Author: catsynth

Weekend Cat Blogging #306

Luna inspects the equipment for the next show during a recent practice session:

UPDATE: Luna just posed more regally next to the Nord keyboard. I think it’s a better picture (what do you think?).

The Nord Stage continues to be the main workhorse for idiomatic music, such as the jazz, caberet, etc. that may work its way into the performance.  The iPad (barely visible here) will provide the experimental counterpoint.

And here is Luna with some of the “analog” instruments:

The prayer bowl will be part of the show tomorrow, but the toy piano and tablas probably will not.

Weekend Cat Blogging #306 is at Pam’s Sidewalk Shoes. Check out the great close-ups of all three cats.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Pet and the Bengal Brats at Pet’s Garden Blog.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Poetry and Music at Headlands Center for the Arts

Another weekend, another show planned. This time poetry with musical accompaniment. The Headlands Center for the Arts is not far from the location of this week’s Wordless Wednesday photo.

Sunday, April 17 · 3:30pm – 4:00pm
Headlands Center for the Arts, Main Building
2nd Floor, East Wing, 944 Barry

Maw Shein Win will be reading poetry with musical accompaniment by Amar Chaudhary for the Headlands Center for the Arts Spring Open House in Marin on Sunday, April 17. Under the title “Pitta of the Mind”, the duo will combine poetry with a mixture of electronic, ambient and pop-infused music.

The Open House is from noon-5PM. The performance is 3:30-4PM. Arrive early to get good seats.
Admission FREE

Unlike a museum, gallery, or theater showing finished works of art, Headlands Center for the Arts supports the creative process. Come discover how a composer composes, what inspires a playwright, and how a painter decides when to put down her brush. Visit studios of more than 40 local and international artists working across artistic disciplines, explore our historic, renovated military buildings, and enjoy a homemade lunch in our Mess Hall Café.

More info:
http://www.headlands.org/event_detail.asp?key=20&eventkey=958

Directions:
http://www.headlands.org/article.asp?key=23

108

Sometimes when things get a bit overwhelming it’s good to turn to numbers and highways. As mentioned in earlier posts, I maintain a rather cursory yoga routine for both health/exercise and grounding. The number 108 comes up fairly often in cycles of repetition and I have been curious about its significance. Long before it was featured on Lost, 108 prominently figured in Hinduism as the number of beads on a mala and in other contexts, and through Hinduism finds its way into Buddhism. 108 has several interesting purely mathematical properties. My favorite is its being the hyperfactorial of 3. The hyperfactorial is the product of consecutive integers, each raised to itself as an exponent:

11 x 22 x 33 = 108

Among the more random properties is being the sum of 9 consecutive integers:

8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 + 16 = 108

9 is of course a divisor of 108, as in 9 x 12 = 108. And both 9 and 12 appear in the above series.

More significantly, 108 degrees is the angle of a vertex a regular pentagon, and 108 degrees can also be used to derive the golden ratio.

The relationship to the golden ratio would seem to be an interesting one, until one remembers that the representation of angles as degrees is itself arbitrarily based on the number 360. The 3π/5 radian representation is more significant in this regard.

And what about fun with highways numbered 108? Here in California, state highway 108 runs from the Central Valley town of Modesto northward and eastward across the Sierra via the Sonora Pass (north of Yosemite) to meet US 395 on the eastern side of the Sierra.

[Photo by jodastephen on flickr.  (License CC BY-ND 2.0)]

While I have not driven CA 108, I am sure I have crossed its path on CA 120 on the way to Yosemite. From the picture above, it looks like it would be a nice drive, particularly in the summer. The eastern side of the Sierra has that stark, desolate quality, in comparison to the heavily wooded slopes on the western side. They are both quite beautiful, but the eastern side tends to speak to me more.

In New York, Route 108 is a short highway on Long Island. In fact, it is very short, a little under two miles total.  It’s southern terminus is the picture below.

[Photo by dougtone on flickr.  (License CC BY-SA 2.0)]

Route 108 southbound crosses into Nassau County, but soon curves away back into Suffolk. Soon after, the two-lane road continues into Trail View State Park, where the route becomes desolate, passing two local ponds.

It is interesting how the word “desolate” can come up for both highways, with very different connotations.

Weekend Cat Blogging #305

In the midst of all the other excitement going on, we at CatSynth are once again hosting Weekend Cat Blogging.  Honestly, we’d just like some extra time to rest, but we honor our commitments and are ready with our “WCB Street Sign” and this post.  And of course we look forward to seeing weekend feline friends old and new.

To participate, leave us a link to your cat-related post in the comments below.  You can also tweet us @catsynth with the hash tag #WCB.  We’ll add you to the round-up.  (Note that this week’s round-up will be a bit more sporadic and delayed given my focus on Open Studios this weekend and next week’s performance at the Marin Headlands, but it will be there.)

And so let us get on with the round-up.

It is usualy Jules who joins us from Judi’s Mind Over Matter, but this week it is Vincent who is featured.  It looks like he is enjoying some affection.

Arthur from Gattina’s My Cats and Funny Stories approves of a litterbox to have elegant surroundings.   As for us, we like the clean straight lines of the garden path.

It’s Caturday at Catsparella, which is when they feature a feline from one of there readers.  This weekend it is the aptly named Nosey Rosie, a cute tabby with an inquisitive nature.

There is some good news at The Chair Speaks, as Cinders is doing much better at recently being ill.  Here we see her resting in an airplane pose on newspaper and giving her thanks to all those who sent healing thoughts.

Speaking of newspapers, our friends at Animal Shelter Volunteer Life share the news that the well-informed newspaper-reading cat Conrad has been adopted.  They also list many other cats that have recently found their new homes.

Trees abound at Life From a Cat’s Perspective, where Samantha and Clementine interpret this week’s Photo Hunt theme of trees. They are also celebrating their 4th Blogoversary and we wish them well.

Over at Team Tabby, Moe says “This is what we do on Sunday“:

That sounds to us like a great way to spend a Sunday.

Naps are also good after a grooming session, as demonstrated by Luna and Zulu in their post :

They have the most amazing coloring.  It almost looks like one is an exact grayscale copy of the other.

Over at Pam’s Sidewalk Shoes, Coco reminds us to take time to smell the roses…err, tulips.  Something we at CatSynth need to keep in mind.

There are certainly times when we feel like this:

Check out the full size version from Kashim, Othello, Salome and Astrid at PaulChens FoodBlog?! for a cute image, even if “nobody’s home.”

At Whiskey Tango…Hello!, Allie and Chloe are showing off their better sides.  Readers can judge for themselves.

Finally, we have Meowza enjoying a nice day outside at Mind of Mog.

He stays happy and content via “canned kitty food, Temptations, mousies and lots of love.”

That concludes the round-up for this week.  Thanks to all who participated!

Open Studios tonight

After much work and excessive anticipatory blog posts and tweets, Spring Open Studios starts tonight! If I can, I will try and live tweet @catsynth wish hashtag #sfopenstudios. It will be interesting to experience an art event from the point of view of a presenter rather than a viewer.

Here is one more picture of installation in progress:

This is a separate wall from those I showed in this previous post. I felt it was a bit unbalanced, so I added one more piece to the upper left, directly above the large picture. One of the many countless details I have dealt with incrementally over the process. The biggest challenge has been taking what was essentially purely digital and changing it into physical objects. It’s one thing to post a photo every Wednesday, it’s another to print, matte, frame and hang it.

One of the things I am interested in seeing tonight is how the experience differs from music, and from the performing arts in general.