Why Aude Khatru?

The story starts more than 40 years ago.  In fact it was either 1973 or 1974.  The confusion is over the year in which the list was published.  What list?  A list of the best albums of 1973.  I think it was in Playboy, and the list was probably published in early 1974.  The top three on the list were…

1. Yessongs - Yes
2. Light as a Feather - Return to Forever
3. Chicago 6 - Chicago

Chicago 6 was one of my favorite albums at the time, and I had to find the two albums that beat it out.  I headed down to my local record store, The Wherehouse.

Now, a quick aside…back in 1974, most single LPs were $3.99 at the Wherehouse.  A lot of my present collection of LPs were bought around this time, and at this price.  In a moment you will see why this is important.

I did not find a copy of Light as a Feather, and it would be a couple more years before I heard Jazz Fusion Supergroup Return to Forever, but I did find a copy of Yessongs.  The problem is that Yessongs is a triple LP, and it cost $10.99.  That sounds like very little now, but for a 17 year old who worked for $1.90/hour, that was a lot of money.  A lot of money for something I had never heard before.

But, I bought Yessongs, and from the moment I heard the strains of the Firebird Suite, which Yes used as an intro to the concerts recorded for Yessongs, I was blown away.  I had never heard anything like it, and I loved it.

I want to say that it changed my life, but other than my taste in music, I am not sure that is really true.  What I can say is that I have never lost my love for the music of Yes.

Khatru comes from the Yes song Siberian Khatru.  I use it as a mark of my love for the music of Yes.

What does Khatru mean?  Hell if I know. 

Jon Anderson, the vocalist for Yes, who wrote the lyrics, said that it meant "as you wish" in Yemeni.  Yemeni isn't actually a language, at best it is an Arabic dialect, and Khatru does not seem to have a meaning anyone can pin down.

Many years ago, my wife found a website that said that Khatru meant Mongoose in Egyptian, or something like that.  I do not remember exactly, and I can no longer find the website.

So, back to the question, what does Khatru mean?  Khatru means, one who considers the group Yes to be important enough to his life to take a word from a song and use it as part of his online name.

That leaves us with Aude.

Aude is a department in southern France.  When I went to France in 1976, Carcassonne in Aude was the first city where I lived.  The river Aude flows north from the Pyrenees and turns east in Carcassonne before heading out to the Mediterranean.  I spent a month or two in the small town of Limoux, which is also on the Aude.

In latin, Aude means dare, as part of the phrase "Sapere Aude" from the First Book of Letters by the Roman poet Horace.  It is my understanding that this is the origin of the French word "audace"  and the English "audacity."

That isn't why I picked it, but I like it.

Then recently, I found that Aude is also a french feminine name.  I don't remember meeting anyone named Aude while I was in France, but I didn't meet more than a few hundred French during my two years, so I may have been unlucky, or it may have been more commonly used since.  This has nothing to do with why I picked it, and it doesn't matter to me now.

Oh, and Aude is pronounced "ode."  Just like the type of laudatory poem.

So, that is why Aude Khatru, or more commonly, AudeKhatru.

Ingress, Part 2

Okay, so previously I gave a primer on Ingress, and now it is time to go into a bit deeper detail.

If you get into Ingress, you will learn that there is a big story that goes with the game, and that has been playing out for the last five and half years.  Niantic has tried to engage the players by creating a story that is pushed forward by periodic videos that often look like News Reports.  During those five and half years many things have been added to game, both story and mechanics.  You will learn all about that if you play, and you won't care much if you don't

So, the game actually plays like this.  You drive around to different portals and hack them, and then attempt to link them to other portals.  Now, you do not do the hacking and linking while moving…at least  you shouldn't, and in Austin, Texas, where I live, it is actually against the law (no hand held devices while driving).

Portals are far enough apart that you will almost certainly have to drive to find more than a few.  The game really should play out by driving to an area, parking your car and then walking around to hack all the nearby portals. 

As an example, there are at least a dozen portals within a mile of my house.  However, there are only two  within 200 yards of my house, so it depends on how far you want to walk.  I find that most people drive into an area with a lot of portals, and then walk to hack those portals.  Some parks and churches will have several portals in a small area, so it becomes easy to hack many portals with minimal effort.

Ingress is largely a loner game, but not necessarily a lonely game.  You go out hacking when you have time, and that often means you do it alone.  You don't need other people to play the game.  However, there is a Comm function in the game that allows you to talk to other players.  It can be filtered to your Faction and a distance, so you can talk to local players on your side.  That means you can find other players near by and work together. 

The Austin Ingress community is pretty good, and the Austin Enlightened group even has a webpage, and they use Google+ and Slack to communicate outside the game.  This allows the local group to coordinate efforts and create local events.  There are also game wide events, which center on specific cities around the world, usually a few major sites, and then more minor sites.  Hundreds of people meet up and compete for the day.

Lastly, one of the things I like best is that while the Resistance and Enlightened are rivals, there is no real animosity between the factions.  Though the ingame story pits them as rivals struggling to control the destiny of mankind, the players are just playing a game and having fun.  That is probably the best thing about Ingress.

Five and a half years and still going strong.