The neat-o iPigeon.institute homemade instrument of the day (updating).

As an aspiring mobile device-driven music box designer, from various standpoints of development: nature’s form of the instrument (whistles, clicks, pops, bird sounds, and resonant bodies of materials, such as metal, wood, etc.), digital design of the emulated instrument (physical modeling, synthesized sounds, audio recordings, key mappings, and transpositions), as well as the delivery of the app, in a usable form, of some standard such as MIDI, 

I have, on one hand, a lot of free space to work with, given that any individual component would reasonably simulate some sort of more complex mechanical form and instrument structure, for example, my first novelty device:

The Can Drum Bellows Clicks-Flourisher - runs on tar!

Long-time readers of mine know that I’m big in to tar. What a fortunate discovery, to have happened upon this hand-crafted (post-manufacture and consumer use of this recyclable product - an aluminum can) bellows device - a sequential flourish-clicker, if you will, with features of a miniature steel drum; on one hand, percussive, as the form of the instrument was crafted by my own musician’s take on suitable design, for a makeshift tobacco pipe, whereas - as a pipe, for that matter, the instrument is played with the breath. It goes well, with a popping sound, perhaps, as a flourish moment, in a musical idea, whereas the tar, from smoking the aluminum can pipe, with tobacco; then smeared (the tar) across the numerous holes in the can’s smoking bowl section, whereby the can, suitably designed, mind you, would blow out, with a bellows thrust and force design concept, in mind, with both flutish and percussive effects being achieved, in one simple blow. 

It’s a simple thing to construct, yet it takes a musician’s skill and finesse, along with some entrained tonal fine-motor muscle tuning, which goes in to the crushing of the can - perhaps even a newcomer could construct the panels of the body of the instrument well enough; it’s just that this is particularly a musical instrument consideration. The holes are poked through, slightly, with a safety pin, or needle, perhaps, and the blowing happens through the drinking mouthpiece, otherwise, visually, the “top” of the can. 

Try it for yourself! It’s really a cute instrument to pull off, to wow your friends, compatriots, and passersby, alike. Try it with a squeeze pop!

Hear the individual sounds of the instrument, freshly capped with tar, from tobacco!

Alternatives to Gig Work, Now that the Federal Extension Unemployment Benefits are Ending.

 Although it may seem like a bleak outlook on the newsfeed, lately, I'm not going to freak out. There are plenty of ways in which I can assert my enterprising self and my entrepreneurial spirit, even as of yet;

Hopefully you'd also managed to procure and safeguard some capital investments, using unemployment benefits from the Employment Development Department, etc. - for me, it was perfume and fragrance | aroma ingredients that stuck things out, beyond the stock market and the cryptocurrency craze that hit many newcomers, from the wayside, with attractive and compelling distractions from what few opportunities many of us were afforded, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and subsequent social strata fallout that was the Black Lives Matter movement and associated civic center occupations and unrest. 

In any case, you might be wondering what else there is to do, now that much of the attention is on the presidential administration, the weather, etc., while here, in Southern California, the weather is relatively balmy and cool - at least for a few days, now; we',ve got raindrops notifications coming through on Dark Sky, and it's only the height of mid-day that's unbearably hot and overly bright. Things could be worse; they « had been » worse, previously... 

Then, from out of what seems like nowhere, Google manages to pull through in some new releases; there's the Pixel 6 coming out soon, and with it (preceding it's release), there's plenty of self-starter enterprising frontier, development and production space that's rich as all of the major topics of Big Tech, as of late: AI, ML, Call Center stuff, IoT, online retail, ad marketing, domaining... that sort of thing. 

For me, Google Workspace reignited the development aspirations fire within me, and I was drawn in by Gmail's chat space, which, for me, is constantly dead space, or non-existent, as I work primarily on mobile; finger-flipping up and down, checking on this and that, waiting for my benefits to come in, ... although that was bound to come to an end, at some point in time. Now that those things had come to fruition, during their time, it's obvious that we'd expect to have something to show, as for ourselves, and for our adult life and professional careers, to come. That's how I see it, in any case. 

There's Dialogflow, which is the linguistic version of what was, and is - the visual foray of Machine Learning platform, which is TensorFlow; we've all been familiarized with the notion of what TensorFlow does for us, in having to go through Captchas, as the intelligence barrier, between us, and some fated necessary task of scripting, that comes about, as a result of browsing the web, sometimes. 

There's the Tovusound Organ Pipe Music Boxes, which I'm a huge fan of, as a DTLA pigeon carnival enthusiast and proponent (lately, I've been getting shipped around, various parts of town, for the sake of tending to the other pigeon flocks and small establishments of them, in numbers, whether they were known gatherings of birds, or unbeknownst to me), given that the birds are likely to flourish, here and there, regardless of whether or not it's the civic center, or not. In these many various locales that I traverse, I encounter signs of that the pigeons and the people are getting along well, and that the birds are treated well in various parts of town.