The Great Anti-Pigeon Battle

• The image above was generated by AI.

Pigeons and Software

Recently, a flock of uninvited guests arrived on my balcony: pigeons.

They actually decided that the old black desktop computer I left out there was the perfect nesting spot.

Every day, they hover nearby, and as soon as we leave for work or school, they fly right onto the computer on the balcony.

Since this is technically a tech blog, I feel obliged to connect every post to software in some way.

So, I looked it up and found the Pigeonhole Principle.

The core logic is simple—so simple that I wonder if it even counts as an academic theory.

"If you have n pigeons and m pigeonholes, and n > m, then at least one pigeonhole must contain more than one pigeon."

In software architecture and algorithm design, this means that collisions are inevitable and inescapable.

Key Applications in Software Development:

1. Hash Tables: This is the classic example. No matter how brilliant your Hash Function is, as long as the number of Keys is greater than the number of Buckets, collisions are guaranteed to happen.
2. Lossless Compression: Mathematics proves that a "universal compression algorithm" does not exist. According to the Pigeonhole Principle, it is impossible to map all files of bits to a space of bits without repetition.
3. Cryptography: The Birthday Attack exploits this principle, proving that in a specific hash space, the probability of finding two different inputs that produce the same hash value (a collision) is much higher than intuition suggests. This directly impacts the security strength of encryption algorithms.

When writing code, don't just try to avoid all collisions—learning to handle them gracefully is the real skill. (Accuracy verified)

Tools Tried

Bleach doesn't work. Don't believe the home remedies on the internet anymore.

I thought they were gone after I sprayed it, but they came back the very next day.

It turns out pigeons come to build nests during the day and go back to their own roosts at night.

There are also YouTube videos that play sounds that birds are afraid of. This also doesn't work.

Current Situation

Thanks to my wife's mother-in-law (aka my mom), she prepared a practical weapon.

You can search for the keyword "black diamond mesh" or "generic plastic mesh".

I won't advertise any specific brand.

Actually, any local hardware store should sell it.

I took some zip ties and secured the mesh to the railing.

Hopefully, this works.

Conclusion

I have an inexplicable fear of birds. I don't know why.

Fortunately, the Holy Spirit is like a dove. "Like" means it isn't "is", and "is" doesn't have to mean "like".

Mark 1:10

Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.

This passage describes the scene of Jesus' baptism.

YES!! It worked!! The next morning around six o'clock, that pigeon couple stood on the building across the street, completely dumbfounded.

I wish you two find a good nest in the wild. Don't come back.