frustratedpilot | Entries tagged with thinkers

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of September 27, 2018

If you were ever going to win a contest that awarded you a free vacation to an exotic sanctuary, it would probably happen during the next three weeks. If a toy company would ever approach you about developing a line of action figures and kids' books based on your life, it might also be sometime soon. And if you have ever had hopes of converting your adversaries into allies, or getting support and backing for your good original ideas, or finding unexpected inspiration to fix one of your not-so-good habits, those opportunities are now more likely than they have been for some time.

It has been a long time since I posted one of these.

Who wants to fly with the Wild Geese?

A very long time ago, I received a bunch of built-up 1/72 airplane models--including FIVE F4U Corsairs. (One Airfix, two Heller [now SMER] and two old-production Revell, to be specific.) They were all in bad shape and poorly built to begin with, so I stripped the paint off, carefully disassembled them and started looking for alternative parts.

My search is a little more serious now.

If High Planes did a detailling set for F4U-1(A), F4U-1D, F4U-1C and/or FG-1D, I'd be all over them. As it is, I may just get some F4U-5N sets from them, "impossible variant" be darned.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of March 12, 2015

One of your important assignments in the coming week is to get high without the use of drugs and alcohol. Let me elaborate. In my oracular opinion, you simply must escape the numbing trance of the daily rhythm. Experiencing altered states of awareness will provide you with crucial benefits. At the same time, you can't afford to risk hurting yourself, and it's essential to avoid stupidly excessive behavior that has negative repercussions. So what do you think? Do you have any methods to get sozzled and squiffed or jiggled and jingled that will also keep you sane and healthy?

I've got some balloons but I need helium gas. In theory I can get a cheapy tank at WallyWorld...but would it be worth the hassle?

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of July 17, 2014

"There is no such thing as a failed experiment," said author and inventor Buckminster Fuller, "only experiments with unexpected outcomes." That's the spirit I advise you to bring to your own explorations in the coming weeks, Sagittarius. Your task is to try out different possibilities to see where they might lead. Don't be attached to one conclusion or another. Be free of the drive to be proven right. Instead, seek the truth in whatever strange shape it reveals itself. Be eager to learn what you didn't even realize you needed to know.

I don't want to proven right. I want to be proven wrong, in the most spectacular, anecdotal, legendary manner there could possibly be.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of June 12, 2014

Novelist Herman Melville wrote that in order to create art, "unlike things must meet and mate." Like what? "Sad patience" and "joyous energies," for example; both of them are necessary, he said. "Instinct and study" are crucial ingredients, as well as humility and pride, audacity and reverence, and "a flame to melt" and a "wind to freeze." Based on my interpretation of the astrological omens, Sagittarius, I believe you will soon need to meld opposites like these as you shape that supreme work of art -- your life.

...She's my one desire!

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of February 20, 2013

The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Eighth Symphony in a mere two months during the summer of 1943. He worked on it in an old henhouse on a former chicken farm. The location helped relax him, allowing him to work with extra intensity. I wish you could find a retreat like that for yourself sometime soon, Sagittarius. I think you would benefit from going off by yourself to a sanctuary and having some nice long talks with your ancestors, the spirits of nature, and your deepest self. If that's not practical right now, what would be the next best thing you could do?

Some would say that Rather Manor is a good place to start if you want a creative retreat. But I have found over the years that we tend to bring in a lot of our own noise without realizing it. So I don't know what the answer is here.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of February 6, 2014

"What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree?" asked environmentalist Edward Abbey. His answer: "The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse." I suggest you meditate on all the ways you can apply that wisdom as a metaphor to your own issues. For example: What monumental part of your own life might be of service to a small, fragile part? What major accomplishment of yours can provide strength and protection to a ripening potential that's underappreciated by others?

It's hard to know the whole of one's own ecology, macrocosm or microcosm.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of July 18, 2013

The Sagittarian writer and artist William Blake (1757-1827) made drawings of many eminent people who had died before he was born. Julius Caesar was the subject of one of his portraits. Others included Dante, Shakespeare, and Moses. How did Blake manage to capture their likenesses in such great detail? He said their spirits visited him in the form of apparitions. Really? I suppose that's possible. But it's also important to note that he had a robust and exquisite imagination. I suspect that in the coming weeks you, too, will have an exceptional ability to visualize things in your mind's eye. Maybe not with the gaudy skill of Blake, but potent nevertheless. What would be the best use of this magic power?

Fat lot of good it does to have an imagination in times when nobody else wants you to get ideas.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of June 27, 2013

"The only thing that we learn from history," said the German philosopher Georg Hegel, "is that we never learn anything from history." I'm urging you to refute that statement in the coming weeks, Sagittarius. I'm pleading with you to search your memory for every possible clue that might help you be brilliant in dealing with your immediate future. What have you done in the past that you shouldn't do now? What haven't you done in the past that you should do now?

I was going to restart taking multivitamin tablets after I'd given them up for a while (since I forget how long it was it must have been a long time)...but they've gotten expensive lately. I have to be careful now because I can't swallow big honkin' horsepills like I did when I was younger.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of January 31, 2013

"Everyone is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day," said writer Elbert Hubbard. "Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit." Judging from my personal experience, I'd say that five minutes is a lowball figure. My own daily rate is rarely less than half an hour. But the good news as far as you're concerned, Sagittarius, is that in the coming weeks you might have many days when you're not a damn fool for even five seconds. In fact, you may break your all-time records for levels of wild, pure wisdom. Make constructive use of your enhanced intelligence!

Is it that wisdom is wasted on the wise or that idiocy is wasted on the idiots?

If you thoroughly shuffle a deck of cards, the novel arrangement you create is probably unique in all of human history; its specific order has never before occurred. I suspect the same principle applies to our lives: Each new day brings a singular set of circumstances that neither you nor anyone else in the last 10,000 years has ever had the pleasure of being challenged and intrigued by. There is always some fresh opportunity, however small, that is being offered you for the first time. I think it's important for you to keep this perspective in mind during the coming week. Be alert for what you have never seen or experienced before.

Dad is really antsy that I find some sort of going income. Filling online surveys for money, having a shop on eBay or ClickBank or Amazon.com, microgigging--none of it seems very plausible or promising.

Mum said I needed to invent an industry and be the first professional in it. I'm just looking for the box so I can think outside of it.

Current Music: Loading...

Over the weekend was the drawing for a sweepstakes I had entered online (and of course, did not win)...it was from Ford Racing and the prize was a 7-liter V8 race car engine of the latest version.

I had no ready use for such a thing, but it was fun to brainstorm possibilities. What WOULD I do with such an engine? Did I have a tasty recipie for the Secret Ingredient?

Upgrading an existing vehicle is the most basic idea, of course. Mustang, T-Bird, Taurus, Crown Vic, Pickup, Lincoln Mark #, Cougar, whatevs. Sure. Plenty of project cars to be had. Heck, that Mach 1 across the street is still theoretically available.

Early Thirties "rat rod"? I know a local shop that can build one in their sleep.

Replica Cobra roadster or Shelby Mustang? That's practically a cliché for current kit cars. Repro bodies-in-white for Sixties Mustangs are almost a phone call away.

Spec racer? Late model? Road-legal NASCAR stocker? I know where to look for those too.

So where did I wind up going on my train of thought? GTs. Ford had two from my lifetime that I was interested in: the GT70 and the Mustang GTP. The former was a possible follow-on to the GT40 that Ford developed at the end of the Sixties but never put on the track. The latter was run in IMSA in the early 1980s...but never built with a V8 engine, although Roush Racing wanted to build such a machine. A replica of something that never was? A rewrite of motorsports history? Could I have gotten away with it?

Radiolab did a very good program on Artificial Intelligence; I heard it overday.

As I'm sure I said before, there is little in the way of problems that an AI could solve better than a human being as yet. Tho' I was thinking of one possibility.

Suppose a Cleverbot-variety AI were to go through your existing canon of social media output. Every face, space, tweet and blog. Every text, pic and vid. And then it would find "keys" in that content and ask you about them. Perhaps get to to think about why you say what you say. Maybe find your psychological or social "blind spots" and help you work through them.

Yet another chapter in the ongoing saga of taking Polish paper model scans and trying to find some worthwhile activity from them...

The aircraft carrier I acquired the other day is 1/200th scale as-is. To bring it up to 1/72nd (so I can pose my collection of airplane models on her deck) RonyaSoft ProPoster sez that by enlargening each plate to 23" wide (proportional scale) each graphics plate would take up eight legal size sheets.

If I were enlargening a 1/33rd scale plane to 1/6th (so that if somebody gave me a World Peacekeepers action figure pilot I could put him in a Hawker Tempest V fighter, for instance), that would mean a 45" wide plate and each plate would take up 30 sheets of paper.

If I wanted a 1/25th scale tank enlargened to 1/6th (so a WP tanker would be driving a Cromwell I happen to have on file), that's a 35" wide plate for 20 sheets per plate.

Whereas a 1/15th scale Volga car I've got enlargened to 1/6th (I've got my excuse) would mean a 21" wide plate and only eight sheets per plate.

I'm gonna need some ink.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of December 8, 2011

Harvey Ball was a commercial artist who dreamed up the iconic image of the smiley face. He whipped it out in ten minutes one day in 1963. Unfortunately for him, he didn't trademark or copyright his creation, and as a result made only $45 from it, even as it became an archetypal image used millions of times all over the world. Keep his story in the back of your mind during the coming weeks, Sagittarius. I have a feeling you will be coming up with some innovative moves or original stuff, and I would be sad if you didn't get proper credit and recognition for your work.

The problem is that I'm not sure I trust legal professionals with my ideas. And too many other people don't want me to have ideas. But I love a good idea, when I see one happen.

For my Week 4 entry in the Wishlist sweepstakes at Amazon.com...over on saferacer.com I found the version of Alpine Stars driving suit that The Stig wears on Top Gear. They're on special this season, but I'll never be able to afford to buy one myself. I could probably get a huge chunk of my existing Wishlist for what this one article of clothing costs!

For somebody who can't exactly watch the show I'm becoming a big fan.

As for the Power Lap project, I did a little research. I'd done an estimate from the drawing I had here earlier that it was probably around 1.5 miles around--and then I found a source that told me it is 1.76 miles. If so, completing the circuit in exactly 60 seconds makes the average speed just over 105 mph.

Actually, this makes sense as there are no places to really go flat out, and a lot of hard braking and cornering is involved.

So a little cribsheet to compare to the numbers for The Stig's runs and Celebrity In A Reasonably Priced Car:

Speed to Lap Time
170 km/h = 0:59.7
100 MPH = 1:03.4
160 km/h = 1:03.5
95 MPH = 1:06.7
150 km/h = 1:07.7
90 MPH = 1:10.4
140 km/h = 1:12.5
85 MPH = 1:14.1
130 km/h = 1:18.1
80 MPH = 1:19.2
75 MPH = 1:24.5
120 km/h = 1:24.6
70 MPH = 1:30.5
110 km/h = 1:32.3
65 MPH = 1:37.5
100 km/h = 1:41.5

And anything slower than that, is not important. (To paraphrase Raul Julia in The Gumball Rally)

In reference to THIS EARLIER ENTRY...

The other day, Dad related to me that he also noticed the car and was a little interested himself. But at the same time, a low-mileage Daewoo sedan is being sold by a neighbor up the road. The price is definitely reasonable, but whether it will still be available when Dad clears his debts is another story.

I have been brainstorming things I could do if I did in fact acquire the Bradley. But there are still too many choices. GM/Toyota (with the possibility of parts commonality with Moonshine)? Ford/Mazda? Chrysler/Mitsubishi? BMW? Something more exotic? There is plenty of room in the Witches' Cauldron to throw things in and let them stew.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of July 21, 2011

Do you stare for hours every day into little screens like those on smart phones, computer monitors, and TVs? If so, I recommend that you tear your gaze away from them more than usual in the coming week. A change in your brain chemistry needs to happen, and one good way to accomplish it will be to feast your eyes on vast panoramas and expansive natural scenes. Doing so will invigorate your thinking about the design and contours of your own destiny, and that would be in sweet alignment with the astrological omens. So catch regular views of the big picture, Sagittarius. Treat clouds and birds and stars as if they were restorative messages from the wide-open future. Gaze lovingly at the big sky.

As Max Headroom said it, "I need a change of screen-ery."

This past week on PBS, POV's documentary, "My Perestroika" was about the last generation of Russians to grow up under the Soviet system, who witnessed the fall of the Union and the subsequent confusion, desperation and strangeness that followed and continues for them.

Meanwhile, TH¡S had shown the William Hurt/Richard Burton version of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I've never read the novel, but I own a copy of Gyorgi Dalos' 1985: What Happens After Big Brother Dies and a Scholastic weekly magazine that has a condensed drama script version of the Orwell story.

I'm sure you're wondering where I'm going with this train of thought.

I'm not sure myself.

I think America is approaching the kind of historical crossroads that many nations have faced over the centuries. Perhaps by this time six years hence, we'll be talking about the Former United States of America...all a nation has to do to fall apart is for its citizens to doubt the premise that the system to which they have been born is morally superior to all others in existance. Maybe the falling-apart has already begun and the majority doesn't see it happen. Perhaps they'll wake up someday to empty Wal*Marts, no burgers at MickyD's and TV footage of tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Or the opposite happens--the masses see their predicament, stand up...and the shotgun sings its song. And the United States stays what it is, in name only, for some generations.

Either way would be a nightmare.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of June 16, 2011

The coming weeks could be a Golden Age for your perceptiveness. If you're even moderately aligned with the cosmic rhythms, you will be able to discern hidden agendas that no one else has spotted, catch clues that have been hidden, and be able to recognize and register interesting sights you've previously been blind to. To maximize your ability to cash in on this fantastic opportunity, say this affirmation frequently: "My eyes are working twice as well as usual. I can see things I don't normally notice."

I hope I don't become like the Kid Who Saw Everything Twice in Catch-22 (the novel). Didn't work out so good for him.

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Stephen R Bierce

Frustrated Pilot

March 2022

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Pilot's Log

Where Very Little Happens

Entries tagged with thinkers

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Scale Model Dilemma

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FreeWill Can't Keep Silent On The Matter of Quietude

FreeWill Lives Large

Thinking? Allowed? FreeWill Weighs In

FreeWill Likes A Future With A Past

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FreeWill Deals Me In

The Alchemy of the Iron Chef Premise

Machines And Minds

Titan At Play

Whenever I See Your Smiling Face...

Wishlists, Mathematics, And Other Strange Stuff

Update: Stuff I Want And Stuff Wanting

(no subject)

Oh, The Timing!

FreeWill Wears Designer Lenses