Today, all, is the day of days. A long-awaited moment has arrived- John Birmingham’s follow-up to his alternate-history Axis of Time series has hit over on the Beast. If you’ve anticipated this event like me, you’ll smash the link above and score your copy posthaste.

What a journey this has been, following JB along on his Patreon site as this monster worked its way into a real, breathing thing.

The story starts much earlier for me, 2011, to be precise. Back when the only writing I did was this:

In those days, deep in a dive bar stuck in the Hindu Kush, I only wrote operations orders and the occasional letter home. My Valley Series wasn’t on the radar, and the real Valley lay before me, a crummy, darkness-shrouded place tucked between the snow-capped mountains.

I carried JB’s original Axis of Time novels into combat, and my faithful Sony eReader was KIA on a shitty hill in late September 2011. After that, I was out of luck, at least in terms of reading. However, before then I had read his novels so often that I nearly had them memorized and I could just zone out while eating a delicious MRE burger, slathered in GI BBQ sauce and squish-tube jalapeno cheese, lost in my head in his universe. Between drags on my Pakistani L&M and swigs of water, I fought the Japanese Army like my grandfather, except in my internal dialogue, I was born in the seventies, just like his books.

Powerful stuff.

Later, when I wrote my own book, I stumbled across JB’s website and shot him an email on the general freq. He was cool enough to respond (this rarely happens), and we came into contact. With time, I joined his beta reader crew and did some odd jobs for him. He talked about revisiting the AoT universe, and I was excited, along with legions of his other regulars.

Work progressed, and was delayed by various factors, which are discussed in depth on his sites. I won’t go into detail. If you are interested, there’s a lot about this at his free site.

But now, the moment has arrived, and his newest baby is on the shelves.

If you are as big of a fan as I am, you’ll smash the “buy”button so hard you fear that a trip to the Apple Store may be in your future.

I can’t wait to read this! What’s even better is that there are two more in the pipeline- this is like Black Friday in Walmart! Very exciting.

Seriously.

Thought to share this.

All right, so you guys know by now that I’m all over the place on this website.

Future warfare developments, science fiction, books, and reviews of products and cool stuff. Today I’m doing a review of an add-on automotive turn signal kit that I ordered from the beast for 129.99.

As you may know, I recently unloaded the Jeep project from hell, an antique 1955 Willys CJ-5 that was a lot of fun, but it ended up giving me endless grief. ‘Nuff said. I replaced it with a brand-new Mahindra Roxor, a fairly faithful WW2 Jeep clone. I ditched the antique hassle for the same vehicle without the old-stuff headaches.

The vehicle I bought was an HD Base model. By base, Mahindra means very, very basic. Zero creature comforts, but an astounding off-road machine. I had to add protection from the elements equipment, such as a windshield with wipers, a cloth top, and a hitch. This has slowed delivery a bit as the shop must install my add-ons. But that’s OK, because it’s given me time to think about what else the vehicle needs.

All right. The Roxor is legal to drive on the road where I live, with some restrictions. I discussed this with the county sheriff and highway patrol and covered my bases. The Roxor is good as long as I don’t operate it on the interstate or limited-access highways (think freeways). They also advised me not to race it or operate it while drunk. This strikes me as reasonable, sound advice.

But the Roxor I ordered, the base, doesn’t have turn signals installed, and you need those if you are going to share the road with traffic, even over limited distances, to reach the riding trails.

The dealer lady advised me she be happy to sell me an awesome recommended turn-signal kit for between 600-700 dollars.

Guys, this is a bit steep. So, I decided to see what Amazon had as an alternative. There were many kits, from very stripped-down models for about sixty bucks, all the way up to the 600-700 dollar range that I was quoted at the dealership.

Yes, I am sure that the 600 dollar kit is amazing. No, I don’t want to spend that kind of money. But what I also didn’t want to do was to buy a kit and be pissed off because it was shoddy- this would defeat my purpose- saving money. I’ve learned that you don’t want to buy just anything from Amazon because they sell junk and quality products together. Let the buyer beware.

So, after a lot of thought and searching, I settled upon the Kemimoto turn signal kit. It had a good balance of 4 and 5 star reviews, about 70 percent, and from the pictures and descriptions it seemed to be what I needed. I ordered it, fingers crossed. Two days later, it showed up. I unboxed it, curious as to what I would find.

I was impressed. Everything was neatly packaged and labeled, and the instructions weren’t pure garbage.

I decided to test the unit in my basement to do a dry run before installation. I grabbed a spare 12v lawnmower battery to simulate an automotive power source and started hooking things up.

Guys, it was childishly easy. Seriously, if you know that red is “power,” and black is “ground,” you can make this work. Everything, including the very loud add-on horn, worked as advertised without any tinkering, thought, or real effort. I have a fair bit of experience with automotive wiring harnesses. Usually, you really have to think to make things like the turn signals and horn work.

This is not the case with the Kemimoto kit. It really is a case of sticking the red wire on hot, and the black on ground, and everything works the first time. I’ll install this kit the next day when my vehicle is delivered. The biggest obstacle will be routing the wires along the chassis and locating the lights, which has nothing to do with the function of this kit, which is flawless.

One area I do think is a little dumb. The wires for the interior indicator lights use a standard marker light. Yeah, you can do this, but if you place a standard marker light on your dash, you’ll blind yourself! Of course, you won’t forget to turn off your signal with the standard old-school non-self-operating hot rod turn signal control, but those marker lights on your dash would be a bit much.

I ordered these to replace the marker lights, and I’ll use the spare marker lights elsewhere.

A much better look, IMO. When doing such mods to a vehicle, you should always strive for a “factory” look. The green arrows give you that.

Besides that, I can’t find much fault with this kit. I also disassembled the JC Whitney-style turn signal control assembly just to see the quality control on the internals. Everything was soldered in tight, and the hot-rod style unit worked as advertised. It did differ from the old 1950’s and 60’s units in that there is a plunger switch on the turn signal lever which controls the horn, and the body of the assembly doesn’t have the old “jewels” that light up when the turn signals are flashing.

But that’s OK. I know those old units are dead reliable, if clunky, and I was gratified to see that whoever made this loom used one.

For the money, this harness cannot be beat. Period.

Here is the mock-up I made. You can see all the components in the harness, and how they function. This took me about ten minutes to figure out, right out of the box! Very nice, very easy.

So. This will absolutely work on my Roxor, but it has all kinds of applications. Crappy cars whose turn signals died. ATVs. Antiques with no turn signals. The list goes on.

Five stars!

And I wouldn’t describe myself as such. However, if even a washed-up combat-arms ex-company-grade-officer can spot this trend, then you’d think the geniuses at the Pentagon or national leadership can.

National leadership. OK, I said it. Right now, we’ve got a choice between a fella who got into politics before I was born and another who wants the job, again, but is so compromised that I have no words for it. But still, the current President’s subordinates have to point out that what we are doing now doesn’t make sense. I don’t know if they are, and the Ukraine War has put our broken procurement process into an ugly spotlight.

What am I talking about.

I’ve been discussing this subject for years on this site, and was an overarching theme in my first series of books, the Valley Trilogy. We’re talking about drone warfare and its effect on the modern and future battlefields. It all started overseas when I was still employed by the Army. Many a night, I’d be in shithole-somewhere, and we’d get drone intel, or we could even hear them far overhead, depending on the platform. The capabilities were godlike, and it made me feel almost sorry for the a-holes that wanted us dead.

OK, maybe I wouldn’t go that far. But still.

When I came home, a friend showed me a toy his son had. It was a half-dollar-sized mini drone that could do all sorts of amazing tricks. Immediately, I recognized the military applications of this “toy.” Give every soldier on the battlefield his/her own drone, and it would remove a lot of the fear factor as you head into combat. Also, you could tailor-target the bad guys without throwing around one hell of a lot of ordnance, most of which either doesn’t hit anything or hits the wrong thing.

Later, a friend told me vignettes from Syria, where a-holes had been taping old-school grenades to drones and dropping shit onto guy’s heads. This simply reinforced my earlier thoughts, and lent credence to the future combat I described in Valley.

I don’t know if you all have been following developments on the ground in Ukraine, but it’s borderline unsurvivable over there. There are several factors here. One is the implacable enmity between the foes. I’ll bet it’s tough to surrender to a guy whose home village was overrun and his friends and family were tortured, deported, or thrown down a well or some shit. Another has been the profligate use of mines. The world is re-learning the lesson that if you really want to stop an attacking army, simply sow treacherous high explosives into the ground with abandon. If you are Russia, you do not give a fuck if there is no accurate reporting, and you have rendered just about everything unusable for a generation.

A quick aside. What do I mean, rendered unusable? Easy. Land mines from the Vietnam War, over fifty years ago, still kill and maim in Southeast Asia. Now, air or artillery deliver millions of plastic, non-detectable mines willy-nilly through fields and forests, and you can see what I mean by “unusable.” When this war eventually ends, because they all do, people will die daily from shitty modern Bouncing Betties (POM2 and 3), and farmers will die as their tractors hit anti-tank mines. Kids playing in the woods will pick up a seemingly harmless chunk of plastic, and BOOM, their lives change.

These things really suck.

Another factor that makes Ukraine a living hell has been the extensive use of old-fashioned artillery, which is no longer old-fashioned. The stocks of 155 and 152 shells worldwide have been draining toward Ukraine like a funnel, and both sides still need more and more. I remember when we destroyed the massive stocks of shells the Iraqi Army had early in the war. I’ll bet the Pentagon wishes they hadn’t been so hasty in that regard. But hey, those numbskulls screwed up so much over there that that oversight is small potatoes.

But finally, the shittiest thing about the Ukraine War is the pervasive feeling of utter nakedness among the guys up front. It’s the endless clouds of cheap kid’s drones put to lethal use.

It’s bad enough as it is, sitting in a position and knowing that someone could be sighting in on your head at any time.

It’s even worse when you know that ducking behind a tree or into a hole doesn’t help one lousy bit.

Welcome, welcome everybody, to modern warfare. Where you can’t even take a crap without some f’d up Chinese drone coming to pay you a visit. The damn things are everywhere over there. Frontline reports are chock-full of tales in regards to drones, and it’s the stuff of nightmares for both sides.

Hate to say it, but I told you so on this site years ago. Go back through my archives if you don’t believe me.

Drones spotting for artillery. Drones carrying grenades. Drones working with sniper teams. Drones taking out all kinds of very expensive equipment. Drones plowing into apartment blocks. The list goes on.

Oh, and drones delivering serious hits to the Black Sea Fleet and infrastructure in the Crimea. Word has it that Ukraine had a really big hit planned against the Russian fleet at Sevastopol, but General Musk, a paid US defense contractor, unilaterally called it off mid-operation by denying Starlink coverage for the operation. Seriously, Elon, lay off the ketamine. You’ve been doing some really dumb stuff lately.

But back to drones, and eventually AI, which is a separate subject and also one I’ve written about in my books.

Right now, drones are making life very difficult for the combatants in Ukraine. Uncomfortable is actually an inappropriate word that does not capture the horror of the threat from the sky. It’s bordering on the unsurvivable. This will not get better as time goes on; this war, while massive and deadly, is not a global conflagration between peers. That type of war, which will happen eventually, will be a horror show of drone swarms and cutting-edge tech.

When, and not if, this happens, watch out USN and USAF. You folks, with your billion-dollar white elephants, will get seriously messed up by 1500-dollar drones.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. The time is NOW to defend against these threats.

The Ukrainians are doing us favors. There’s that whole defend Europe thing, which is real. If the Ukrainians had folded, can anyone cast creditable doubt that Russia would be threatening NATO right now? Also, they remind us again that words cannot stop aggression. Their courage was an example for the entire world when we had blithely assumed valor was a thing of the past. Their example also shows us the folly of anti-mine treaties that are only honored in the breach by bad actors. What use are such agreements when the very people most likely to use them laugh at such accords? Mines have, and will have, a distasteful place in our arsenals. Like nerve gas or nukes, if only to discourage the enemy from reaching for such tools first. Finally, the Ukraine War has shown us in living color that we need to develop defenses immediately for drone swarms and eventual AI threats, and the sooner, the better.

Do you want to see the Gerald Ford go down like the Moskva?

It’s coming. Flag rank officers of the United States, do your fucking jobs. Politicians, do yours.

Quit wasting money on bullshit politically favored pork projects and put the tools our people need on the line. Yesterday.

Among other things, I’d suggest an armored fighting suit, augmented by AI, and not designed by Microsoft or Lockheed Martin.

It does feel as if I’m pissing into the wind because I don’t think reimagining our defense posture will happen. Non-trust fund poor boys like me will die in droves in the next war, their boondoggle war machines scattered across the landscape or resting at the bottom of the sea.

Count on it.

Hey, all. As you know, I jump all over the place on this site. Science fiction, my writing and interests, book launches, and product reviews.

Today I’m going to talk lights. Specifically, lights I found on Amazon that do everything- replace burned up units, save electricity, are easy to install, and work really flippin’ well.

While often overlooked, lights are a really big deal. Until you upgrade, a lot of times you don’t even notice how inadequate your old ones were. This was certainly the case with me a few days ago when I had enough of the dim lighting in my dingy basement.

I’ve put off the chore of replacing a few burned-up fluorescents for quite a while. They are expensive to replace, and a big pain in the butt to install. Finally, the loudly buzzing unit over my workbench died, and the situation became intolerable. Enter Amazon, where it seems you can find almost anything.

I knew that a single fluorescent shop light at my local DIY costs about forty USD, and that’s before you buy the delicate and failure-prone bulbs. You can get LED replacement bulbs, but the unit is problematic. Once, I had a ballast resistor catch on fire for no apparent reason. It was good that I was close by and had time to turn off the switch, or it could have been a major disaster.

I’m not a fan of old fluorescent fixtures. They had their use in the past, but they are now obsolete. Here’s why.

I found an amazing deal on Amazon, a 12-pack of fluorescent-style lights for just 96 dollars. The price increased slightly to 104, but it’s still a great deal. Also, the price fluctuates, so keep an eye out; the price may go down again, especially around Prime Day.

How much savings are these lights compared to traditional fluorescents? If you do the math, you get 12 lighting fixtures for 2 1/2 old-style lights. This alone represents massive savings, not to mention that the energy use is about half the old light’s power requirement.

Is it an apples to apples comparison, though?

Yes. Both fixtures, the traditional vs. the LED, are two-bulb units. Also, both are the standard four feet, and both have the same lighting intensity. Actually, I think the LEDs are brighter than the fluorescents.

And the installation of the new LEDs, as opposed to the old-style lights? Totally easy. After I did the first one, it took about three minutes per fixture. Each light comes complete with screws, anchors, and leveling chains. I didn’t need the anchors for my application, a dark, dungeon-like 110-year-old basement.

And in some cases, I didn’t need the chains or screws, either. I’ll explain that in a bit. First, I’ll talk about the easiest installs, the chains screwed directly to the floor joists, with the power supplied by old incandescent keyless fixtures. See the illustration below.

This type of installation was very simple. I unscrewed the old bulb and screwed in a readily available adaptor with female plugs to the keyless fixture. Then, I fastened the chains to the closest available floor joist and hung up the new light. I plugged the new fixture into the keyless adaptor, and it worked. Much better, I might add, than the old bulb alone, and at half the power usage of a traditional incandescent. Success!

The other type of installation I did occurred to me as I contemplated removing the old, burned-out fluorescent fixtures. Guys, those old fixtures are a real pain to remove. As I looked at those ancient steel beasts, I had an idea. First, I removed the old fluorescent bulbs. Then, I grabbed one of the replacement fixtures, and held it up to the old steel housing. As I suspected, the new fixture fit neatly inside the old housing. I had an idea.

Why not jam the replacement inside the old housing? I had planned on wiring the replacement to the existing circuit already via cutting the existing romex wire and wiring a female plus to the end anyhow; the existing fixture would be dead as a stone as soon as I cut the wires. Why not reuse it?

Note: If you don’t know what you’re doing, hire someone who does to cut live wires and install plugs! In my case, I was confident that the existing circuit was properly wired and that if the switch was turned off, there would be no residual voltage in the wire. This might not always be the case, so proceed with extreme caution when dealing with electricity! At a bare minimum, ensure the circuit is switched off and the appropriate breaker is pulled. Once again, hire an electrician if you are not 100% confident in the job. It’s too late if you take a pair of cutters to a wire and get a nasty shock!

Alright, now that that’s been said, I did exactly as stated above. I de-energized the circuit and cut the wires. Then, I installed a female plug for the light. You could get fancy here and install a work box and hardwire the light’s cord, but for me, this was unnecessary. I jammed the replacement inside the now-dead old steel fixture and zip-tied it into place. I plugged it in, and it looked as if it had been made that way. Behold.

I was particularly pleased by this- it looked factory, and I didn’t have to pull the heavy old steel fixture from the ceiling.

Within an hour, maybe an hour and a half, I installed eight fixtures in my poorly lit basement.

With all of the lights installed, it made a major difference! When my wife came to look, she squinted. This, for me, was real success. Also, it was pretty painless and I still have four lights left over. I plan to use them in the garage (to replace a failed unit), and in the barn.

Pretty awesome. Highly recommend, five flippin’ stars!

The only drawback is that now I can really see how badly I need to clean down there. So, if you plan to do this to your basement, you might want to do like me and buy a shop-vac, as well.

Later in the month a full review about the Mahindra Roxor, one of which I just purchased.

Also heavily involved with writing.

So. After a busy last month, I’ll be spending some more time here.

Stay tuned!