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Saturday, December 7

A peek at my room at the Russ Hotel.

 I've been assigned to Interim Housing, through the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, since around February of this year, after spending a spat of perhaps 8 or 9 months, or so, being out on the streets, wherein I moved out to Century City and Cheviot Hills Sports and Recreation Park, to be specific, around this time (October) of last year. I'd been haunted by voices in my head, throwing me out of town, so to speak, and I was hinged upon negativity surrounding me, within my personal space. All of this was preceded by an apparent overdose, in July, where I don't remember much of what happened, and I lost all of my belongings, including my beloved iPad Pro. I'm only now within sights of recuperating and procuring another iPad Pro, soon, perhaps before the holiday season, if my estimations are seen through to fulfillment, and, that being the case, a large portion of those hopes are already accounted for and paid, or, as good as paid... since I want to have another iPad Pro so dearly (I had to pay off the balance on the one that I lost). 

In any case, my housing wasn't all that friendly towards me, in my first interim housing assignment, and I got thrown out, at the same time that I was taken in to this new place, which has been a huge boon to my wellbeing and progress, both in health and in my work life, which is, essentially, ordering and reviewing products from Amazon, donating blood plasma, and, here and there, recently, I'd gotten in to some tech industry user studies and product use in-person interview studies sorts of things.

Anyways, no one is allowed to come and visit my room, according to the rules, here, but I get the place to myself, and it's located right next to all of the spots I would normally frequent, out here, in the Skid Row portion of Downtown Los Angeles, CA, but I've gotten my room up to fairly impressive interior design status (aside from the slight mess, pictured below; it's just that the space is small, and it's a hassle to reorganize everything. I just wanted to show folks the lighting and the wild array of products that I have, which are nearly organized; at least, as best as I could fit them in and on to things that I use as storage and display shelves). For a decade and a half, or so, now, I've been fortunate enough to, in some way, or other, have the means to develop the aesthetic of my home (when I am housed, that is).

These are my toiletries, fragrance bottles, and my home and living storage and display spaces, with some art work, up top. To the left, I have a mini closet that's full of boxes, currently. Art buffs and art critics might liken the organization and display aesthetic to the "cabinet of curiosities" style.

This is my bed, my slight art exhibition, some messy product box stuff, and, to he right, is my small utility cart, which stores some of my hopes and aspirations in which I fancy I'd do a pop-up shop, and come out with a bunch of products, for the public, somehow; hence, a utility cart with mostly miniature and small knick knacks. I have some lighting set up, here, for decorative effect, and a big lot of nutritional supplements that I take, which I procured from my product reviewing gig.

A different angle of my bed, with knick knacks everywhere, my charging station, nutritional supplements, etc. 
I'm going to be moving to a new place, in November, or so, so I'm planning on doing some fire sale stuff, and giveaways, I suppose, locally, as well. That's my estimation, in any case. My phone service just got cut off, so I'm a bit in limbo, as far as posting items for sale, since the Internet connection I do have access to is spotty and slow, at best. All in all, though, it's hard to stop myself from ordering yet even more items, and, to be honest, I don't even try to stop myself. It's just fun.

Update: October 27th, 2024: I got a new storage rack, for boxes, and I took some cleaner photo close-ups of some of the detail portions of the room. I also got a new panel lighting piece. Plus, I included the digital photo frame of the still life with pigeons image, sitting across from the foot of my bed.

A look at the lighting scheme, in front of my bed - blue, red, and violet-purple.

A lower view of my cabinet space, with a weaving loom (bottom left), and my new shelving racks, with LED lighting for the middle shelves (the lights aren't on, here), a moon-surfaced globe alarm clock and tea kettle, up top. In the middle shelves, there's food and nutritional supplements. 

The MIDI keyboard 🎹, and the still life with pigeons digital picture frame (currently, that's the only image on it).

Some of my current favorites in nutritional supplementation, recently, as seen here, are ML Naturals New Zealand Green Lipped Mussel 50:1 Extract (great for inflammation), ML Naturals Biotin, Sunflower Lecithin, SAM-e, Berberine Phytosyme, Iodine, and pill-form electrolytes (they work well). In the lower left hand side, I have stacks of product boxes, waiting to be sold or thrown out, perhaps. On the center-right-lower portion, I have a display case of some of my aroma chemicals.

A corner view of my fragrance ingredients collection (left), my tea rack (center), currently featuring Lapsang Souchong Black Tea (it's smoky), Coffee Cherry (Cascara), Jasmine Pearl Tea (traditional), and Tulsi Licorice Root (non-caffeinated) and some detail of my cabinet shelving top portion (top, right), which features my cosmetics and toiletries, such as finished and retail colognes and perfumes, perfume single ingredients, a hydrogen generator water bottle, humic acid and minerals, some other supplements, such as liquid zinc. I also have an electric water atomizer, for humidifying the room, when necessary, and to water seeds and seedlings that I grow.

Finally, (I say “finally,” because I’m running out of space, in my room, and I doubt I’ll be adding much more things for very long), I just got my new iPad Pro, and I made a Polycam 3D model of my room. It’s pretty amazing to view, with all the stuff, and the lights, with a 3D .obj file viewer, either online, or as an app; I’m sure it’ll provide some amusement. . 

Here’s a link to the .obj file of the inside of my room. Just download it annd open it in the online web app link, or discover an app for viewing 3D .obj files in Google Play or the App Store. Enjoy!

The spooky psychedelic ceiling cat mashup photo montage, included in the zip file.



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.



Monday, November 25

The iPigeon.institute Sticker Time art, illustrative, and photography miniatures collection, with annotations.

Welcome to the iPigeon.institute online slight exhibition and annotations for the Sticker Time sticker collection.

The "Friends" TV show logo, "Pigeons" Sticker Time version. Credit goes to fontbolt.com and Gabriel Weiss, for the generator, and for the font, respectively. Created 11/25/2024, on the heels of the 30th anniversary of the show Friends, which was on September 22nd, 1994.

Trivia, 2024.



The Sticker Time art miniatures are an ongoing and updating collection of images, illustrations, photographs, and digital renders of (mostly) pigeon (or “bird,” in general,) images, as well as images that have, or have become, contextually, seasonally, or otherwise, relevant, in terms of content, research, and development.

Sticker Time comes out of best practices in branding. My experience, in working with the circular form, comes mainly from an exercise I went through (which I can’t find, online, at the moment) which was hosted by Google, similar to this article; the essential concept being that some essential message of the brand could be delivered through symbolic, illustrative / graphic, or alphanumeric form. Here, with Sticker Time, the same theme as a branding logo is employed, yet the form of Sticker Time takes a more lax and lighthearted approach, given that the brand is already established (the brand has its own sticker, as well, for that matter). 

Here, in this online collection, I feature the entire set of iPigeon.institute Sticker Time images, with annotations. Enjoy! 

One last thing, though: a how-to for printing out the stickers, if you'd like to do so, at home.


Using a standard graphic design app will invariably cause off-center prints. The paper and interface template that I use for this project is Avery 22807. 

To start, visit the avery.com website, and search for 22807, to get the 2-inch, 12 per page label template. 

The avery.com search page, after querying 22807, in the search box. 

You can make a login for the Avery website, at this point, and you'll see a page pop up, featuring different design templates, for the round labels (stickers).

Here's the page you'll see, after logging in to the Avery website (you can also log in as a guest, I believe).

Here, we're going to be using the blank round label template (the first option, at the top left). You'll see the design interface pop up,after selecting this template. 

The Avery 22807 round 2-inch label template.


What's great about this template is that you can standardize the entire sheet, based off of one single design input - or, there's also an option for inputting a different design on each numbered sticker. Just select "Add objects" at the bottom of the page, and center each sticker around the edges of the circular template. You'll want to perhaps have some bleed, surrounding the template's edges, in order to ensure that the eventual printed sticker does not come out smaller than the actual paper cut size. 

Once the template page is finished, you can export the the project to a photo or pdf file, and, if you don't have a printer, like myself at the moment) you can visit FedEx Office, or some other print shop, or office store, and you'll be able to print the page(s) out. For FedEx Office, for example, you can send the prints over to "printandgo@fedex.com," which is the online way to transfer the project data over, for when you visit FedEx Office to do the print job. Their printers make nice stickers out of these prints.


A bunch of stickers that I printed, using FedEx Office's printers and professional paper-cutting tool.



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“Golden Tropical” glitch line art pigeon, rendered by Vector Q app, (2023)

“Sprightly Sparrow,” glitch version. (2021)

“Flattened Rat,” glitch version. (2021) 

“Poppin’ Pigeons.” 2021

iPigeon.institute brand logo for Pinterest. 2021

Baby Sparrow at feeding time. 2022

Curious baby pigeon in Pershing Square. 2022.

Chimera Sparrow. Created with Chimera Painter, a Google AI project. 2021.

Injured winged pigeon, kaleidoscope glitch version. 2023.

Baby Fruit Bat, glitch version. 2021.

Navy Stripes Cheetah pigeon illusion (masks). Rendered by Vector Q. 2022.

Preening pigeon (triangles). Rendered by Vector Q. 2021.

Wired lighting fanciful bird caricature. Rendered by Vector Q app. 2023.

Vanilla planifolia vine, Harajuku Doll version. Rendered by Vector Q app. 2023.

Ernst and Young Plaza, Downtown Los Angeles - Curious over a Fried Egg. (Artist unknown - George Herms?). Rendered by Vector Q. 2023.

Cute baby pigeon in hand, Tarot version. 2023.

Originally from:


2023 California superbloom wildflowers.  

Romantic pigeon, glitch version. Poppy flower adapted from Dior artwork. 2023.

Romantic pigeon, standard version. Poppy flower adapted from Dior artwork. 2023.

Common pigeon x The Matrix. 2023. Background from WallpaperCave.com.



birds restaurant, Hollywood, CA. Rendered by Vector Q app. 2023

Scientology Celebrity Center, Hollywood, CA. Rendered by Vector Q. 2023.

Sketching exercise, primitives of pigeons, glitch version. Glitch by SCN app. 2023.

Broken-winged pigeon, tropical poppin’ glitch version. Line art by Vector Q. 2023.

Ashy rover beetle. 2023.


More to come! Stay tuned, for updates!

June 24th, 2023 - Baby pigeon imagines Pizza Party!!! rendered by PinksCam app, by siyuan Lin.



Saturday, November 2

Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #3: The Central Library High-Flyers Flock.

Downtown Los Angeles architecture is one of the primary lures for tourists and sightseers, and, for bird lovers, the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library has a neat, al fresco pigeon flock, which, just in recent years, discovered a perch, atop the Library's titling signage, on 5th, nearby where the Library's main entrance lies, just up the street. 

The Richard J. Riordan Los Angeles Public Library (Central Branch) flock of pigeons, perched atop the outside of the apiary, as well as on the ledge, where they find shelter from the sunlight, during the day.




The street is lined with young Magnolia trees, of which feature a delightful floral fragrance;

Check out this amazing deal on Amazon, where you can sample the lovely fragrance of the Magnolia tree's summer blooms.



at the time being, the trees flower very sparsely, or not at all, just yet. They're being grown to shape them properly, for their full adult tree form, I figure. There's also some classic street lamps, a former pond (I think), which has been filled up with dirt, and which feature dwarf natal plum shrubbery - it makes for a nice (maybe not the nicest - wood chips?) feeding pen for the birds. 

An exciting meal, with the Central Branch LAPL High-Flying Pigeon Flock. Many of the birds present, on a daily basis, here in the spring time of 2024, are babies - there's perhaps 10, or so, young ones, whom had just this season come out, in to the public, for the flock's daily fare, outside the Library's facade.



For people, the ledge surrounding the feeding pen makes for a suitable spot to sit and feed the birds: it's an exciting spot to visit, with gorgeous architecture across the street; various sides of the street - there's the U.S. Bank Building, the Gas Company Lofts, The Millennium Biltmore Hotel, 444 Flower, The Westin Bonaventure Hotel, and, the Library, itself, features notable architecture, itself, for that matter. 

Back when I had my iPad Pro, I caught some great video footage of this flock, from the bird-feeder's perspective, as they spot me, preparing a meal for them. 

This flock is a somewhat closed form flock of pigeons - the location, despite being quite nearby other flocks of birds, doesn't typically get a lot of newcomers and transient port birds, although there is some mixing and mingling around, of other birds, here and there. I'm not sure where the birds nest, either. 

Check this flock out, when you're in town! They're great birds.

Update 11/02/2024: Big news to update readers and visitors to this flock about - since I first posted this article, back in late April of 2024, a new influx of pigeons; approximately double the long-time original numbers of about 2 dozen, had shown up and joined the library flock's numbers. Although it's intimidating to take on the feeding of ever more numbers of birds, over time, the flock took well enough to the newcomers, and the new ones assimilated well, in their new location at the library. 

This being the case, the birds aren't so isolated, after all. The exciting news is, is that, apparently, the new birds might be a bit young, compared to the rest of a typical local flock's average age of the constituent birds, and the new ones haven't been imprinted with negative conditioning signals, all that much, at all. Some of them have been bold, in coming up to me when I have food out, preparing to toss the food to them, and they sneak in, some of them, and nearly fearlessly, at that. Yesterday, I was able to grab one, and I held it, for a moment, just as a test. Today, I chose to try out hand-feeding some of these newcomer young birds, since they're being competitive for a chance to eat as much as they'd like to, which, they usually do; it's just that they perhaps forget that they would be fed their full, or the constraints of flock behavior may cause them anxiety, so they step all over each other, in this case, trying to get a shot at eating out of my hand. 


This had got to be a quite major milestone, for these birds, on account of the location and ease of access to the birds, with their being situated on 5th Street, nearby the north side entrance to the library, which is a major pedestrian thoroughfare. Hopefully the birds don't get mistreated and un-homed for, or from, the area. In other words, if you do take one home, please be sure to bring it back and release it in the presence of the other pigeons. I'm sure that the at-home experience of taking one of these birds back is all that satisfying, at this point, because they're still inherently a bit scared of people. It's just not ideal. 

Other than that, new individuals have been arriving to feed the birds, in addition to that I see to their feeding on nearly every day, out of a week, and it's open and fair game to go ahead and try out feeding these birds. It's a pretty exciting flock to feed, comparatively, especially if you want to try out hand-feeding them. I recommend using seeds or peanuts.


Sunday, October 27

Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #10: Figueroa at 4th St. Underpass flock.

This flock is a delight to visit (for me, at least, because I'm training them). They are currently (October 2024) becoming trained on the clicker, for "come." One of the birds swooped down in front of me, just earlier, today, as I arrived. I was positioned in an unfamiliar place, for feeding's sake, so it was especially flattering that the bird recognized me by the clicker. 

Some of the pigeon flock at Figueroa at 4th St. Underpass. 
This flock is particularly charming for its resilience in the face of challenges. Several of the birds (much more than by averages of other flocks) have visible battle scars, in the form of deformed and swollen feet, from having string tied around their feet, by former trappers that frequented the area, although they're here no longer, I seem to notice. I'm not well-versed in trapping the pigeons, to save them from their plight, at this time. I just show up and feed them. You can check out some of their quaint and isolated behaviors (although fairly common fare, for pigeons; I just felt that they could be a control flock, eventually, in psychological terms, with their progress and development in mind, on account of their isolation) in some video footage I captured while socializing my deceased pigeon friend that I brought along, and wrote an article on, a couple of weeks ago, below. 

Here, you can see my pigeon friend is being investigated by one of the males in the Figueroa at 4th St. Underpass flock's regular members.

Regardless of being new to the place, my pigeon friend felt right at home with the new birds, and he took to some sharing of the same meal as the other birds, while we visited. 

This bird, (unnamed, so far) is one of the more charming of the flock. He had a broken leg happen to him, several months ago, and it hasn't quite healed properly, but he could potentially heal up and be just fine, some day. 

The location is fairly quiet, lately, and, as I noted, isolated, but it's ideal if you happen to show up with food for the birds, and you can spot them roosting on the light poles. They'll swoop down and accept food, if they spot you tossing some out, in many cases. If you have a clicker, that's even better, because they're becoming trained on clicker noises. 
 

Saturday, October 26

I just recently saw a former friend in porn + some back story surfaced.

 As that I'm single, right now, I'm still drawn to pornography, at age 42. It's been a rough set of years in dating, as a schizophrenic, with several bad breakups preceding my schizophrenia onset, as the backdrop to a row of horrors that ensued. This particular incident dates back to the beginning of my dating years, which was back in college and university. There, I was with one girl throughout my college career. I hear that she hangs out with the guy whom I saw in the porn video; a mutual friend. After I realized that the guy is, potentially, recognizably, the same person that I was friends with, back in university times, some melodrama unfolded. I hear that the purpose of me hearing it was that I'd been done a number on, so to speak. 

According to the allegory, my ex-girlfriend and ex-fiancee had moved back to my college home town, of back then, and had been settling in, with friends, there, meanwhile, I'd heard nothing of it. I'm not all that much attached, any more, and there's a lot of sore feelings that go along with processing this sort of thing, which, usually, lately, I'd not give much credence to, yet I found that the story satisfyingly enough fulfilled a dark hole portion of my mind's memories, coming up to the present day. She was upset that I never came back out to try to find my way in life, with her running around town, but I guess that that's where things get fanciful, in believing the story. I have to maintain some restraint, since the girl remains distant to me. 

There were a bunch of short tales of misdeeds leading up to ruin, in their own lives, likewise, as I'd experienced. It was like a lucid dream, that I'd had, in hearing this stuff out, while I'm trying to get to sleep. I'd been ailing over the notion of becoming old, as a single person, lately, since I find it hard to socialize, and all of my former relationships, whether they be guys or girls, are largely all broken ones, so it's a bit awkward, starting over again. I just have to keep faith and persevere through this; I've been through a rotten bunch of years, but when things are good, they're good times to be had, for sure. I'll just have to wait things out. I don't get very far, in contacting people, from long ago. It tends to exacerbate my symptoms. In general, though, I've been on a good path towards rehabilitation, and I've been feeling better, and more on top of things, in my life. The pigeons help keep me stable, because they show affections towards me when I show up to feed them. 

Update: Now, a couple of hours or so after writing this article, I have new voices in my head, feigning possibilities about the pigeons' fate, should I ever choose to leave town, which, I figure, could be plausible, being that there's a train that runs out to Riverside, from Downtown Los Angeles (I went to UC Riverside). They're saying that they could keep the pigeons fed, in my absence. Perhaps I'll be able to figure something out that works with the schedules and needs of all included, within this issue, daydreaming aside; I still would like to finish up my Master's Degree in Music Composition, being that I've had plenty of years on me, at this point, and I have, as well, some cool compositions that I've worked on, over the years.

Latest post.

Pigeon chat, with ChatGPT (12/22/2024)

  note: originally published with a typographical error in the title and web address; the title has been corrected, whereas the web address ...

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