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.

District VII Detroit Presents: Twisted Toys & Mad Scientists
Steampunk & Victorian Affair III

Another Art Event in our Steampunk, Victorian Technology Dress Up Series.

***We are proud to announce our Host for the evening: Michael Wiggins of Phoenix Cafe in Hazel Park***

***Our Featured Steampunk Artisan: Steampunk Fabricators***

***Our featured Performance: Ringmaster Zeb Presents his children’s book: “Kingdom of the Fools”***

***Hackerspaces: i3Detroit & AHA present their inventions & toys***

Live Performances:

Lula La Rose-Burlesque

Emily Infinity-”"Spherical Harmonics”

Christopher Bogucki-Sideshow Act

Weird Sisters-Aerial Act

Arlow Xan- Live Music

Detroit Shimmy-Burlesque/Bellydance

Zac & What Army-Comedy

Music by Doc Colony & Daniel Tuttle (and fingers crossed that Thomas Downey can stop by!)

Art by:
A Owen Layne, Bethany Shorb, Diane Irby, Karianne Gottschalk, Sergio Marzzotta, Micho Detronik, Kristine Diven

Complimentary Dress Up Zone
Cupcakes by Suzanne J
Make Your Own Robot Station
Robot Pinata with prizes & treats
Beverage Laboratory by Meg R
Door by Wendy

To keep you busy, we will have a robot making station set up where you can make your own robots out of tin cans, pringles/coffee containers, foam, paint, etc.

AHA will again be bringing their scanner camera, so feel free to pop by and get a scanned photo taken. They also will have their electrifying Jacob’s Ladder project in tow, so prepare to be amazed!

Additionally, there will be a large robot pinata bursting at the seams ready to erupt candy and toys all over the guests. Bring fancy umbrellas for this portion of the evening, or steer clear form the main pinata fly zone!

As always we will have the complimentary dress up station where guests can apply the makeup and perfumes provided, plus try on and borrow a huge assortment of clothing, lace, jewelry, shoe wear and accessories for the evening. If you’re already arriving in dress, feel free to frolic in the items just for fun. And if you don’t have your outfit coordinated, feel free to arrive early to use our resources to come up with a killer costume. Items provided are for makes and females in a variety of sizes.

Prepay Tickets can be purchased here at BrownPaperTickets for $12 general admission (food/drink not included, but enjoy the pinata treats or make a donation when you get snacks or coffee/tea/soda) and $23 advance VIP (cupcakes, drinks, foodstuffs included, plus priority VIP seating area.)

General tickets and VIP tickets can be purchased at the door the day of the event, they will be: $15 general admission, and $25 VIP.

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/237740

See districtvii.com and detroitmakers.tumblr.com for updates, interviews and costume ideas/tutorials

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

Kuen Kuit by Moy Yat and N.C. Kwong. This is definitely not a reference for learning martial arts techniques. Well, providing the book’s copy is appropriate:

“In 1967 Grandmaster Moy Yat and his student Chi-Nam Kwong engraved the Ving Tsun history and idioms (Kuen Kuit) onto a set of 51 seals, and were originally published as a Chinese-only edition. In 1980 Grandmaster Moy Yat’s disciple Moy Wo Tin was given the task of translating the seals into English. The first edition of this book was a result of his 2 year effort and included not only stampings of the seals and their English translation, but original artwork, photographs, and anecdotes by Grandmaster Moy Yat and his senior students concerning the proper study of the Ving Tsun System. “

This includes a lot of interesting proverbs, history and anecdotes related to Wing Chun training in particular. This is a great way to peak into the culture of Wing Chun training and is worth grabbing while it remains available. It went some 20+ years out of print.

The Shaolin monastery: history, religion, and the Chinese martial arts by Meir Shahar. This is strictly a historical book about the Shaolin Temple. Most of the accepted history of Shaolin is completely blurred by legends and myths, and most of the story is simply untraceable due to lost evidence, documents, etc. Shahar, who is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at Tel Aviv University, breaks down this history as much as possible with extremely solid research. He approaches the subject in a truly scholarly fashion, and the information contained in this book is extremely compelling and enlightening. He explores motives, and answers many obvious problems that relate to Buddhism and why these monks would take up martial studies while being devoted to peace.