TWO FEET - AUDIO BOOK SAMPLE - MARK ROPER

Self publishing - costs and benefits

The costs and benefits of publishing your own books

An interesting article via the +BBC News on publishing your own book.

I don't know if I should weep or cry!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28268014

Any comments out there??? Your experiences as a self published author? This is an open Blog and feel free to comment!!!

The Bone Traders -- BBC link - day without satellites

...I'm no scientist, no politician, so the plot of #The Bone Traders is all imaginative. Yet, in the last few months articles like the attached are starting to appear weekly....??? Some food for thought if you are that hungry.
But the scenario does deserve a fleeting thought?
Imagine NOT BEING ABLE TO READ THIS on your computer.....

Visit


http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130609-the-day-without-satellites

There was nothing sudden. Planes did not fall out of the sky, the lights didn’t go out or the water supplies fail. At least, not at first.

Some things did stop working straightaway but, for most people, they were more an inconvenience than anything else. The loss of television satellites meant that many families missed the cheery rehearsed smiles of breakfast TV presenters, and were forced to talk to each other over their cereal instead. There were no foreign correspondents on the radio, no results of the latest international sports fixtures.

But outside, the loss of global satellite communications was putting the world in danger. At a bunker somewhere in the United States, a pilot squadron lost contact with the armed drones they were flying over the Middle East. The failure of secure satellite communications systems left soldiers, ships and aircraft cut off from their commanders and vulnerable to attack. Without satellites, world leaders struggled to talk to each other to diffuse mounting global tensions.

Meanwhile, over the Atlantic, thousands of passengers watched movies, oblivious to the difficulties on the flight deck as pilots struggled to talk to air traffic control. Without satellite phones, container ships in the Arctic, fishermen in the China Sea and aid workers in the Sahara found themselves isolated from the rest of the world.

As people started work in their offices in Tokyo, Shanghai, Moscow, London and New York, they found it difficult to talk to colleagues in other countries. Email worked and the internet seemed okay, but many international phone calls failed. The rapid communications systems that tied the world together were unravelling. Rather than shrinking, it seemed as if the Earth was getting larger.

11:00

As presidents and prime ministers gathered their crisis teams, a new threat to global stability began to emerge: the loss of the Global Positioning System (GPS). As far as most of us were concerned, GPS helped us travel from A to B without getting hopelessly lost along the way. It had transformed the lives of delivery companies, helped emergency services reach incidents much quicker, allowed planes to land on isolated runways and enabled trucks, trains, ships and cars to be tracked and traced. But GPS turned out to be much more pervasive in our lives than many of us could possibly have realised.

GPS satellites are little more than highly accurate atomic clocks in space, transmitting a time signal back to Earth. Receivers on the ground – in your car or smartphone for instance – pick up these time signals from three or more satellites. By comparing the time signal from space with the time in the receiver – the receiver can calculate how far away the satellite is.

But there are plenty of other uses for these accurate time signals from space. Uses that, it emerged, our society had become increasingly reliant on. Our infrastructure is held together by time – from time stamps on complex financial transactions to the protocols that hold the internet together. When the packets of data passing between computers get out of sync, the system starts to break down. Without accurate time, every network controlled by computers is at risk. Which means almost everything.

Two Feet - Lesson #4 from the playground

Two Feet's home

I viewed the first episode of the BBC's period drama, The Village, last night. I thoroughly enjoyed it: well written (no nonsense dialogue) strongly directed and it depicted the period without unnecessary garnish.   Perhaps a little dark in mood in some places, but without the dark we wouldn't appreciate the light, would we now?  There were one or two scenes set in the boy's classroom that evoked memories of our Meneer Gerber, hence the following extract. 

Please feel free to comment!!

IS GOD A MECHANIC?

 Meneer Gerber once said we were all marching forward on God’s road.

 God was our engine, driving us on.

 God was our petrol, fuelling us around the bends and up the hills and down the hills.

 God was a powerful motor vehicle, and we were his passengers.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God wore a crash helmet as the racing car drivers do that I had seen pictures of. But I did not.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s car as it zoomed along, also left behind clouds of red dust that asphyxiated bird and insect as it travelled. But I did not.

I wanted to put up my hand and ask if God’s car had any gears, especially a reverse gear. I was thinking that a reverse gear would be a good idea for God’s car because if there were any mistakes to be fixed, God could just reverse over the mistakes and then drive forward again. This way he could fix the mistakes and make certain they never occurred again. But I did not ask.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s engine ever broke down. But I did not.

But I should.

Was a submersible borehole-pump not a part of God’s engine?

I won’t ask.

But if God was in control of an engine, any engine, then He would know how to repair it?

But I should ask.

A borehole was an engine. It had an engine, a pump. It was buried deep down in the shaft after the drilling machine – Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! -- had driven away leaving mounds of red clay and diesel and black oil stains on the grass. Yes, a pump engine that sucked the water from down there where it was quiet and still and dark. Immersed in the bowels of the earth, where the sun didn't shine and where the water was sweet

I won’t ask.

I will.

Will not.

Will.

I raised my hand.

“Meneer?”

Meneer Gerber had his feet up on the desk. He twisted his feet and separated them so he could get a view of me. He remained lounging back in the wooden chair that often creaked with the sound of a timid fart. He looked at me between his polished shoes.

“I did not ask a question, boy.”

“No, Meneer.”

“Then what the bloody Hell do you want?”

“You are in deep kak (shit), Rooinek!”That was Pisskop’s whispering voice. He sat at the rear of the class, but his words were like rifle shots in my burning ears.

Stand up, Feet. Make me stand. Please!

I stood on shaking knees trying to focus on Meneer Gerber’s shoes that partly hid his face. I was deeply flushed. I felt as if I was rolling in a field of stinging nettles. The soles of Meneer Gerber’s shoes were worn thin, and there was a patch on the left shoe. I spoke to the patch.

“Dust, Meneer. There is only dust now because the borehole engine has broken. In the vegetable garden where my mother is growing radishes, beetroot, cabbage and carrots so we can sell them at the road shop. (Breathe, chest in and out) Mister Kelly, he says the pump is old and worn, and he showed us the remains of some rusty pieces (cheeks hot, so hot)...so... so now there is no water, Meneer because of the pump so we...we are carrying water now from the dam in Mister Kelly’s jerry cans. (Bare-feet now sweating on the wooden floorboards and toes curling) We use a pole, Meneer, so we can carry the water on our shoulders, you see? But the grass on the hill is dry, Meneer and we are often falling and (hearing a dry chuckle from Pisskop)...and Mabuza is helping with some rope to pull the jerry cans up the hill, and my mother, she is really trying to show the water the way to find the vegetables. (No breath anymore. Sucking in air) Meneer, but it is not enough water without the borehole engine so...so...I...the plants are dying in the dust so I...so I...was thinking that maybe God because he knows engines, Meneer, can fix the submersible pump?”

Meneer Gerber abruptly swings his feet off the desk. He sits slowly upright in the wooden chair that makes a farting sound. He does not lose focus on me.

I remained standing. Sweaty, naked feet glued to wooden floorboards. A strong smell of chalk suddenly, a waft of Pisskop’s sour body odour. A movement from Max, the baker’s son behind his desk: more of a nervous squirm, like someone waiting for a film to be projected.

“You are in deep, deep kak (shit), Rooi-Nek”, whispers Pisskop from out there amongst the blurred faces.

Think: - mother on hands and knees in dust whispering to rivulet of tepid water. Solution: - God repairs pump. Result: - mother not necessary to be on hands and knees in dust whispering to tepid water.

“Are you...”His voice is shrill with pain, like the sound a rugby player makes when he is kicked between the legs. He coughs then again speaks.

 “Are you are asking me if God is bloody mechanic, boy?”

I am I suppose, so I nod, and my head feels heavy, so I know the gesture makes me look like a dumb child with his bare feet glued to a wooden floor.

I am soon bent over with my head in the corner. Above my head, just a few inches away, is a small book shelf. It carries two heavy books – the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places of the World. There is a layer of chalk dust on the books. They are not a part of the curriculum so are never read and left to gather chalk dust.

When a child is bent over in a corner of a room and he is given a caning, his first reaction is to recoil; is to lift up his head. That is what the bookshelf is for. When you recoil, you slam your head into the bookshelf. This way Meneer Gerber gets you twice with one blow. This way the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places in the World also have some use.

I look down at my two, bare feet as Meneer Gerber lands the first of six strokes. He will land the second stroke half an inch above the first, then the third will strike where the first landed. He is a master of his craft.

I wonder if God will try the reverse gear for me.