Royal Air Force

Had he been alive, this past weekend my father, Frank Knight, would have been joining his fellow veterans at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, London in the annual parade. He left his squadron as Flight Lieutenant, when it was disbanded - I’ve always suspected that he would have preferred to continue in the RAF after the war (he mentioned once that he had the opportunity) but his wife was going to have their first child and they chose to return to her parents in Argentina - where I was born a month before his official discharge.

He stayed for a while in Buenos Aires after his retirement (he worked as a salesman for a brewery, then for a steel company) and was at one time Chairman of the RAF Association there, but returned eventually to live in London, back to those of his surviving friends of that time - for though it was a tragic and awful time for humanity and the world - today we stop a little while in memory of all that die in wars and particularly this one - I think that bonds made then can never be undone. So honouring the memory o all veterans, and to Flt. Lt. Frank Knight, our Dad … with love,

Peter, John and Jeannie

About his Squadron:

No.172 Squadron was formed at Chivenor on 4 April 1942 from No.1417 (Leigh Light) Flight which had formed on 8 March to operate Wellingtons equipped with airborne searchlights on anti-submarine patrols. The first operational night patrol was flown on 3 June during which two U-boats were located and attacked. In August, seven aircraft were detached to Wick for patrols over the North Sea and were the basis of No.179 Squadron when it formed on 14 September. Patrols over the Western Approaches and Bay of Biscay led to many sightings and in March 1943 the Squadron’s Wellingtons were fitted with ASV Mark III radar to guide the aircraft into a position where their searchlights could be exposed to reveal a U-boat. This method soon brought results, U-665 being sunk on 20 March and the overall the squadron averaged one sighting for every four sorties.*

Between October 1943 and April 1944 detachments were based at Gibraltar and later, in the Azores. In September 1944, No.172 moved to northern Ireland and flew patrols over the Atlantic until disbanded on 4 June 1945.

Q

* Win one, lose one. From my father’s flight log: On the 8th. of October 1943, the German submarine U-340 was damaged and later scuttled (all crew but one rescued safely) but on the 7th. of January 1944 a surfaced sub blew a hole in one wing of my dad’s plane - the sub may have been U-380 or U-952 - but they managed to get home and land safely. For better or for worse that’s why it’s me, Q, here and not somebody else.

As soon as the weather clears a little. What happened to August? And September?

• Two and a half years after we bought this land  and  building a house on  it (in exchange for our share of “Cruz Blanca”, the farmhouse in the mountains that was our home for the past twenty years, plus some more) - the title deed was finally released by the Provincial Registry. It became “legally ours” - so have been able to start untangling the remaining issues …

• We very nearly lost Remy, the other half  the K9 division of our immediate family (two German Shepherds Champ and  sister Remy, both seven).  We had never heard of Bloat , or “Gastric Dilation - Vulvulus” until the Saturday 23d August … and then learned more about it than I’d ever care to know. A rare opportunity to know you dog inside.  Two hours emergency surgery (the duty vets, a couple of lasses, one still in her evening clothes) . Remy is fine now, though will be forever at risk if we are not careful with her feeding. She figured on her own that she’s to take a nap after her meals. Smart.

• In the midst, rearranging my work to accommodate writing full time , as a business - far from real yet, but much more realistic.

“Danzig Daughters” the novel is - work in progress, still in rough draught.
A heartening bit of good luck, I got a third place in a flash fiction contest (at the UK site, Writelink.co.uk for a dark little piece (probably reflecting my mood at he time). First place was way ahead, it did provide some welcome cheer at the moment! Thank you, Writelink & Paola.

“Seventh Aubrey” returned (can be revised, sent again); “Mother Dear” needs working on some more. Then a week ago, I thought it time to get back into the fray with writing friends in the different forums (fora? ). Writers Village U. and the L. Ridge alumni at Storycrafters. At Writers Village University a new round of the six week introduction to basics for writers is starting up, and in November of course, another bout of “writing 50 000 words in a month”, the notorious and totally mad NaNoWriMo

BYKNIGHT.COM will just have to wait a little longer. I’ve got (finally) Dreamweaver, Photoshop and other Adobe stuff and no more genuine excuses for stalling.

So Q rides again. Windmills will remain un-tilted, damsels will have to take care of their own distress’, knaves will stay unpunished for a while.
Sunshine.
Q

We watched the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games in this 08-08-08 edition in Beijing - spectacular, as I’m sure you’ve all seen … we missed the start (there will be many opportunities later; this exhibition must have been canned in every medium available and i’m sure we’ll see many replays).

Then I recalled this handy reference to the antipodes, in Wikipedia - and collected this map. It appears that from here, central Argentina (31.95 South, 64.56 West *) we are exactly at the opposite side of the planet. So: digging straight down, through the core get us within a few miles of the Stadium - with some correction, our tunnel could emerge within the boundary and save us the cost of the entrance tickets - I suppose there are tickets, and that they must be pretty well sold out by now.  The hole will have to be a mere  12, 742 kilometers … ah - deep? High? Both? Across!  Not too bad.  I will start digging presently - meanwhile, enjoy The Games.

Q

*Latitude and Longitude coordinates have been slightly modified: they actually belong to an obnoxious neighbor, so if any of you have a cruise missile handy … but please advise ETA as I’d hate to miss the fireworks -  if I’m not too far down on my way  to China

Taking stock as winter ends for us, in Argentina:

My little e-book ha done well, and so has my association with Holly Lisle’s affiliate program - thanks to her, I began this Internet adventure. The whole series, “33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About…” is at the Shop Page, in this journal

As a netwit, I’ve found the whole Internet adventure slower than I’d expected.
My main website www.byknight.com has gone through several transformations as I’ve been climbing the learning curve: it began with Kompozer, an excellent (free) editing software, with some limitations. I dug into our reserve funds and got properly set up (I hope), with Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Acrobat Pro … the good people at Adobe are a little richer - though I doubt they’ve noticed - and we have become considerable poorer (which we have!) … so BYKNIGHT should be out there before the end of August.

Writing - a good job with a printing and publishing contact, covering for the Drupa Exhibition in Düsseldorf, a long story (part of it sketched in my other web log, Mostly by Knight … a dull read for non specialists but intriguing; the story of publishing from the Lascaux Cave Paintings all the way to high speed digital printing (which just may be the future, and just may change the way books are published).

Sunday Morning and time to go and ring the bells at Mrs. Q’s church - so more of this later

Q

Somebody in this region tried this some years back: design a garden, with trees, flowerbeds, shrubbery and all, alongside a highway - it’s not too hard to do, as long as there’s some way of providing a water supply and some people willing to undertake a bit of regular maintenance (here, along Provincial Route 5 in Cordoba, Argentina, had the fire brigade of a town nearby provide irrigation services but it went to weed when enthusiasm from the volunteer gardeners ran out).

This morning’s Science Daily picked up an initiative prompted by The American Horticultural Society  (as a ‘new idea’: fair enough as no one has published it formally as far as I know):  From small, manicured beds of flowers maintained by community volunteers to extensive landscaping projects along America’s byways, roadside gardens are taking root.

Whoever can take credit, it is a good idea and deserves support from any authorities, groups, anywhere in the world: a win win thing if there ever was one.  Best would be a cooperative of individual enthusiasts but it’s hard to imagine that many people that would take on a largely altruistic effort - this is a place where town councils, state and provincial authorities can meddle and provide fine outdoor work as ‘jobs for the boys and girls’ if they must.  Better by far than enclosing inexperienced youths in administrative offices so that they can mess up peoples lives with careless form filling and messed up data gathering (but that is another rant).

If you happen on this post - keep it in mind and if you can, approach anyone you can to get this show - literally - on the roads in your region. And if you can, spread the word through trackbacks and comments on your space on the ‘net.

Q

American Society for Horticultural Science (2008, July 26). New Roadside Beautification Concept Studied. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 26, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/07/080717110228.htm

Liz Strauss: A most Successful and Outstanding Blogger!

Leave for the last minute of the last day, this exercise on inspiration in twenty-five words: there’s too much haste and impatience out there, anyway.

Q

Are you an intellectual or a romantic? Math or … (males, but - won’t say, anti-spam overworked as it is) Look at the image below, you are what you see! a famous film goddess? Just walk away, keep your eyes fixed on Albert.

Or maybe it doesn’t work at all. It should show either Marylin Monroe or Albert Einstein, according to how close you are to the screen (at about six yards on this 17″ LCD monitor, the image - transforms, showing just how relative things can be).

But maybe it’s just me, and I need new specs (I ordered a new pair this morning: Half frame,  Polycarbonate, +1.5)

See you tomorrow. Bonswa,

Q

I have to find a good theme: Some look great at first but the text starts drifting across columns, or picture don’t quite stay put - at least, where I thought I put them. Others … I tried one and couldn’t find my way back into this site management place: Q was locked out of Q’s Place!.

Pretty can? The Original:

Still working on this site. “Q’s Place” is a little low on an overcrowded priority list.  Mrs Q and I discuss what might go here. It’s definitely be the place to put personal things,  for friends and family as well as any that wander by and care for the kind of things we post.  writing of course, and home making as we haven’t been able to settle down yet; for oh so many reasons!

This morning though there were forty seven messages spam queue, blocked by the wonderful WordPress Akismet plugin.  Wonderful software,  that!. But the topmost was nasty - a few hundred lines of filth. So long that it wasn’t practical to search back for any genuine messages.

So if I haven’t acknowledged a genuine post: my apologies. Please post again. I know I should check in more often and look at comments held by Akismet before the list gets too long … of course it wouldn’t have done anything about the garrulous pornographer of that long, long comment.

Of course, one can just let the sewage through and then collect from Adsense? I doubt it, the good people at Google must be wise to that one, ages ago. Whatever,  it’s sad to see so many twerps and nitwits using up bandwidth like this. Nitwits and twerps is too mild for those sad sacks that make a living promoting the junk.

Until the next one, soon I hope. Pictures of where we used to live.

Where we are now - which is also where we hope to move out from.

And some grandchildren pictures, and great pictures of great grandchildren as well.

Meanwhile …

Please don’t open the can !

Q

 OK, that image was done in Microsoft Windows Exolorer. The post immediately before was with Firefox, my default (and preferred) browser. I had gone into Site Admin > Settings > Writing-settings and unchecked “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” . I thought I was dung frying (that’s ‘doing fine, by the way, in spellunker checker) but alas, not so: Next time around the darn problem came up again. So this is in IE - and seems to be working. Oh well, if anyone knows anything about this, please don’t heitsate to comment. Comment anyway! Q’s place is welcome to all.

Q

So all these problems with MS Windows (Praise Gates!) have been completely unnecessary! There has been, all these years, a ‘hidden’ options screen, apparently since April 1st of the year 2000. Bring it up and contrary to Microsoft instructions, uncheck all the deafault settings.

Oh by the way: remember Widows Millennium Edition? Me? Yes, I feel the same about that one too. No, we don’t allow profanity on this board.

How to get to this screen? The ridiculouly simple command is: Hold ALT, CTRL, CAPS LOCK, and TAB while simultaneously pressing F8, HOME, ARROW DOWN, and ENTER. Mac users do something else of course but they never need this one, bless ‘em.

That’s all.

Later, I may even tell the secret of how I got images (well, this one anyway) to load in this WordPress …. meanwhile, off to find yet another theme.

Actually, time to do get back to some serious writing, the regular two hours or one thousand words are a strict, unbreakable rule.

Q