Fort-Knight Dispatch

So, I think this is officially the longest PAUSE in this blog’s history. To say that I haven’t been busy in the meantime would be untrue. To say that I’ve been TOO busy to post here would also be untrue. The sad fact is, my posting on Twitter has by far our paced my posting here by an astronomical amount. That’s not to suggest I’ll be getting rid of this blog. Let’s face it, 140 characters just isn’t enough to post what I can (or should) be posting here. 

So, all that being said, I’m back and I’l be using this space to say the things that just don’t fit anywhere else on any of my other blogs, twitter feeds, facebook page, Instagram feed… oh, you get the idea.

So what does one write in a space so open and roomy as a personal blog? Hmm. Stay tuned. I have a few ideas.

I started this little poem/story before Halloween and just finished it.
Consider it a late trick or treat.

Love Bites

A Halloween Tale of Love with a Warning

Here is a tale of Gothic splendor
about a man and a woman
and loves’ first ember.

Upon our stage we first meet Jack.
He’s tall, quiet,
and has a straight back.

He lives in a house made by his own hands,
which sits high on a hill
surrounded by sand.

Upon its roof shines a light so bright
it’s easily seen
both day and by night.

Therein he keeps watch over the shore,
the sea, and ships
in front of his door.

His life it was lonely, but it had meaning.
So he thought, until he noticed,
his house had started leaning.

“What am I to do?”, thought Jack, the light keeper
“I’m in debt, I can’t afford it,
“I’ll only get in deeper.”

The wind started blowing, from out of the East.
The skies turned black
like the fur on a beast.

That October was icy, cold and bleak
Jack began fearing
that his house it might leak.

What is important to note is that Jack was alone
on that hill by the beach
as white as a bone.

He didn’t hear her approach on steps made of wood
upon his narrow path
but there alone she stood.

Now, with our lady Beth we make introduction
as fortune would have
she had skills in construction.

Her hair was black, beautiful and bright
the toolbelt she wore
was full and tight.

It had hammers, and chisels and a saw that was fine
which could cut through a tree
in little to no time.

On the steps of his house there they made a bargin
it was plain spoken and simple
and contained no jargon.

The house would be straightened and stand perfectly straight
on this last matter, in fact
there was no debate.

They shook hands and agreed there on the spot
to commence right away
and to prevent all the rot.

Night and day they worked on that house by the sea.
Hammering by him.
Sawing by she.

Jack noticed he’d become attracted to his domestic contractor.
He admired all her skills
and she his protractor.

He liked what he saw, that she was curvaceous.
as well as her thoughts
on the late Cretaceous.

While the paint dried they’d talk of many fine things
of pits and of pendullums
and dark messengers with wings.

While fixing foundations they would exchange brief glances
and during their lunchtime he’d show her
his collection of lances.

As their agreed upon construction drew closer to completion
they both began discussing
their relationship’s accretion.

Jack was afraid of getting too close
and Beth held a secret
she felt Jack would think gross.

Jack had a secret, a secret so dark.
You might say his bite was far worse.
that his bark.

As that October came quick to an end
Jack wasn’t so sure what to tell
his girlfriend.

Beth had decided to come clean and admit
her secret bloody shame
and take what she’d get.

Under the stars on Halloween night,
the house was completed
and all the angles were right.

Jack stood on his porch as the clouds covered the moon
he became itchy and sweaty
as Beth crested a dune.

She walked up to him where his front porch light hangs
and gave him a smile
and a look at her fangs.

He began talking and explaining in such a hurry,
too late as it were,
before he became furry.

There they both stood, each a wolf facing
their fears and their worries
began rapidly erasing.

Smiling with teeth, too big for their faces,
they started their first of
many amorous races.

Our story is done, and ends in November.
There’s a moral to take and
it’s one to remember.

So, if by a light house you decide to go prowling
don’t knock on the door
if you hear howling.

I love Halloween. The mere concept of a holiday rooted in dressing up and fooling and scaring evil spirits makes me giggle. I mean, what’s better than that? Ok, killing zombies. You get my point though right? Growing up a geek, my costumes reflected my various geekly interests – there were super heroes, soldiers, Star Wars characters, and the list goes on. When I became a dad and my son approached the age for his first trick or treating ritual, my mind raced at the possibilities. One of my hopes was that, as father and son, we could dress up in a common theme. Darth Vader and a young Luke Skywalker perhaps? Batman and a very Jr. Robin? (This was WAY before the introduction of Damnian Wayne people). Well as the day approached I started asking my son for ideas. Please note at the time he wasn’t even 3 and he was kinda big into Blues Clues and Disney movies. I threw a bunch of ideas his way and explained that he not only got to pick his costume but mine as well. Right now, you have just seen the flaw in my plan. All those years ago I gave my almost 3 year old son carte blanche but I had faith he’d do me proud. What was his answer? Well, as we approach Halloween 2011, I’m proud of some of the homemade costumes we’ve made but none more than the first one. Here’s a sampling of them over the years: homemade, store bought, geeky each and every one.
His answer? “Thomas Pup and Dada Pup”.

In no particular order: shuttle astronaut, the Dark Knight, Chimney Sweep (or Badger from Firefly? Look at that glare!), 101 Airborne Paratrooper, The Sky Captain, The Joker, Future Shock Trooper.

First before I begin, let me state that I am a customer of Amazon.com. I own a Kindle, I have gifted Kindles to family and have enjoyed the benefits of the Amazon Prime service. I love my Kindle. I also happen to own an Android powered phone and upon hearing about the new Kinde Fire tablet I smiled.  This is a product I had speculated would be coming in one form or another and now that it almost hear I’m finally getting excited about a tablet. Now, all that out of the way, I wanted to discuss a few questions about the new SILK browser that will ship (partly-more on that later) on the Kindle Fire.  As I don’t think I could do their explanation justice, please see Amazon’s video here before continuing.

Back? Good.

The Silk browser, while innovative, isn’t an entirely new concept. In the early days of surfing the web on phones, a few web page caching services sprang up and several server based software packages were available to reformat the served up web-pages into smaller, bite-sized chunks the phones of the era could handle.  For the most part they did what they needed to do.  Some people, myself included, are a little more paranoid than the average bear and could see a very obvious issue with these solutions: a single third party knew everything about your web surfing. Well, maybe not everything but they knew where and when you surfed.  Now, let’s fast-forward 14 or so years to this week and Amazon’s Silk announcement.

As an Amazon customer one of the things I like about shopping with them is their ability to predict what I might be interested in based on past purchases, product reviews and their massive amount of analysed customer data. The last item in that list is their “secret sauce”. They know so much about so many people they can do a good job of guessing what might strike my fancy on any given day. As any other Amazon customer can tell you it’s not perfect but it’s good. Amazon has many websites that are all part of their company such as IMDB.com where I get my movie trivia information. Like many companies they are able to track their customers and visitors to their sites across several domains (web sites) and correlate this data in to consumer behavior, ie – they know what you click, where you click it, on many many websites.  Also, many companies can track their customers beyond their own websites either using data received from web based ads or by data sharing with other companies.  In this day and age whether you use your smart phone or tablet to surf the web you might also be giving Amazon or another company your exact location.

One of the most obvious examples of what a company can do with this sort  of day was beautifully put on the big screen in the movie Minority Report. The scene had the protagonist played by Tom Cruise on the run and being noticed by… the advertisements; which promptly recognized him and showed him (and everyone around him) personalized content.  I like personalized content. I love Pandora and love hearing exactly the music I want when I want it, albeit with ads thrown in.

So, where were we? Oh, they know where you are. The Silk browser lives in two parts, one on your device – the Kindle Fire for now (not for long I bet) and the other half  lives within Amazon. To speed up your web browsing experience they take your request and send  you down a compressed version of the page (the speeding up part) and you see your web page faster than the next guy using last year’s iPad. For a big bonus, Amazon, using their HUGE data sets predicts what  you’ll surf to next and might send that down too (before you ask). This can have the wonderful effect, I imagine, of INSTANT internet! This all is a good thing, please do not get me wrong. I did, however, say I was paranoid.  As a few of us saw those many years ago, anyone who gets in the middle of your data can manipulate it for good (compression=good!) or bad (selling my info, altering my data, blocking my data, etc. = BAD). I’m in no way suggesting that Amazon will do anything evil here. I am completely expecting that they will use all this new customer data (mine) to add to their ability to guess what I want next from the Internet. Perhaps a bit more.

I am looking forward to see how good SILK is in the field. I’m sure even Amazon can figure out some pattern from my mostly random surfing habits but now I find myself wondering if I want them too? Here’s where that paranoia comes in.  In today’s world, a web browser isn’t just for getting that sports score, weather or news story. It’s not even just about cat videos, honey badger videos or email. Today, many applications have moved up into the “cloud”. Folks, it’s the internet and it’s main user interface is via a web browser.  My big question for Amazon’s Silk team is, does ALL that communication go through their servers and end up (even if for a brief moment) on their EC2 cloud? Sounds like it. Now, I know I’m a nerd AND a geek but these seemingly trivial and technical questions have practical and important implications that raise these questions. Where is my data? Who can see it? Who has a copy? What are they doing with it?

I like being in control of my data. I choose to share quite a bit here on the internet but it’s my choice. I choose the what, the when, and the how much for my own reasons. In the days that follow, I hope the Silk team explains a bit more what they plan on doing with my data. I haven’t ordered that Kindle Fire yet after all.

In order to save people from having to read my day to day ramblings, I’ve decided to move my online novel to http://fathertimechronicles.wordpress.com .  If you are interested in following that story and see where it goes, I encourage you to bookmark it! The story is far from over and if you have any interest in other history, steampunk, murder mysteries or characters who always carry duct tape and know how to use it, then keep on reading.

Thank you!

John M Knight

September 18, 2011

Hello, this post is part of my novel series. That is to say, a novel I’m writing via this blog -from the beginning, serialized and for your reading, tweeting and general enjoyment.
Part 7, Georgia on my Mind

Daniel Andrew Charleston was in the best shape of his life. Gone were the extra pounds that were added after college. Gone were the extra 30 that had slowly accumulated after his 30th birthday. In their place were lean muscle that had been added through many grueling months. In addition to rebuilding his body, Daniel had also been working on healing his mind which in many way had been far tougher. His traumatic experience of fighting some of the bloodiest guerrilla warfare seen during the Civil War had been buried out of necessity. Danielle’s subsequent experimentation with time travel had led to a dangerous life and one filled with deception and secrets. He could tell no one about any of it for two simple reasons. First, most people wouldn’t believe him and think him crazy and second, those that didn’t would try and use the secret for themselves. He believed that very few people in the world could actually be trusted with the knowledge and power that went with being able to travel through time. The dangers were in fact far greater than he realized at the time.
In the distance something was crawling through the dried brush. Daniel dismissed it as it was too small to be a man and what he was walked on two legs. In the hot Georgian summertime Daniel should have been sweating but he wasn’t. All those years ago when he had been saved by the small contingent of the 19th Indiana, he thought he’d never stop sweating or ever feel cool again. The time in therapy had Daniel deal with the pain and trauma he had experienced for those hot and humid month. What keeping Daniel from sweating was a continuous flow of chilled water from a network of tiny tubes woven throughout his uniform. A small battery on his belt kept the liquid chilled and flowing constantly. Daniel thought about how similar the system was to what was used by astronauts who ventured into space and then he smiled, realizing that it would be less than 100 years before they would start wearing those bulky first suits.
Up ahead on the trail something moved. Daniel wasn’t willing to raise his head the scant few inches and risk giving his position away. Instead he tapped a sequence into his wrist mounted input, sending instructions to his UAV. The small aircraft had nestled itself in the top of the canopy and after receiving the commands rotated it’s cameras, giving Daniel the literal birds-eye-view of the trail. A lone rider on a sickly horse was approaching.
The brown, broad rimmed had obscured the mans face. The shirt the man was wearing may have been white at one time but now with more than a year of soiling and wear was now some sort of grey brown color. His slouched shoulders and holstered pistol gave every indication that the man thought himself reasonably safe. The UAV dropped like a rock from a height of over 60 feet. As planned it’s four electric motors started spinning the propellers fast enough to stop its decent just as it fell within a patch of dried tall grass. One of the cameras onboard the tiny robotic craft focused in on the face of the lone rider, now from a much better position.
Daniel, looking at the digitized image of the man recognized him as one of the 30 possible rebels that could have taken his son. Months of training his body and tending his mental scars had been the foundation necessary to perform his mission. At first the situation had overwhelmed Daniel. The he looked it at in chunks and broke it down into smaller and smaller workable pieces. Slowly, through hard work, things came together. The research and study he had put into the plan was already paying dividends on the ground. He had narrowed the location of his son down to a few square miles and his research had tracked down almost every possible person alive then that could have been in that Godforsaken patch of Georgia.
As a historian. Daniel better than most knew how incomplete the historical record was and the dangers of traveling through time based on what sometimes amounted to little more than hearsay or legend.. However flawed the foreknowledge he had might have been, it was still an advantage. One that he was more than willing to exploit against these sonsabitches. For most of those men in those woods that day, Daniel knew the times and places of their death. A few would survive the war, living their lives and trying to find some sort of peace with their experience. For most, they would end up in a nameless grave and not leave these woods. What little had been written about their lives Daniel had read and analyzed. Most were little more than criminals, thieving and murdering their way across the Georgian countryside – using the war as the excuse to let themselves become monsters.
The rider was now just under a 100 yards away and making a slight bend in the trail. Crawling, Daniel inched slowly after the man. In broad daylight he could be seen like any other man and he had to be careful not to be spotted. High above, another UAV tracked the rider and kept Daniel informed of his movements. If he was lucky he’d have the location of his son and the identity of the captors within a few hours. Next he would watch and gather intel. He would watch the men’s movements from afar and even listen to their conversations. He’d soon be able to see his son’s face again after all this time. The sun would be setting in a few hours and he would be able to cover the distance at a faster pace. At night, the advantage was his.