Now, your speciality is to run the place, make the guests comfortable, make sure everything is in place and well-kept, etc.  You’re not in the web business.

Someone suggests that you get a website, and you agree.  After all people would like to book online.  It ought to bring some business.  (Never mind that the current telephone booking system works perfectly and you have a full house every season.)

This clever whizz-kid then proceeds to design you a website for – are you sitting down – R12 000.  You grind your teeth and pay it.  It’s more than you anticipated.  The whizz proceeds to upload the 5-page wonder site for you, and tells you it’s R500 for domain registration and R600 per month for maintenance.  Your guesthouse is doing really well so you heave a sigh and add this to your list of expenses, and faithfully pay it every month (and the domain renewal yearly) for the next 5 years.  It is after all a tax deductible as it is a business expense.

(Let’s not go into what tax deductibles actually save you – less than you think!)

Ok, I’m going to flake this whole thing open.

The whizz put up a 5-page wonder (or even a 3-page site) in Yoomla, Wix or WordPress.  Something you could have done yourself for free, with a bit of experimenting.  The whizz probably does lots of these and wouldn’t have taken more than one, maybe two hours to put up your site – if he’s inexperienced.  In fact an experienced programmer can do this in 2 – 3 hours in source code, and takes 15 – 20 minutes in drag-and-drop, most of which time is spent resizing your logo in GIMP.

Is it worth R12 000?

Then he paid for the domain.  Ok.  A domain is not that expensive.  The priciest of the lot, the .com, cost around R100.  Not R500 as he led you to believe.  A 400% markup.  Easy money.

To have the site hosted:  A holiday place would need a contact page and potentially a booking form.  You wouldn’t want to pay online, so e-commerce is not indicated.  Neither would you need logins and accounts – your office handles this paperwork, don’t throw it on the web.  So a simple hosting plan is good enough.

There are even places that host for free, as long as you allow their adwords on your site.  But:  Don’t do that, it cheapens a site.  If you are running a real business (as you are with that holiday place), do pay the R30 per month it costs to stay online.

R30.  Not R600.  That is a 1900% mark-up.  Every month; for the 3 minutes it takes to pay one more account of R30.

As you see, it’s ridiculous.

Item	What it costs (if you do it yourself)	What the kid charges	How long it took him (“labour”)
Website design	Time and frustration in Yoomla (because you’re inexperienced)	R12 000	15 minutes in Yoomla or Wix2-3 hours in hard-code (but the fewest do that)
Domain name	R100 for .com	R500	5 min
Web hosting (monthly)	R30 for simple site	R600	5min/month

As you see, you’ve been had.

Ask yourself too:  Your old system worked great – with telephone bookings.  How much extra business did the website bring you?  Did it even pay for itself?

Caveat emptor!

The time and frustration may make it worth your while to pay someone to do it for you after all.  The best would be to pay a graphic designer, and specifically one who will charge you per hour.

1) They have an amazing eye for what looks nice

2) They tend to have experience and will be using Yoomla or Wix anyway.  But your product will truly look good; you’re paying for the professional eye.

3) It’s not their main income so they are unlikely to want to rip you off on maintenance and hosting.  They are more likely to get the “job” over with and then hand the reigns to you, so that you pay for your own hosting and domain name.

Of course, if you have a business in which your site will need to be updated regularly (such as for instance, a shoe shop), you’ll be best off if you find a young designer who is willing to train you to do the updates yourself.  Uploading images and price tags is time-consuming, frustrating admin work and few web designers want it – unless they’ll be charging you R2000 for every update.

Don’t be afraid, it isn’t more complicated than learning to blog!

Eragon

Eragon – C. Paolini

 

Just finished reading Eragon.

The book has been on my reading list for a looong time, last not least because it intrigued me that it was written by a teenager.

Eragon is the first of a series.  Now, there are various ways authors approach series; there is the loose-standing Disc-world “series” by Terry Pratchett where every book is a complete, separate story; there are series such as the ones by Jean M Auel, once again each book more or less stand-alone but connected by a storyline that ties over; and then there are series where a book cannot stand alone.

This is one of those.

I had hoped it would be more in the line of Ann McCaffrey (we’ve been so spoilt, we readers from the 80′s).  Her “Pern” series also deals with dragonriders, but each book stands more or less alone.  If you’ve read one, you can go for two years, then pick up the next and it will be enough of a stand-alone that you can read it on its own.  Because people who are in the middle of their lives, and especially those who drive a business after hours, after working normal hours every day, and then still try to find time to squeeze in writing, generally don’t have all that much time to read.

If it’s a series, like Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, then the pull towards the next book needs to be incredibly strong at the end of the first book (and each one after).  This means of course that the pull within the book itself must be like an ocean current coming too close to the swimming beach – dragging you along inexorably, unable to fight free of it.

Imagery, such as the quaint little house of the Gaffer in the quaint little town of Mousehole (which does btw exist, in Scotland) in the book “The Little Country” by Charles de Lint, helps put the reader inside the story.  Paolini does imagery quite well:  The “Spine” near the original village, Carvahall, retains something mysterious (mainly because people are superstitious of it).

It’s not a bad read.  If I’d bought it for myself, I’d have passed it onto my daughter (in fact I bought it for her, and the excitement and the way she adored the read, were great rewards).

As classic fantasy goes, maybe I’m a bit jaded and bored of the genre.  Ann McCaffrey sort of said-it-all concerning dragon riders.  Paolini didn’t really add much new.  His “Urgals” remind me of something between Tolkien’s Orcs (though these have horns) and the Minotaurs of Spellforce (the game).  The elf is (unlike Pratchett’s elves in “Lords and Ladies”) vividly beautiful; it’s what we expect from  the High Elves, Tolkien already overdid that.  Then there is the trek, first through the plane, then through the desert.  Once again I’m disadvantaged by having read the epic Western books by the German author Karl May.  He “did” the desert and the prairie masterfully, you hear the wind ripple through those grasses or get sand blown in your eye.  As for the dwarf place:  Very nicely done; though it doesn’t really touch on Barad-Dur and similar Tolkienish setups.  The Dwarves are just a wee bit too human and not quirkishly dwarfish enough.  (The same goes for that elf.)

I’ll say it again, we readers of the 80′s were thoroughly spoilt, so that by now we find books such as Harry Potter and Eragon, a bit of a rehash.  Though I have to add that Harry Potter has Quidditch.  She invented a whole game for her book. But if you read it as one of your first fantasy novels, i.e. before you touch Tolkien, McCaffrey, de Lint, Karl May, or Marion Zimmer-Bradley, you’ll find it a wondrous new world and be agape about the amazing adventures.

I strongly recommend Eragon for your teenage children (or grand-children in some cases).  They will read the whole series, walk in a dwaal for a few days and get thorough enjoyment out of it.

Myself:  I’ve got a better review for a number of other books.

1. The Wind Singer.  (My daughter found it “spooky” – and it is!)  Read it – I’ll say nothing, it’s got everything in it that you’re looking for, except what you expect to find.
2. “Queen of the Witches”.  (A recommended read for the Ark, btw.)  It is really cute, rather funny, over-the-top and very human.  It’s the humanity in this modern Wiccan skit that is so very endearing.
3. Charles de Lint:  ”The Little Country”.  If you haven’t yet read it, do so!  It’s a haunting saga, with dual reality and two storylines unfolding in parallel.  You get as drawn into the politics of the one as the magic of the other.
4. Anything by Marion Zimmer-Bradley – her tomes about historical fantasy give “fantasy” a different slant; but what I especially enjoy is her science-fiction.  Once again it’s the human element.

The list goes on.  And on.  Of my recently-reads, I most enjoyed the antics of “Kaptein Oloff die Seerower”, which is a pirate romp for young teen and preteen boys.  It is fast-moving, action never stops, and despite it being a series of rather thin books, one gets drawn into the stories so much that one needs to read the next on putting down the one.

I also enjoyed the “Hannah Montana” booklets for preteen and teen girls:  Same reasons, they are school stories with a slightly surreal twist, and they are very funny.  I can cut through one in about an hour, but I feel satisfied, as though I’ve read a really good book.

No, I’ll resist the temptation to punt P’kaboo’s books here; you’ll find a bit of everything in them but I shall not mention them here!  You know where to find them.

(M, D, L:  We’re working on our review and book display pages – in our minds, once the concept is formed completely, we’ll implement them.)

 

 

For Colonialist – you’ll know why

Astronomical engineering: a strategy for modifying planetary orbits

D. G. Korycansky, Gregory Laughlin, Fred C. Adams

(Submitted on 7 Feb 2001)

The Sun’s gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth’s biosphere within ~ 1E9 years. If Earth’s orbit migrates outward, however, the biosphere could remain intact over the entire main-sequence lifetime of the Sun. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of engineering such a migration over a long time period. The basic mechanism uses gravitational assists to (in effect) transfer orbital energy from Jupiter to the Earth, and thereby enlarges the orbital radius of Earth. This transfer is accomplished by a suitable intermediate body, either a Kuiper Belt object or a main belt asteroid. The object first encounters Earth during an inward pass on its initial highly elliptical orbit of large (~ 300 AU) semimajor axis. The encounter transfers energy from the object to the Earth in standard gravity-assist fashion by passing close to the leading limb of the planet. The resulting outbound trajectory of the object must cross the orbit of Jupiter; with proper timing, the outbound object encounters Jupiter and picks up the energy it lost to Earth. With small corrections to the trajectory, or additional planetary encounters (e.g., with Saturn), the object can repeat this process over many encounters. To maintain its present flux of solar energy, the Earth must experience roughly one encounter every 6000 years (for an object mass of 1E22 g). We develop the details of this scheme and discuss its ramifications.

Bach, Mendelssohn and Barber

We had the pleasure of playing at a place called the Zambesi Lodge, today.  We were simply invited to rehearse there, seeing that we have a large ensemble going.  And so we did.

What a lovely venue!  I wish I’d taken pictures… my mind wasn’t on blogging.  With some luck we’ll be invited to play there for weddings and functions – birthday parties etc.

We kicked off with the 3rd Brandenburg concerto.  I’m linking to a youtube rendition to give you an artist’s impression – trust me we don’t sound like that yet!  (also we are not an orchestra but a chamber ensemble with 8 players.)

We then tried out a new piece, by a Barber (no not the kind that cuts your hair).  Somehow, some people find something special in it… myself, frankly, it puts me to sleep and the only thing that keeps me awake is the counting and the fact that due to our third violin not being there today I had to pick up her voice as well as mine and play double-stops all the way.  It’s such a slow piece that even with double-stops it really is no challenge.  Hey, but maybe my taste stinks.  I might warm to the piece yet.

The last piece we played, is the Mendelssohn octet.  A truly gorgeous piece of music, I think I posted a Youtube link before, it reminds in places of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by same composer (though I think it is even better).

The people who own the lodge, spoilt us terribly.  When we arrived there was coffee/tea, a la self-help with urn and all.  When we took our break, there were freshly baked scones, and when we finished, cappucino muffins also fresh from the oven.  The lady had made the word “Welcome” and a whole lot of music notes out of white chocolate, for us to eat.  (Which we didn’t, I sometimes really don’t understand this “maturity” thing.  If it had been a young ensemble of twenty-somethings, not a single choc would have survived.)

In short it was wonderful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, misnamed the previous post: Should have been “Pseudoscience”.

The scientific fraud came in about an article I read about nuts.  A team of scientists “finding” that in calorie-controlled diets, the intake of nuts doesn’t cause weight gain (duh, the controlling factor here is the “calorie-controlled”!).  The scientists had been incentivised (funded) by a Tree Nut Foundation (I think, Australian but it can happen in the best of countries) to “find” that nuts don’t cause weight gain.

Completely against anyone’s intuition who’s ever spontaneously started eating and enjoying nuts and suddenly found themselves 6kg heavier.  Yes, it’s the nuts.  Tree nuts, peanuts, regardless.  They contain extremely high amounts of fats.  Plant fats, sure.  Acc. South African dietician Tabitha Hume, it doesn’t matter where you source your dietary fat; how much fat you “source”, matters.  Your liver takes whatever lipid comes along, and turns a lot of it into cholesterol.  Yes, cholesterol is an animal product.  Your very own liver produces it.  So people with high cholesterol shouldn’t only avoid animal fats; they should avoid all fats as far as they can.  This apparently leads to much lowered blood cholesterol levels.  Good ones as well as bad ones.

Do you need cholesterol (why is your liver producing it)?  Yes, you do!  You consist to a large part out of cholesterol, as it forms the most important part of all your cell membranes.  That’s a lot of membrane.  It is also the most common base material in your hormonal household.  Do you need cholesterol?  Yes, of course!

Nuts are in fact a fantastic food source.  Which is probably why St Nicholas is said to have gone around with his huge bag distributing apples and nuts to the poor around Christmas time.  Nuts are prime protein and calorie sources.  They are also “brain food” and have a calming effect on the nervous system.  (From that angle one should maybe try giving ADHD kids nuts on a regular basis?)  They are just not the food of choice if you wish to become / stay skinny!

What baffles me about this vegan site is this:  They are their own worst enemy.  They should sometimes just shut up and let facts speak for themselves!

Fact:  The “First World” has a huge massive obesity problem.

Fact:  Very few vegetarians and vegans manage to be overweight, and that only by a very concerted effort of eating lots of oily food.  Most vegetarians that I’m aware of (and also my brother who is a GP in Canada) are skinny, lean and very healthy.  He complains about them; they are their GP’s worst customers, it’s really annoying how little heart disease they get.

Fact: We eat far more meat and protein (in general, not just animal protein) than we need.  (Ok,  there is another fad around, the Atkins crowd and more recently the “Paleo” crowd who somehow imagines that prehistoric man mainly subsisted on hunting.  Well, humans got pretty good at hunting (“vegetarian” is actually a Sioux word for “bad hunter”).  But the high-protein and ketotic-style diets have their own health side effects, which once again their proponents don’t want to know about.)

Fact:  Sugar is harder than teeth.  (Who ever split a tooth on a candy?  Pretty scary experience, isn’t it?)  Whether it’s the chemical erosion (sugar turns mildly acidic when being digested by our amylase in our saliva – yes, go figure, for what would we have amylase in our mouths if we weren’t supposed to eat and digest sugars?) or whether it’s feeding the plaque bacteria, I wouldn’t be able to tell.  But I disagree with the extremist view that sugar is “poison”.  We were designed to eat, taste, enjoy and digest sugar and get a huge energy boost from it.  Our whole system is rigged towards it.  If we only ever ate fructose or protein, why should we even have insulin?

Sadly however, all is not quite vegan where it comes to health.  There is a growing body of evidence showing that those who incorporated fish in their diet (early on) were the populations where most inventive progress towards civilization was made.  Fish contains the omega 3 fatty acids that are so essential to brain development.  It has been indicated to prevent and/or treat hyperactivity or attention difficulties in children.

But to bring global warming into it, and CO2 levels (honestly, do you know what percentage of air is CO2?  Want to venture a guess?  Want to look it up?  Want to look up in the same go how a genuine greenhouse actually works? … and for how many years, summer after summer and winter after winter, we’ve actually been having global cooling now – why the climate changists now very carefully don’t talk about global warming anymore but about climate change?)  Cows farting will bring on the end of the world?

Ag all this talk about food is just making me hungry!  LOL

Scientific fraud and other entertainment…

Yep, that’s what we’re up against:   The second people cook data and come with arguments you could use as a sieve, you’re up against dogmatism and fundamentalism.

There are some beliefs around in today’s dietary world that are both unprovable (because inaccurate) and vehemently defended.  One of them is that a purely vegan diet is enough for a human to survive and live healthily.

Now:  I won’t argue with the fact that the civilized world has a huge overweight problem.  As long as we derive a lot of our calories from fast-foods steeped in lard and don’t run marathons on a daily basis to burn up those calories, we can expect to pack on weight.  But is going completely vegan the answer?

And most of all:  While I really don’t mind what you eat, please, extend the same courtesy to me!

This website is a compilation of arguments used to try to “convert” people who do include animal products in their diets, into vegans.  Is it a cult?  Well, could’a fooled me…

As you read these I’d like you to think scientifically.  Are these figures accurate?  What do they really mean?  Is there a case going of “cum hoc, ergo procter hoc”?  (That means, for those who like me didn’t know 3 weeks back what it meant:  ”With which, therefore because of which”.  The nicest example to illustrate is the year in which there were so many storks in Germany… and the birthrate soared, too.)

I’d like to hear some pros and cons on the arguments below.

Have fun!

How To Win An Argument With A Meat-Eater

DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA | John Robbins | 09/21/09

Read More: factoids, how to win an argument with a meat-eater, vegetarianism

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• The Hunger Argument
• The Environmental Argument
• The Cancer Argument
• The Cholesterol Argument
• The Natural Resources Argument
• The Antibiotic Argument
• The Pesticide Argument
• The Ethical Argument
• The Survival Argument

“Outsmart him. Outrun him. Outlive him.” – Dave Scott

The Hunger Argument

Number of people worldwide who will die as a result of malnutrition this year: 20 million
Number of people who could be adequately fed using land freed if Americans reduced their intake of meat by 10%:100 million
Percentage of corn grown in the U.S. eaten by people: 20
Percentage of corn grown in the U.S. eaten by livestock: 80
Percentage of oats grown in the U.S. eaten by livestock: 95
Percentage of protein wasted by cycling grain through livestock: 90
How frequently a child dies as a result of malnutrition: every 2.3 seconds
Pounds of potatoes that can be grown on an acre: 40,000
Pounds of beef produced on an acre: 250
Percentage of U.S. farmland devoted to beef production: 56
Pounds of grain and soybeans needed to produce a pound of edible flesh from feedlot beef: 16

The Environmental Argument

Cause of global warming: greenhouse effect
Primary cause of greenhouse effect: carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels
Fossil fuels needed to produce meat-centered diet vs. a meat-free diet: 3 times more
Percentage of U.S. topsoil lost to date: 75
Percentage of U.S. topsoil loss directly related to livestock raising: 85
Number of acres of U.S. forest cleared for cropland to produce meat-centered diet: 260 million
Amount of meat imported to U.S. annually from Central and South America: 300,000,000 pounds
Percentage of Central American children under the age of five who are undernourished: 75
Area of tropical rainforest consumed in every quarter-pound of rainforest beef: 55 square feet
Current rate of species extinction due to destruction of tropical rainforests for meat grazing and other uses: 1,000 per year

The Cancer Argument

Increased risk of breast cancer for women who eat meat daily compared to less than once a week: 3.8 times
For women who eat eggs daily compared to once a week: 2.8 times
For women who eat butter and cheese 2-4 times a week: 3.25 times
Increased risk of fatal ovarian cancer for women who eat eggs 3 or more times a week vs. less than once a week: 3 times
Increased risk of fatal prostate cancer for men who consume meat, cheese, eggs and milk daily vs. sparingly or not at all: 3.6 times.

The Cholesterol Argument

Number of U.S. medical schools: 125
Number requiring a course in nutrition: 30
Nutrition training received by average U.S. physician during four years in medical school: 2.5 hours
Most common cause of death in the U.S.: heart attack
How frequently a heart attack kills in the U.S.: every 45 seconds
Average U.S. man’s risk of death from heart attack: 50 percent
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat: 15 percent
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat, dairy or eggs: 4 percent
Amount you reduce risk of heart attack if you reduce consumption of meat, dairy and eggs by 10 percent: 9 percent
Amount you reduce risk of heart attack if you reduce consumption by 50 percent: 45 percent
Amount you reduce risk if you eliminate meat, dairy and eggs from your diet: 90 percent
Average cholesterol level of people eating meat-centered-diet: 210 mg/dl
Chance of dying from heart disease if you are male and your blood cholesterol level is 210 mg/dl: greater than 50 percent

The Natural Resources Argument

User of more than half of all water used for all purposes in the U.S.: livestock production
Amount of water used in production of the average cow: sufficient to float a destroyer
Gallons of water needed to produce a pound of wheat: 25
Gallons of water needed to produce a pound of California beef: 5,000
Years the world’s known oil reserves would last if every human ate a meat-centered diet: 13
Years they would last if human beings no longer ate meat: 260
Calories of fossil fuel expended to get 1 calorie of protein from beef: 78
To get 1 calorie of protein from soybeans: 2
Percentage of all raw materials (base products of farming, forestry and mining, including fossil fuels) consumed by U.S. that is devoted to the production of livestock: 33
Percentage of all raw materials consumed by the U.S. needed to produce a complete vegetarian diet: 2

The Antibiotic Argument

Percentage of U.S. antibiotics fed to livestock: 55
Percentage of staphylococci infections resistant to penicillin in 1960: 13
Percentage resistant in 1988: 91
Response of European Economic Community to routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock: ban
Response of U.S. meat and pharmaceutical industries to routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock: full and complete support

The Pesticide Argument

Common belief: U.S. Department of Agriculture protects our health through meat inspection
Reality: fewer than 1 out of every 250,000 slaughtered animals is tested for toxic chemical residues
Percentage of U.S. mother’s milk containing significant levels of DDT: 99
Percentage of U.S. vegetarian mother’s milk containing significant levels of DDT: 8
Contamination of breast milk, due to chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides in animal products, found in meat-eating mothers vs. non-meat eating mothers: 35 times higher
Amount of Dieldrin ingested by the average breast-fed American infant: 9 times the permissible level

The Ethical Argument

Number of animals killed for meat per hour in the U.S.: 660,000
Occupation with highest turnover rate in U.S.: slaughterhouse worker
Occupation with highest rate of on-the-job-injury in U.S.: slaughterhouse worker

The Survival Argument

Athlete to win Ironman Triathlon more than twice: Dave Scott (6 time winner)
Food choice of Dave Scott: Vegetarian
Largest meat eater that ever lived: Tyrannosaurus Rex (Where is he today?)

Source = “Diet For A New America” by John Robbins

IE Explorer go explode!!

I’ve just discovered that the rounded-corners issue, which I battled with in the past and gave up on, has been solved, neatly and nicely, in CSS.

Rounded corners on boxes have been with us on many websites for a while now.  Look at WordPress.  Boxes have slightly rounded corners.  Another beautiful feature is the drop-shadow and fuzzy edges effect on boxes.  Both gorgeous.  It makes a website look 3D, malleable, real.  Not just flat.

Back then, rounded corners were only possible one of three ways:  By loading graphic images (and of course it fell apart in IE6), or using pages and pages of javascript, or doing a bit of both.  So now there’s this single, neat CSS command that takes care of it all:  ”border-radius”.  You can set the depth of the curve; you can even make elliptical corners, or round individual corners on a box and leave others sharp.

After playing around with P’kaboo’s dropdown and branchout menus, I decided that the current look of sharp corners is crisper.  And after all, crispy reads is what we offer, not fluffy reads.  We like cliff-hangers and ragged-edged humour in our books, and try to steer away from the stuff that makes you reach for the tissue-box (or the bucket).

So there was only one page I updated with some rounded corners.  

And behold:  It works in all browsers …  except Internet Explorer 8 and older!

Other browsers have backwardly fixed their old versions.  Other browsers were more on-the-ball with updating their css-support.  Sure, for corners and for fuzzy edges you may have to add -webkit- or -moz- prefixes to make sure it works in some older versions, but the prefixes are there.  For IE, there’s nothing.

So for the first time in 2 years I find myself in the position again of having to write a redirect page (and I have to admit, the redirect-code has become easier – possibly more web developers experiencing the same gripes?).  Our links page (www.pkaboo.net/linkspg.html) with its rounded corners decomposes on IE 8 and older.  Doesn’t only not have rounded corners; literally comes apart.  URGHH!  I redirect it to “www.pkaboo.net/linksIE.html” with a dire warning to the user of the old browser.  I have to solve this problem in my mind and then upload the solution so that the page can at least look as pretty as its standard counterpart, even though the code is not the same.  (It also doesn’t handle the link css.  So our little green boxes decompose into a heap of naked text.)  

If you are still using an old Internet Explorer, please consider updating it, or better:  Download Firefox or Google Chrome (Chromium if you’re on Linux, but you won’t have the same IE headache in any case if you’re on Linux because you’re not using IE).

It just brings it home to me how spoilt I’ve become, snug on my Ubuntu (a version of Linux) with all programs being freeware, and most functions as good if not better than Windows.  And:  No viruses.  None.  At all.  It’s been quiet around these parts.  Touch wood.

Just some updates

When you ski, you do so on two skis.

We’re skiing on two skis all along; on the one foot, the Music Studio and on the other, our young publishing house, P’kaboo.

Last weekend we updated the studio website.  Added a few nice things, slimmed the whole thing down, it is now more user-friendly.

The music studio offers violin and guitar lessons, further, viola, theory, voice training and composition.  We put on concerts, house concerts and musical functions that are known as “Ceilidhs” after the traditional Irish “Rambling House”.  The main difference between our Ceilidhs and a true Irish Ceilidh is that in Ireland, they provide free-flowing ale.  (Have I now put everyone off our Ceilidhs?  ;)  )  For the rest, it is much the same thing.

The Studio also helps people through practical music exams; though we definitely use the international exam centres rather than having our own biased system.  That way the paper the student receives, is internationally acknowledged.  This year we are hoping to put two talented young violinists through Matric.

We’re also updating the book site, P’kaboo; a mammoth task as it is a very differentiated website.  The most-used pages are updated, but all the author and book feature pages have not yet seen their refresher.

There are some great news for P’kaboo:

One of our books is now listed with Waterstones, UK.

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/marie+marshall/lupa/9645210/

( The story of a Serbian circus girl in 20th Century Rome, and of a female gladiator in the Circus Maximus in ancient Rome.)

This is thanks to our agent, Paul Thompson, from Bookseeker Agency, Scotland.  The project is to get the remaining books listed by Waterstones, too.

Lots happening on the home front but that is material for another blog.

There is also a new Facebook group for discussing books:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/139271869584780/  The P’kaboo Book Club.

EDIT:  Somehow half the post got lost…

On the Solar Wind front:

Nearly ready with Solar Wind 4:  ”Raider!”

Raider – Solar Wind 4

A taster:  Alien Touchdown!

He stared at the sea, and the Solar Wind that… failed to come into view. “Flying stars, what the hell is that thing?”

“Danaan Battle Maiden,” said Perdita. “They can carry up to three hundred petites. Most vicious soldiers New Dome has. Destroy everything on sight. The bigger carriers can take two or three thousand at a go, but the Battle Maiden is a favourite where Dana travels with an entourage. The ship itself is a weapon.”

Federi stared at the huge black metal ship.

If a giant manta ray had solidified into metal; if a Stealth had been forged to look like the meanest scimitar ever designed; in short, the thing looked as though it, the ship itself, had been designed to hack and slash and rip holes into other vessels. Like a ragged, notched blade. Its top, except for a saurian ridge of barbed hooks, was smooth and black.

The bridge was on the underside. Federi took the Probe lower, dipping and immediately lifting her away again. He veered away, hoping they hadn’t yet been seen.

That was the nastiest design for a warship he had ever seen. Underneath the manta ray-shaped wing hung the body of the ship, ridged with more saurian lines of massive hooks and barbs. The thing looked as though it had been cast in one piece, with no seams at all. The compounding body of the Solar Wind wouldn’t last a second if that metal spaceship should decide to take a jab at her. Not even counting those huge chutes that were clearly for launching missiles or maybe hooks, and those other things that looked like oversized nozzles, for shooting – what? Fire? Burning acid?

And if that monstrosity decided to drop by only a few metres, it would crush the Solar Wind’s rigging. And a few more, and the whole Zephyr would be pushed down under the sea. And run through with those spikes. Ye Gods!

Clearly diplomacy was the only way. Negotiation was in order.

“Does it have any weak points?”

Perdita shook her head. “It wasn’t designed to have any. That’s seamless tempered titanium.”

Federi nodded grimly. “They must have seen us! Why aren’t they shooting?”

“Firstly,” said Perdita with a smug grin, “you’re on one of my jets. They are invisible. The only way the petites can see us is visually. Then, secondly, they don’t have reason to shoot us… they can’t know that we’re connected to the Solar Wind.”

Federi nodded again. “They’ll know in a moment,” he commented and activated the com. “Who’s on the bridge?”

“Johnny Anyhow, sir,” came the sharp answer.

“Ah,” said Federi. “Habla Espagñol?”

“Si, si,” said Johnny.

Perdita grinned. If the petites were listening in, they might understand English, because Dana would have trained them for that; but never Spanish! Full hit for the gypsy!

She kept her hands poised over the console, ready to take a flying leap with the Probe into the upper stratosphere if it needed to be. All deflector shields were up. It should take a few punches before the Danaan could make a dent; but then again she wasn’t sure how much further Dana had advanced her weapons since she had left New Dome.

“The thing above your head,” Federi went on in Spanish, “is a Danaan space shuttle. Don’t ask,” he forestalled. “And Johnny, here’s what you do.”

Perdita watched in fascination how the Solar Wind furled her sails, pulled in her rigging, secured it automatically to her own deck, and then sank away into the depths of the sea.

“Brilliant, Federi! In the ocean, too! They’ll never find them now! The seawater fudges the reading!” She grinned broadly. “Had no idea the Solar Wind could do that!”

“You’ve never been submerged before?” asked the gypsy, surprised. “You didn’t know about it?”

“It’s one of those things about Radomir Lascek,” began Perdita and lapsed into silence. Damn Radomir Lascek!

“Why do you say, seawater fudges the reading?” asked Federi, intrigued. “Doesn’t this craft use sonar?”

“Albitrino tracing,” said Perdita. “Different technology. Renders sonar obsolete.”

Federi nodded. He’d get the details from her! Or better, he’d tell Wolf to get the details. “Perdita – what petites? Little whats?”

“Girls,” said Perdita with a sigh. “Always little girls. None younger than fifteen; none older than nineteen. Dana trains them to a vicious edge.”

Federi grinned. “And they break everything?”

 

(C) copyright Lyz Russo, 2013

Enjoy.

…gipsika…

And of course…

P’kaboo trades Car Parts

As shimmers through in the comments on the previous post, P’kaboo is not only publishing books but also agenting some other items.  Part of these have to do with furniture and upholstery; we’re also thinking of expanding into custom-made jewellery.  But the most significant development is the coalition we formed with a Russian car parts company.  South Africa being part of the BRICS block of countries, it makes sense to open trade relations, especially in the light of the BRICS dollar that is on the cards, and the BRICS passport that will be available later this year.

So if you know someone with a Russian car – or even a Russian with a car – or a car part – please let us know.  Perhaps we can add to our current line.

Also let us know if you know someone who needs something upholstered or wants to learn upholstery, or someone who needs custom-made jewellery, like an engagement or eternity ring or special baby bracelet, or who needs changes done to their existing jewellery.