All of these things did help some, and her feather mutilation waxed and waned. Prior to our recent move, she was doing really well. We had long accepted the fact that she would always be a plucker and look a little rough around the edges, and so that never stopped, but she had allowed her wing and tail feathers to grow in, and she was looking a bit more like an actual parrot and not some pre-cooked chicken.

Well, the move messed everything up. Of course, our move wasn’t normal anyway, the process took over a month with us slowly moving stuff, and this set her plucking off rather seriously. By the time we got moved, she had herself totally plucked again. We figured things might flat-line a little more once the dust settled. Not so! A couple weeks ago she actually started… mutilating herself. She was chewing her wing, and it was bleeding rather badly, and kept getting worse daily. I have always accepted the plucking, but have drawn the line at actual mutilation. At that point, things are well out of my very limited bird expertise.

We found a lady who specializes in parrot/bird rescue, met with her and let Bella go with her. Normally this lady rehomes parrots, but it seemed she was interested in keeping Bella, to possibly breed her. Which is fine. Ultimately, I want Bella to be happy, and that didn’t seem to be happening at all here and I was getting very concerned about her actual safety. This lady will be sending photo updates and such, so we will be able to see her improve if/when she does.

“Twisted Toys & Mad Scientists” will present work from across the alternative Do-It-Yourself spectrum, from straightforward visual artists to Victorian-influenced steam punkers to the wizards associated with those tool-sharing spaces for creative types known as hackerspaces.

Read more here.

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And the CSS

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I was trying to make inline DIVs and was failing because of the Iframes a couple of the buttons make. It was working until I added Pinterest. The only thing to note is that I am populating Pinterest’s description field with custom field data, and the image is automatically selected from the Featured Image uploaded in the post. In this case, the custom post type is for my music discography, results of which you can see here.

The second floor was in a rough state, entirely undeveloped and quite filthy. Looking to move out of Auburn Hills and hoping to be close to the kung fu school to do a term of hard, focused training, I petitioned my Sifu to build out that second floor, since no one else had yet moved on it. We came to an arrangement and are getting it done. We’re kind of at the zero hour state now, but have the task at about 90% completion.

The main livable unit is mostly done, except building some temporary partitions to separate one half of the unit from the other, and some various insulation details. The bathroom is on the tail end of construction and may not see full completion until very close to or just after move in. The plumbing is installed. The floor is tiled, but the shower needs tiled. The water heater should be installed before move-in, and the washer and dryer will likely be dealt with after move-in. Electrical is 99% complete at this point, I think.

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Exitmusic, “From Silence“

Falling somewhere in the darker shoe-gazey sort of sound, Exitmusic’s short release is one of a number being roped into this “gothic revival” I keep hearing about. Interesting that it has been so long that gothic music has been “cool”, I forgot that it wasn’t for a while. Personally, 2011, and 2010 to a lesser extent, have been great for dark music, of which I am obviously a fan.

Zola Jesus, “Conatus“
A lot of people keep saying this sounds like old school goth, a point upon which I disagree with mostly. But one can’t deny that it is certainly carrying the torch as much as possible with a great infusion of modern electronic production and intense club mood.

]]> http://daniel.bottle-imp.com/blog/mixes/2011-top-ten-albums/feed 0 http://daniel.bottle-imp.com/blog/field-rotation-cloud-observation http://daniel.bottle-imp.com/blog/field-rotation-cloud-observation#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:09:12 +0000 Daniel http://daniel.bottle-imp.com/?p=3385

I decided to create a small photo series of my cloud observation that I did in the mountains recently. The often ghostly pictures appeared due to an extremely cold and rainy weather period although it was meteorological midsummer. These stills have been taken in various locations on the Tyrolean Alps.

Cloud Observation describes my mood whilst observing clouds – it reflects the impression of looking at the steadily moving sculptures that are formed by temperature, wind layers and the cliffs that collaborate perfectly and shift the clouds slowly and gracefully. The (partly processed) string-based composition is an excerpt of a piece for one of my future releases that I’m currently working on.

- Field Rotation

View the Underexposed images at Fluid Radio.

Underexposed: Field Rotation – Cloud Observation by Fluid Radio

Svartsinn – All the colours are fading – Life Toward Twilight mix by Bottle Imp Productions

A huge part of this process involved sharing creative efforts, in my case usually music. This lead to me running or being a part of a few very big music oriented promotional efforts, including Bottle Imp Productions, but also efforts like Eclectic Detroit where we hosted stages at the DEMF, and Killdevil Studios, where we built an online community in Indiana for underground music in the 90′s. All of these efforts have lead to putting on shows in various areas, including some far reaching destinations. I’ve met and collaborated with many, many artists and musicians over the years, some with known names, and many lesser known.

In 2005 I went through a serious personal tragedy, one that is familiar to anyone who has corresponded with me for any length of time. The net result of this seriously impacted my creative output, particularly over the last few years where I’ve stagnated rather significantly. As a result, I have been slowly collecting a lot of my previously online output and sticking it in this blogs archive. This includes a LOT of posts from places like Livejournal, Facebook, Myspace, Last.fm, former blogs I ran, current blogs I run for various projects, and so on. It is not all encompassing. For one, I post a lot of personal stuff I feel is best left archived where it currently is. Further, collecting all of it and re-posting it would be an absurd task without using scripts, which I don’t want to do.

The goal of all this is to build a foundation for which I can build on going forward. I can see, personally, where I’ve been, where I’m heading and where I’m at. Hopefully the long term result is an ongoing effort that I can maintain.