Author: catsynth

Weekend Cat Events: Cats of New Orleans Revisited

We at CatSynth will continue to keep this candle lit along with Kashim and Othello and all our cat-blogging friends. Please visit them for the full list of remembrances.

This week also marked the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. On Wednesday, we revisited my trip to New Orleans last November. I also wrote about the Cats of New Orleans, both real and imagined, and so we re-visit them this weekend.


(Click to enlarge)

We also visited with the Louisiana SPCA and got a tour of their cat facilities in their temporary home, several environmentally controlled units inside a large warehouse. You can see some photos from the temporary SPCA as well. The good news is that they have completed and opened their new permanent facility. So much of the rebuilding in New Orleans has been slow or non-existent, it's good to see this success…

In addition to the Weekend of Rememberance by Kashim and Othello, the other weekend cat events are going on. Bad Kitty Cats Chaos Festival #8 as at The Mad Mirror. The Friday Ark #154 is at The Modulator. And Carnival of the Cats will be at This Blog is Full of Crap with Laurence et al.

Seven Strange Things About Me

Well, we (or rather I) got tagged by Megan and The Bad Kitty Cats with the meme Seven Strange Things About Me. This was almost two weeks ago, though we at CatSynth remember it like it was yesterday…

OK, so I decided to dust off the list of interesting facts about me from my music-and-professional site. It's supposed be the sorts of facts that would not appear in an official bio, program notes, or in the normal course of writing for this site. A few of them needed updating, like switching the career-related stuff to the past tense. I added a few more as well, pushing the total up to 95. And from that list, I selected 7 that I have deemed to fit the “strange” requirement:

05. I have never been to Kansas, but have visted every state that borders Kansas.
11. I call myself a cynical optimist.
32. I have a large orange stuffed clownfish named “Big Fishy”.
46. I once slept in a car and discovered the next morning that another car only yards away was ripped open by a bear.
62. I used to regularly listen to Stockhausen while having a bagel and coffee and reading the Sunday New York Times.
70. I am fascinated by crumbling concrete walls, graffiti, vacant lots, the spaces around highway overpasses/underpasses.
73. I have camped in Death Valley during the summer time. The daytime temperature was over 120F, and the night temperature was about 90F.

Hey, the requirement was “strange”, not necessarily “exciting”.

So the next step is to tag some more of our blogging friends with this meme (hopefully they're still my friends after I do so):

1. Meeyauw.
2. Gattina (of Gattina's Writer Cramps)
3. Jason of Xenogere
4. Jellypizza (I know, that's two in less than one week, but I'm curious to hear the results).

Bears, you're on notice!

CatSynth pic: Mimì with Synton Syrinx

It's been a little while since we've seen Mimì. But she's back, in a pair of photos submitted by our friend polynominal:

The blue synth is a prototype of a Dutch “Synton Syrinx”, which you can read more about here.

Polynominal has quite a studio of vintage synthesizers and other gear, and he has some new photos, including several of Mimì, on his recently updated website. The site is definitely worth a visit, and check out some of the new musical samples.

Weekend Cat Blogging #116: Luna in stained glass 2007

For the past three summers, I have photographed Luna basking in the glow of the morning light through our stained-glass window. You can see her previous photos here, from 2005 and 2006. Her new stained-glass photos are below:


These were actually taken on separate days, one in July and one in August, which demonstrates not only Luna's fondness for this spot of colored light, but her photogenic nature. I am very proud of her in these photos.

Weekend Cat Blogging #116 is being hosted by our friends at Belly Timber. I really like the new graphics.

The Bad Kitty Cat festival of Chaos will be held by Pet and the Bengal Brats at Pet's Garden Blog.

The venerable Carnival of the Cats will be hosted at The Scratching Post. I like this “busniess case for kindness” thing…

And of course Friday Ark #153 will be where it always is, at The Modulator.






Five (or more) Blogs That Make Me Think (The Thinking Blogger Award)

We were tagged a week or so ago with the “Thinking Blogger Award” by our friend (and fellow mathematics enthusiast) meeyauw. We appreciate meeyauw's endorsement and complete, and encourage readers to check out her other recommendations.

Since the rules are for five recommendations, I decided to break it down using CatSynth's motto:

Cats. We are tagging Megan and the Bad Kitty Cats, for their mix of thoughtful writing and love of cats, and helping to bring our own “Cat Blogging” at CatSynth to another level. Megan also tagged us with a meme recently and I will get on that one soon…

Synthesizers. A slight deviation of the rules, we're spitting this one. Matrixsynth is our starting off point for all explorations synth-related, we've found several interesting instruments and other synth blogs by reading – plus it features Cats and Synths. While Matrixsynth remains focused on its core, Muff Wiggler provides a more eclectic mix of personal commentary often revolving around synthesizers and electronic music.

Music. We recently found a few interesting new-music blogs, including New Music reBlog. The authors add their own writing around music and performances, and follow a lot of the same live improvisation that I do.

Art. I have to give a shout out to Placebokatz for presenting modern art via a black cat. While a lot of the performance or human art is not usually my taste, I expect no more and no less from any real-life art exhibition. Also, pawful, the creator of the visual livecoding Fluxus has at least one page that counts as a blog – I have reported in his projects including Fluxus and Quagmire in the past.

Opinion. Our friend jellypizza combined cat blogging with progressive/liberal political commentary and eclectic references from bygone pop culture and our home in Westchester, New York. We miss Taboo; but we're also grateful for setting this example for the rest of us.

Should any of abovementioned sites choose to participate: please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ?Thinking Blogger Award? with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative gold version if silver doesn?t fit your blog).