Pilot's Log

A party supplies place had its going-out-of-business sale yesterday so I cleaned them out of these.

Much of the action in the world's novels takes place inside buildings, according to author Robert Bringhurst. But characters in older Russian literature are an exception, he says. They are always out in the forests, traveling and rambling. In accordance with astrological omens, I suggest that you draw inspiration from the Russians' example in the coming days. As often and as long as you can, put yourself in locations where the sky is overhead. Nature is the preferred setting, but even urban spots are good. Your luck, wisdom, and courage are likely to increase in direct proportion to how much time you spend outdoors.

If it weren't this place's rainy season...

I spent another fruitless while yesterday in the Bargain Basement of Books Warehouse in Pigeon Forge yesterday.  The place is a shambles with tens of thousands of books in bins or on shelves with very little in the way of organization.  It's impossibly difficult to find anything specific.

My thinking there went in this direction: if I had one of those quadcopter drones that could carry a camera, or perhaps carry my smartphone and have it act as a camera, I could photorecon the whole space and then have a computer program determine all the books it saw.  Then I could virtually search that data and see if there was anything I wanted or needed.

I feel it's probably a good likelihood that somebody's already thought of something like this.

A couple weeks ago, on my way to the scale model club meeting in Knoxville, I stopped at a BP station for a fill-up and noticed that there was a crew at work painting the pump barriers and the streetlight posts.  They were cutting down the plastic temporary signs these places always have ("Play The Lottery Here" or "Special On Pepsi") and throwing them in the dumpster in the back corner of the property.

I'd seriously thought to go retrieve the signage, as the plastic material is good for scratchbuilding scale models.  But I had a meeting to go to, and the night was cold, and even on my way back to the house I mulled it over more and came to the same conclusions.  It would probably be easier for me just to look up a signmaker and either ask for surplus pieces or buy the raw material through that channel.

I went past the place today.  It's no longer a BP.  I couldn't take their plastic then; now they can't take MY plastic.

Plastic isn't the future anymore.  It's the now.

FP