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Showing posts with label updates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label updates. Show all posts

Friday, January 10

Baby pigeon’s first day out with the flock. (LAPL Central Branch).

 

Here’s baby pigeon, on the lower right portion of the photo. Today was his first day out, that I’ve seen him. 

The pigeon flock at the Downtown LA’s Los Angeles Public Library, Central Branch, feature just one newcomer baby pigeon, for the past year’s late season mating period. I noticed him squeaking around, on the ground, below me, as I gave the birds their lunchtime daily meal. This baby was pretty adept at taking care of himself, already, as far as eating goes. Sometimes the baby birds don’t know how to eat food on their own, yet, when they come out with the flock, while they’re still young, and they go around squeaking for help, to the older birds. This one knew how to peck for his food. He hasn’t learned to preen himself, yet, though, so his feathers were a bit ruffled. When the flock was done eating, they flew off, almost in unison, as they typically do, although baby pigeon wasn’t quite used to being in sync with such a nuanced trait of flock behavior, yet, so he stayed behind, for several seconds, probably wondering at what had happened, but eventually, he flew off, to join the rest of the flock. 

I didn’t try to intervene in baby pigeon’s mealtime and first day out, with the birds. Pigeons are naturally frightened of humans, as wild birds, on account of our size differences. I figure that if baby pigeon is meant to be a show bird, he’ll learn the behaviors from the members of the flock who have been showing confidence and dominant behaviors towards me, lately, in that they started using me as a perch, which you can see in the next blog post. This had just started recently, and some of the more senior members, such as Snooker, the senior Pakistani High Flyer of the flock, even took on this advantageous behavioral trait, for themselves, just to try it out, and he perched on my arm, for a moment, before flying off. I say advantageous because the ones that perch on me stand to be rewarded with premier picks of the meal supply, provided in my hand, for them to peck out and nibble on. In some cases, when they perch on me, as multiple members of the flock, they flout their pigeon idiosyncrasies and social order behavioral traits, such as competitiveness over who gets to pick the food out of my hand, or not, and who gets to stand where. 

This behavioral paradigm is promising, as it suggests that some members of the flock have become quite comfortable around me, for themselves fact that I’m the primary feeder of the flock. With this being the case, some newcomers to the flock adopted this behavioral trait of flying up on me and perching on my arm, or climbing over my grocery and food bags, and my legs, while I’m seated on the ledge, to feed them. The fact that Snooker tried out perching on me, the other day, was a subsequent promising gesture, on top of that birds started perching on me, at all, since previously, before a few weeks ago, or so, this trait did not exist, in the flock. It makes for a unique sensory experience for human participants; offering the hand, to hand feed the birds, and feeling their feathery texture of the birds’ crop area, above the chest, and just below the throat, as they peck frenetically and pick out which seeds or peanuts they’d like to eat. It’s a humorous thing to be so close to the action of their meal time, since they have poor manners, and they even jump on top of each other, shoulder their way in, and stand on top of each other, even, to get to the food supply. Sometimes, the birds even prefer to eat out of my hand, since it’s more efficient than eating off of the ground, which is their other option. I figure that baby pigeon might likely some day take part in this social behavior of the showier birds in the flock, and I’ll just be patient and reinforce the occurrences of repeating this feeding ritual, for display, for the other birds to perhaps mimic, each and every one of them, that feels like it. Beyond that, I feel that it would be a new challenge, to bring discipline and orderliness to their meal time. Meal time is where they really go wild, after all, which is part of the entertainment value of feeding the pigeons, to begin with. 

Now I have a new training gesture to offer the birds; holding my arm out, parallel to the ground, to stand as a perch, for the birds, and some of the birds accept it, and readily and playfully fly up on my arm and perch there, to demonstrate and participate in this training. It was a heartwarming moment, on this day, when a disfigured-legged pigeon flew up to perch on my arm, to eat food out of my hand. It showed that even physical disfigurement, from former misfortunes in life, doesn’t discourage the birds from trying out new behaviors, in interacting with their caretakers and handlers by perching on them, to receive hand-fed meal portions. 

Friday, December 27

Pigeons eating sandwiches at the library. (Photo blog)

 Some of the pigeons have been doing pretty neat things, lately, during their meal time. One of them hops up on my arm and perches there to eat out of my hand. This is new behavior, as of the past couple of weeks, or so. 
































Friday, December 6

I finally got an iPad Pro back in my life.

 I probably vaguely covered the topic, as well as that I vaguely disappeared from updating this blog - I'm referring to last year (2023) around the beginning of July, which was when I woke up in a nurse's dorm, completely naked; I was the victim of an overdose (apparently). 

I struggle to recall the precise details of where I went wrong, leading up to this occurrence, after the fact, and I swear that I had identified that my personal belongings were somewhere in the nurse's dorm, yet I was too much out of it, at the time that I was transported to the main part of the hospital by the emergency medical transport personnel, to make certain that my belongings weren't lost in the shuffle, being that these were items most surely attached to my body (I wore my iPad Pro, at the time, inside a bag that I never took off). I can recall that I found a fentanyl-tainted methamphetamine sample inside a  silicone container, nearby where I slept, back then, as a homeless person, but I recall that I consumed it without issue, at the time, and that I went about my day just fine, at the time - not quite in fine form, as I had to resort to shopping-carting around, since my baby stroller broke down (I used the stroller to transport my items around town). The reason I reported to the shopping cart was, ironically, related to my iPad Pro, of back then, to begin with - I had a delinquent bill, with AT&T, and, as I was, at the time, I could only imagine making payments for the device, and for my service, with recycling money (collecting and redeeming recyclable bottles and cans). 

Nowadays, things are different from all of that, lifestyle-wise, and to my benefit - this model iPad Pro is the latest model; it had been a while, since I was out on my own, without an iPad Pro to prop me and my project aspirations up, and make things presentable. My financial situation, on top of my housing circumstances, are much more well-supported, at this point. On one hand, looking at my own iPad Pro, after experiencing, first hand, an Apple Vision Pro, which is fantastic, and a heap of fun to play around in - it's challenging to portray the experience to somebody else, but, in short, it is a truly immersive augmented, camera assisted, operating system, run primarily on eye-tracking technology, whereas the controls of the device (keyboard, scrolling, etc.), unless the user implements the Dwell option, which means, essentially, that the user's gaze, and a certain amount of time afterwards, upon a single object, such as a link, the corner of an app window, a menu list of items(s), basically any individual selectable item within the operating system and apps is gaze-able. The cool thing about the Vision Pro, though, is the augmented reality feature of resizing screens, such as video screens, as can be imagined, I fancy, by referencing my iPad Pro, in my room.

The Christmas season 2 episode of Ted Lasso, a show I came to be fond of, after trying out the Vision Pro.
Now, imagine that the iPad Pro screen is resizable, up to virtually the entire visual field, and all of it (apps and VisionOS) is controllable by camera-tracked fingertip pinches. The resizing feature of it would amount to that there is now a 100-inch projection screen in front of the viewer, all done virtually, with some simple finger gestures, done in thin air. It's quite fantastic, and it makes watching media on smaller devices a bit dull, although the iPad Pro does have a gorgeous color profile to it, and great apps, which aren't matched by other platforms - that's what I really missed about my lost iPad Pro - the accessibility and the diversity of activities that I could achieve in the iPadOS platform, with an iCloud backup installation of an iPadOS that dated back several or more years, which I had been building upon. I lost access to my backup, this time around - I guess that I was fooling around with tightening up the security of my device, out of paranoia, I'm sure; I became convinced that somehow, people were tunneling in, or had peeked over my shoulder, on the bus or train, for example, and I changed my password in to something hopelessly complex, prior to losing my device, due to the hospitalization. 

Anyways, here's to a new season of better photo captures and high-resolution video, as well as advanced graphic and image creation, for the Sticker Time collection. Who knows what'll be next?

Anyways, I purchased up the iPad Pro in-store on Cyber Monday, and it arrived near the end of the week, and I picked it up. I was expecting to slip right in to my trusty old iPadOS installation and configuration, with over 700 apps neatly organized in to folders, if I remember correctly, but I apparently did some screwy stuff with my iPad Pro that I had previously, right before I had my misfortune last year, when I lost my device, and I locked myself out of getting the configuration, itself, (which amounts to a lot of work - the configuration of the apps in to folders). I must have changed the password on myself, or something like that, because I couldn’t sign in with my previous iPad password, for my old device; hence, I lost that section of the work I put in to the device, but it amounts to only the encrypted information on the device, itself, not iCloud-stored information. So, I’ve got to make out a new, or makeshift, configuration with a new set of folders, but I’m definitely glad to have the device back in my hands - this one’s thinner than ever: Apple calls it “impossibly thin,” and it’s practically true, yet it’s a very sturdy device. One of the first things that I did was LiDAR-scan my room and port over my video game accounts, that I started playing on my other, Android devices, and, as luck would have it, the progression ended up being a passing of the torch, completely, from an Android tablet experience - not a bad one, with this Yatiom model tablet, “for kids,” it had been marketed as, yet, it came with 10 GB of RAM: pretty competitive, as well as intelligently put, although my new device has 16 GB of RAM. There were some processes that I was running, in audio, on my old device, that pushed the limits of throughput and available memory (apparently), and I encountered an app crash, from out of running those processes on my old iPad Pro, which only had 8 GB of RAM. In any case, somehow, serendipitously, my Yatiom Android tablet got it’s screen broken, the next time I looked at it, after receiving the iPad Pro, so I’m lucky to not have had a lapse in tablet format and a higher-RAM-running operating system.

R.I.P. to my broken YATIOM Android tablet, which gave out, just as soon as I received my new iPad Pro.



Saturday, October 12

I found my own personal pigeon friend.

 Yesterday, when I was out feeding the pigeons, I noticed that one of the pigeons stayed behind, while the other birds left, after their meal. He was puffy feathered, which indicated that he might be under the weather. I tried picking him up, and, surprisingly, he let me pick him up. 

I'm not sure why he's not flying away, but I took him to another pigeon-feeding spot, and I let him wander around, with the new pigeons, and, after their meal, he let me pick him up, again, so I took him home. 





He's an adorable puffy pigeon. He slept next to my bed, and I gave him a water dish and some cookie crumbs, while I'm out, for the day. 


I'm not sure if I'm going to keep him, for the long term, just yet. I have to figure out if his condition is temporary, or not, and see if he stops letting me pick him up, after a few days, or so. He seems fairly healthy, aside from the puffy feathers, and he might make a good housed pigeon, for me to keep. 

Update: the pigeon succumbed to whatever was ailing him, and he passed away, 2 nights ago. I had one day with him, which was nice :)

Some fond memories of my adorable little black puffy pigeon:






If you're interested in adopting (purchasing) your own personal pigeon friend, yourself, I recommend Farid's Pet Shop, at the corner of 6th at Maple in Skid Row, Downtown Los Angeles. He has a variety of pigeons, from time to time, and he currently has some pigeons (Late October, 2024) in stock, I saw them just yesterday. It's a good start to establishing your own small pigeons and avian pet friends hobby, with hand-feeding the young, as the next step in having a tame bird as a pet. As you can see, pigeons are adorable birds!

Friday, October 4

The new and updated Sticker Time October 2024 complete series (48 pieces).

 These are all images that have previously been shown and published, here on iPigeon.institute, and elsewhere; it's just that I set out to do as complete a collection as I felt would be appropriate, considering the recent art work in imagery I've done, as well as examples and images from my earlier years in image, photography, and illustration creation.

My latest, most complete Sticker Time set yet - I decided to do a small run of prints for nearly all of my Sticker Time images.

The Sticker Time Collection is a (currently) small novelty art, Generative Artificial Intelligence imagery, and photography series, which is in ongoing development, for the sake of popularizing and reawakening the connections we have, as humans, with birds; a colloquy which brings some of the cute things about birds, and our imagination and bond that people have, with regards to the human endeavor, in exploring the potential that we have: a life enriched, when we have an inclusion of bird friends amongst us, captured in the miniature form and artistic medium of 2-inch stickers, which, individually, portray some small aspect of birds, brought to light.

The project is still in it's early stages, as my artistic aspirations and hopes for this collection are expansive, with regards to differing mediums, with which to present the art, as well as that I'd like to explore more themes in creating numerous amounts more stickers. 


Friday, April 12

iPigeon.institute turns 7, officially.

 Yesterday marked the 7th anniversary of this website's founding. I nearly had it aligned with my readers' 200,000th visit to iPigeon.institute. Thanks for all of the support, throughout the years, and still, on such an ongoing basis. I feel that this year will see some exciting developments in the website's offerings, as I'm learning to manage product developments at scale, and my primary support systems are well in place.  

Thanks again! 🤯🤧🎂

I landed as the 199,177th hit on my blog, here, in anticipation of reaching 200,000 hits, soon.


Monday, May 29

Today, I have a friend.

 For people who see me around town, being that it’s the civic center metropolitan district, I’d suppose that I’m a sore sight, on various counts, for some people. On one hand, for example, I feel like I’m fairly pro-sociable, and that I’m good for “friend status,” and, although it plays out, in truth, in some sort of informal and disjunct fashion, I feel like, even though I’m present, in a cognizant sense - meaning, I could reliably answer questions accurately, in nearly all situations (which, I’d say, is one of the hallmarks of my reputation, nowadays, amongst people who know me), I have some chronic pain and inflammation issues that never seem to go away, being that I’m legitimately fully homeless, and, since town is fairly upscale, in many of the small locales which characterize the areas I frequent - this is Los Angeles, on one hand, and we’d been brought up, in this generation, to have fancy ideals and aspirations to live up to. 

Nowadays, I wonder how the rest of America views this fumbling facade - it’s become a stark contrast - this notion of poverty and the battle for inclusion, in to the American Dream, whereas so many people are mired in judgmental paradigms and sociability-defeatist attitudes of better aspirations (perhaps), whereas I constantly see groups of peers and colleagues, amongst us (youths), of this generation, berating each other, at the slightest notions of escapism, in to some sort of virtuous or fanciful deed, or gesture - essentially crippling the work day, work week, workplace morale, and, in doing so, it undermines so many foundational and essential functions of coworkers, affected demographics, and governmental institutions. My personal, fanciful belief, that I flout, sometimes, is one where I assert that people’s common belief of that we are constantly struggling against budgetary concerns (crises, that it were), is actually shortsighted, and, a more insightful perspective on things is that people would endear to fund us - from whatever means available (yet, only “somewhat,” on that last notion); yet, at the most distributed workforce entity-meets-consumer, as far as social services, public and mental health services, and other relevant institutions, I feel that a limited pool of selectivity in hiring, and extraneous influences upon workplace attitudes has become pervasive and characteristic of unaccountable organizations, where casual unprofessionalism is considered due process, and trite judgmental attitudes and quips, which characterized the abuses that we’d known, and, largely, as young society, back in our early school days, committed against each other. In recent memory, it seems that, over the course of new, and forthcoming presidential administrations, we “repeat” some of the hard-won, progressive policies, which had taken decades, at these points in time, various that they are - yet, it seems that they have to be repeated, for the sake of folks who’d been distracted, or who seclude themselves, as hermits, of some fearful respite over growing up, and facing adulthood, and it’s constituent features, vulnerabilities, responsibilities, accountability, and so forth. 

On one hand, this is an age where science and technology dominates life. I feel that, to deny the preeminence of this facet of society and global commerce, would someday work itself out, for individuals, to inevitably be torn asunder from this sort of privilege that we enjoy, whatever that might be. 

As for myself, I experience several, perhaps, disadvantages, as far as being homeless. I make accommodations for myself, in various forms, yet, all in all, I’m perhaps not all that much different from my “housed” (surreptitious, being that it’s within my memory, and I’d duly “housed” myself, rightly so, as an independent business owner, in previous years) self - on one hand, sure - maybe I was “playing house,” in some cases, yet, in some other cases, I fully supported myself, all on my own. Over time, I learned valuable lessons, over losses, and I take those things in stride, and I expect little, these days, that I’m not already offered, or taught, “had been” taught, already, or, on one hand, I’d been distracted from thinking, perhaps, due to this ongoing exhaustion, which I’d mentioned, earlier. 

Anyways, getting back to my vision, of the rest of America - essentially, “hoping” for a beautiful generation of us, coming from out of this California Dream, so to speak, and, rightfully, as well, I’m sure that they expect it. We read half-hearted news, out here, nowadays. We get untimely late updates about rainy weather, lately, that I experience, for example, and, for me, that’s one thing that really affects me, at least, for a day, but I do a lot of reading, and I encounter, just tangentially, subjects such as weather engineering, which irks me, when the weather is, year over year, uncharacteristic, and seemingly, cruel, at that, and arbitrary. I feel that a proud and foolish man (or woman) would claim superiority over nature, whereas natural sciences are, on one hand, significantly vast, and numerous, in nature; and, as well, for the sake of the fact that a self-made attitude, in part, plays in to this sort of narcissism, and, on another topic at issue, sometimes, people gather together, in the various forms that we gather, nowadays, or are influenced, collectively, perhaps - we may be apt to have been led by suggestion, at a point in time in which we were prone to seek peers, and support, for ourselves, which is natural, and standard, in psychology, whereas cruelty sometimes simply seems, or feels like it’s appropriate, when our emotions and patience are tried. The best of the self-made pool of successful people, as far as articles have reported for us - would (surreptitiously) have a second-hand, non-arbitrary “serving” of their foes’ consequences, for defiance - it’s part of corporate governance structures, I’d come to discern, in far fetched lessons that I glean intelligence and insight from, which seem to rightfully characterize the man or woman whose face seems to be duly their own, and with recognition to boot, for having become the rare public figure who had flouted a poor reputation, notably so, of some sort, which regularly peppers our news feeds, of a Scientology sort of twinge to a story of life 😏. It’s tough, but we all like to laugh, on one hand. 

Wait. While I arrived at this thought, I’d like to dote on a recollection of its significance - of the fact that we all like to laugh, raucous and foul-natured that the humor may be, and despite expectations at maturity and composure, yet, writers have to have a job, and “everyone’s got to matter,” (perhaps, here, inappropriately, that I’d put this last assertion in quotes), and humor is one way to soften the insults that more well-composed, patient, and reserved folks might otherwise duly characterize these sorts of qualms, of occurrences, that get served to us, on our intellectual meal plates. 

Some sort of similar notion got flouted my way, for observation, and for ire, for example, when I’d checked on a selfie porn video that I got talked in to filming, and I looked fwacked and bwammo’d, most surely, facially, which - on one hand, I’d refrained, initially, from posting it, yet, I got talked in to reconsidering it, and, even though - fwacked and bwammo’d, in appearance, to be sure, I relented, and I went ahead and posted the video. It made me consider contingencies of classical virtue, in a philosophical sense, of stuff like, “well, what if it’s just fwacked and bwammo’d on my end, for ethical and moral purposes, like self-restraint, and public relations considerations, et al - considerations?” I’m not all that cognizantly a pornographic narcissistic exhibitionist, via search, so outright and simple. Who is? - I figure. 

Okay. Some people are…, or, uh, I dunno. I don’t really know anybody. Who really knows the real somebody, anymore, these days, enough to truly get to know somebody, for real friends, types of purposes? Some guy gets me, like that, and we’re hanging out, right now. Some notes, I encounter, are that he makes me desire drugs, none whatsoever, while he’s with me, and, by and large, I’d refrained from re-dosing myself, whereas, I’d probably, most surely, have had chosen otherwise, had I been by myself, which is characteristic. I’m always by myself, as a homeless person. I’m always fraught with the presence of others (okay, sometimes, perhaps. I do like people-watching, a bit - but not, like, I’m super-in to it, or by any means, inappropriate) - I’d used pornography, in my personal time, to satisfy that sort of personal aspiration at intrigue. I guess that some people find it creepy, since the reality of creating pornography is sometimes a matter of abuse, from an objective, societal perspective - in common sense, in other words. I know that, well enough, yet the pursuit of capturing the essence of beauty pervades our young minds, regardless of religious underpinnings, reeling against that sort of impulse. But what could possibly be left of childhood, for one thing, if these types of freedoms and expressions of ourselves were so truthful, accessible, and… simple, on one hand? It would easily cheapen the structure of authority, itself, if our nude and sexually vulnerably prone selves were our easily accessible identities, in common encounters. 

One thing that I imagined, in this moment - fleeting that it seems, for me, since I’d gone off, on contextual and corollary subjects, yet - here, I envisioned that I; within this context of this new friend that I have, for the time being - he’s still somewhat anonymous and new, for me, and a bit lofty, which is fine - my take on things is that reoccurrences, of casual encounters, is a rightful duty that true locals have to bear, for the namesake of being a local. Out here, that could get pretty rough, for a well-traveled person, yet intelligence, in many cases, rises to the task - independently supporting what’s duly right - simply right, as our higher power, as individuals, in a sense. Anyways, I showed the guy some of my old photos, and they were blurry - jittery, so to speak. I considered various things, such as - had “such and such” headquarters got rattled, of their data centers? On one hand, I’m a bit of a sore subject, in big tech c-space circles, imaginably, yet, I’ve encountered, in some instances, old dogs of men just don’t want to look bad, in front of people, if they can help it - something like that. Another thing that I’d been imagining is this “live forever” thing, and the consequences of equitability, and personal responsibility in the matter, sort of thing. It’s a hugely flouted topic, amongst people of my peer group, age-wise, I imagine, or figure. I mean, they see me, and, based on my past, they constantly seek retributions, actively, whereas, as I’d detailed, previously, here, the well-mannered and austere, or even “anonymous” (for not… well, I dunno, I guess, what makes a person anonymous, off-hand, except… well, maybe it’s the adults-only contextuals, or something - so much sexual abuse goes on) amongst the big tech corporate figures - they maintain (forgive the cheap grammar, please; it’s just for ease of usage) composure by long-gone-on standards of ethics, which are enforced, and admired, throughout the millennia, for the inherent, fundamental, and structuralized sustainability within those forms. These types of restraints and restrictions upon our expectations, and our selves - forms some of the suffering and burdens that some people are commonly fond of, or some cultures, for example - as an off handed quip, but I figure that people know what I’m talking about. 

Anyways, ugh. A huge array of annotations and subject and author citations to wrangle out - while I’m shallow-means deep, in this Sticker Time concept, perhaps, which I’d used a one-step (mostly) app, lately, to vectorize and “cute-if-y” my photo images (mostly mine, but I hadn’t foreseen some of these consequences) - such as my old photos becoming jittery, which I can withhold from doting and musing upon - for one thing. I can, as well, get around to these image annotations, T & C’s checkings-on, and making-sure, kinds of stuff, but some of these Sticker Time images, I feel that I couldn’t just do without, as far as handing them out, anonymously, and scarcely - because, on one hand, who could possibly truly be “God,” whatsoever, with absolute expectations and breadth of reach, reliably? Some people just aren’t reached. 

I figure - I’ll Sticker Time some folks, when I can, at random, mostly, and equitably - Sticker Time them.

Now my old photos are jittery. 

🙄

Original photo shared by @a_london_pigeon, on Twitter. Cartoony-look (plain vector) by Vector Q app.


Latest post.

Baby pigeon’s first day out with the flock. (LAPL Central Branch).

  Here’s baby pigeon, on the lower right portion of the photo. Today was his first day out, that I’ve seen him.  The pigeon flock at the Dow...

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