New App: The Pigeon Costume Party Cam.

 Along the lines of the new book that I put out, on Apple Books, is the idea of that I’d like to place Augmented Reality (AR) costumes on the pigeons. I made this little HTML app that serves as a rough scratch version of the idea, using Gemini. The camera discovers birds within the view range and then places a bounding box and a wizard hat on the bird. Other than actually looking at birds, the viewer would just look like a camera view, although photos of birds work, as well.

The first scratch version of the Pigeon Costume Party Cam

 

Pigeon Costume Party Cam

Point your camera at some pigeons (or any bird) to begin!

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The Pigeon Costume Party Cam in action, on my site. 

 

New Feature: Pigeon Photobooth

Upload a photo of a pigeon, then drag the wizard hat onto its head!

Select a Pigeon Photo

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September 2025 haul from Perfumer Supply House - Product Review

 Recently, I had a perfumer’s ingredients inspiration strike, after having become fascinated by a product that I had made, out of vanilla beans, for discovering that it greatly soothed my neck and back joint pain, upon application. It was a new discovery, so it was exciting, for me. I started to branch out, in seeking out other vanilla fragrances, and I decided to head over to The Grove, a wonderful Los Angeles landmark outdoor shopping mall, adjacent to Miracle Mile. It features popular shopping destinations such as an Apple Store, a Barnes and Noble book shop, a large farmer’s market, which is one of the most popular draws of the location, with dozens of restaurants and food and snack specialty shops. There’s also a fantastic Nordstrom department store, that I had visited, fondly, several times before. I figured that they would have a good selection of men’s fragrances, that I would enjoy sampling, and I wanted to smell Tom Ford’s Vanilla Sex, knowing that Tom Ford’s fragrances draw a lot of attention and fanfare, and that they also feature fragrance compositions that highlight singular notes of aroma compounds. 

As it turns out, the men’s fragrance section at Nordstrom, at The Grove, is very spacious and extensive. It goes far beyond a single rack of colognes, with numerous other racks covering a large space to walk through. I was also on the lookout for a fragrance that I had admired, recently, that I had trouble identifying - a powerful and compelling smoky woods fragrance note, that happens to be Ambrocenide, which is one of the aroma compounds I purchased, this time around, from Perfumer Supply House. I was glad to discover that I had found the ingredient I had been seeking out. Here’s a photo of the ingredients I purchased. 

My fragrance ingredients haul of 9 items, from Perfumer Supply House, which I’m very pleased with.

I was pleased to find Ultravanil online, at Perfumer Supply House, which is one of the primary components of Tom Ford’s Vanilla Sex, and I got to smell the fragrance at Nordstrom; it’s very pleasant, and an alluring vanilla scent, that’s quite beautiful. Being that I could purchase Ultravanil, myself, from Perfumer Supply House, I got to looking around the site for other ingredients that sounded compelling, for throwing together a nice vanilla fragrance composition of my own. 

September 2025 haul from Perfumer Supply House

After I placed the order, I started thinking about what sorts of fragrances would go with a vanilla-based composition, and I thought about rum, which is another common tropics delight that goes well with vanilla. Perfumer Supply House also happens to carry Rum Extract on Crodamol, and it’s a very lovely rum fragrance ingredient. It smells just right, like rum. I took some influence of tropical and sunny types of fragrances to add, such as Melonal, which is a delightfully refreshing melon note, and Sinensal Natural ex Orange, which is a true-to-form representation of orange. I threw in some light splashes (several drops) of each, in to my fragrance composition, and I put a helping of Tonka Bean Absolute in, as well, which complements vanilla nicely. Periploca is a wonderful vanilla almond gourmand type of fragrance, and it feels very familiar, not too spicy or exotic. The floral ingredients that I had purchased, Jonquille and Narcisse Absolutes, are moderately floral fragrances, with a prominent green character to them. I put in just one drop of the Jonquille. 5 drops of Ambrocenide were very powerful, in the fragrance composition I made, so I doubled the amount of Ultravanil to about 21 drops, which balanced out the composition nicely. Cetalox is a nice, pungent, musky compound, and it goes nicely in the mix. 

The fragrance spray bottle I made up turned out to be a very pleasant and fine smelling fragrance, and I feel like I could enjoy this one, rather than buy Vanilla Sex, outright, although the Ultravanil ingredient tip was a good one. It’s a very lovely and powerful vanilla ingredient, and the spray I made smells very nice. The total cost of the ingredients was just over $200 or so, and I feel like this investment is possibly the best selection of ingredients, for the price, out of all of my fragrance ingredients hauls I’ve ever done. This fragrance is very satisfactory. Feel free to try it out, for yourself!

A Skid Row pigeon couple loses their home.

Two pigeons perch amidst the wreckage of their home.

Los Angeles’ homeless crisis affects so many, including the wildlife. Last night, two pigeons lost their home when a sidewalk shop’s sign collapsed, leaving the couple’s home roost vulnerable and exposed to the sidewalk on 5th Street, which sees a lot of pedestrian foot traffic at all hours, particularly during the day time. Since the structure collapsed during the nighttime, the birds were forced to stay there, for the night, because other pigeons claim the signs around them. These pigeons seem to not know where they might go, next, but it’s doubtful that they’ll stay here, because of the risk of threats from below. Pigeons usually prefer to have a safe and secure, secluded roosting spot, where they’ll return on a daily basis, typically in the late afternoon. The birds are likely devastated, at the loss of their home, having made grand plans to build a nest and rear some young, behind the shop sign, now that their meals had become regular, on an ongoing basis. 

Scratch space livestreaming

Live Stream Feed

An example of HLS Live Streaming in a Web Player

This player is configured to play a live HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) feed. It leverages the HLS.js library to ensure smooth playback on browsers that do not natively support HLS, such as Chrome and Firefox on desktop. This approach is widely used for live webcams, virtual events, and broadcast streams.

A work in development: The Pigeon Costume Parade children’s story.

I was brought up on a lot of children’s stories, being that my mother taught second grade, and she was primarily in charge of my early years in education. I imagine cute storybook-like lifestyles and lives of the pigeons, and one of them is The Pigeon Costume Parade, where a townsperson knits costumes for the town’s pigeons, and they have an annual costume parade. Here’s a mockup cover for the story.

A preliminary look at the concept cover of my children’s book idea.

Here’s one take on the book’s beginning:

 Here’s another set of concept images: not as linear as ChatGPT (above), but I like the illustrative styles pictured in ImageFX’s Imagen 3 generative image renders, here.

Now, the challenge would be coming up with a coherent illustrative style, in order for the story to make sense, visually, but the ideas are well done, with Imagen 3, by Google Labs. I think that the illustration styles have specific names for the styles, and I could, potentially, narrow down the artistry by refining the prompts, in a linear chat.

Update: Over the weekend, I was able to complete the book. I went with ChatGPT, since that was the most familiar platform that I was using to generate images in a consistent illustrative form. In subsequent editions, I’ll perhaps go for more detailed renders, from different engines, if possible. For now, you can check out the first edition of The Pigeon Costume Parade on Apple Books.

The Pigeon Costume Parade is now available on Apple Books. 

My next idea, for this book, is to look in to manufacturing plush doll toys of the costumed pigeons, for collectors and for children. Here are some early concept renders of that idea.

A felted pigeon doll, wearing a cow costume. 

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The Library Pigeons are returning to their daily perching spot.

 It had been several months, since I updated news about the Downtown Los Angeles Central Library’s pigeon flock, and there had been some unfortunate turns of events, in that the flock slowly began to migrate out of the area, eventually fully abandoning the perching spot, up on one of the library’s walls. My guess was that some of the new birds who had joined the flock had some attachments to where they came from, and they began to stray, slightly, from the flock’s flight formations, eventually leading them back to places where they came from, and the library pigeons, who were homed there, for years, followed them, possibly for adventure. 

The other day, I saw several pigeons return to their library wall perch, one of them, I call Ruffles, because he always has ruffled feathers around his neck. They came for a meal, which I offered them, and Ruffles ate out of my hand. 

Here’s a video recapping some of the closeup photography I got to do of the birds eating out of my hand. I had posted the photos, previously, but they ended up being still photos, instead of Live Photos. Here, you can get a sense of the action of the birds eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with live moments interspersed with the still images that were captured.