Author: catsynth

Weekend Cat Blogging #105, Part 1 – Gotcha Day (June 10)

“Gotcha Day” is the day a feline companion is adopted, a fact that we at CatSynth did not know before last week, when we helped celebrate multiple Gotcha Days for fellow cat bloggers during WCB 104.

Well this weekend is Luna's Gotcha Day, also known around here as the “Lunaversary.” I adopted Luna from the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter on June 10, 2005. She was 7 months old at the time. Here are a couple of many photos I took that day:

Luna was quick to come out an explore her new surroundings, which was for the first evening limited to the bathroom. She quickly gravitated towards the softest object in the room and started kneading and purring, a habit she retains to this day.

Of course, the kitty bed has been largely ignored since she discovered my bed, where she often kneads a little nest and beds down for a nap.

It's interesting to look back and see how she's grown in the last two years.

The festivities for “Gotcha Day”, such as they are, will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm sure our friends Sher and Upsie will indulge us in a two-part Weekend Cat Blogging for the occasion. In the meantime, visit them for WCB 105, complete with squirrels. Update: you can see the big WCB roundup here.

CatSynth: "Me, a synthesizer, and a cat."

No, not “me”, but leslie.paige at flickr. Her photo comes to us via matrixsynth:

Leslie says the she found the cat “near a dumpster.” We at CatSynth are always happy to hear about cats being rescued.

He reminds me a lot of Morty, who some readers might remember from this post.

Morty was also a rescue. He was found as a kitten by a rescue group and raised until he was ready for adoption. He was the original “Supa-Bad Kitty,” and quite a mischief-maker, really the opposite of Luna in a lot of ways. I still miss him sometimes, though.

Berkeley, Part 2

The mini-conference that brought me to Berkeley on Monday and Tuesday ended fairly early, and I took the opportunity to wander the streets up into the Berkeley hills. This is something I used to do all the time, but haven't in years.

I started out by heading out of the campus on Piedmont Ave., passing by the Greek Theatre, which I hereby dub the “scene of the crime” from end of my time here.

At the northeast corner of the campus, Piedmont becomes La Loma and heads up into the residential neighborhoods of the Berkeley hills, an area that is apparently called La Loma Park. I always enjoyed wandering through these streets, which start out very much like city residential blocks and get more and more sparse and wooded, yet somehow remaining “part of the city.” Again, that is a bit different from Santa Cruz, which feels like a town squeezed between the ocean and the mountains and redwoods. I do walk downtown and along the shore a lot, but the hills here just haven't seemed as interesting to explore. As I write this article, however, I will note that the sunsets here in Santa Cruz are better than they were in Berkeley apartment.

Beyond Cedar Street, the city-block feel ends and La Loma continues up a steep hillside with retaining walls on one side and rails to another.

It is a view I remember quite well. The first time I wandered up this way, I was simply curious to see where this ended up – indeed, I never really “planned” out these walks and simply relied on my strong sense of direction to get me home again. Around the corner, the road comes to the top of the steep canyon cut by the Codornices Creek, with spectular views of the bay.

]It is hard to get a sense of the canyon from a photograph, unless you place it in context, such as the houses built along the steep grades. What looks like a flat ranch from the top of the canyon turns out to be a five-story monster built into the hillside:

This view is from the street below, Shasta Road. Shasta and LaLoma aren't actually connected, but one can make use of the numerous public staircases throughout Berkeley. In this case, I took stairs descending from La Loma to Rose Street, which then connects to Shasta. At the bottom of the stairs, one can see the supports that hold up La Loma on the side of the hill:

Upon seeing the support structure, I was immediately reminded of the architecture of Gaudì at the Parc Gruel, which I visited in 2005.

Longtime readers have already seen some images of Gaudì's residential architecture, in the context of parabolas (indeed, both “parabola” and “Gaudì” are among the most popular search terms by which people reach this site). The connection to Gaudì is not one I would have made while I was still living in Berkeley, having not yet visited the Parc Gruel or Barcelona in person.

I eventually made my way back to campus via Euclide Ave and Scenic Ave. “Scenic” is a very bold name for a street, and more the most part it doesn't live up to its name, except for a couple of blocks near the Pacific School of Religion, whose main walkway I crossed often.

Driving out of Berkeley on Telegraph Ave. towards highway 24, one cannot help but notice the incredible contrasts between the neighborhoods in the hills and those in South Berkeley and northern Oakland. I still think that it all fits together, somehow.

Mr. Lee CatCam

Thanks to our friend matrix for finding this site. Although not musical, it is nonetheless an example of cats and technology. The project involves modifying an inexpensive digital camera to be wearable by a cat and take periodic photos as said cat goes about his/her daily routine. The site contains a lot of technical information, but most interesting are the photos from the cat's various excursions. There are several under-car views and feline encounters.



Live from Berkeley, Part 1

Tonight's posts are coming to you from Berkeley, my home for six years while I was a grad student at the university. I was invited up for a two-day mini conference by my former colleagues at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies and the recently created research group for parallel computing (aka “the View from Berkeley”). The interesting technical topics will have to wait for some other time – though I can't imagine the EECS faculty would enjoy seeing their research reviewed by a blog about cats…

For now it's simply worth noting that I'm sitting out with my laptop and a hot cider at an outdoor on a summer night. It's one of many things to miss from this much larger town, even as conference participants told me how lucky I was to now be living in Santa Cruz. I of course enjoy the ocean and the interesting cast of characters in my current home, but regular readers also know that I often miss being in a more urban environment…

It is interesting to compare Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Berkeley is much larger, more urban and culturally vibrant, better food, and spectacular streets to wander in the hills – stay tuned for more on that in part 2. Santa Cruz has the ocean, it's calm laid-back character, and an interesting community of creative and artistic people. Interestingly, Berkeley had little to no “night-life” in terms of live music and clubs during the time I was there. The nightlife in Santa Cruz is nothing to brag about, either, but it does have several live music venues that have managed to stay open despite the best efforts of residents to close them down – I never understand why people who hate nightlife live in downtown areas. In any case, almost every place in Santa Cruz closes by 10pm except a few clubs/bars, while in Berkeley things at least stayed open until 2am or later. I'm not sure one can conclude much from this comparison, except that either town would be a better place to live than most…

Not too much interesting to describe from a travel point of view, unless you count the Bay Bridge, which I don't think I have drivin in quite a while. There is a lot of contruction on the San Francisco approach, it looks like they might be trying to fix the remaining “errors” left over from the earthquake and subsequent demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway. With the changes to the 101 freeway described in a previous post, the 80/101 corridor might start to look civilized.

Then there is of course the new eastern section of the Bay Bridge (to replace the current seismicly dubious eastern span), which remains under construction. I wonder when they're planning to finish that…

More sad news (but hope) for cats in Lebanon

As if last year wasn't enough, there is more sad news from our friends at BETA in Lebanon:

More than a week has already passed now with, at the beginning, severe clashes between the Lebanese army and some armed groups in northern Lebanon. Immediately following those deadly conflicts, car bombs and hand grenades went off in Beirut and its suburbs, and the first bomb exploded very close to one of the cat shelters in Ashrafieh area. Fortunately, the glass and walls remained intact at the shelter.

As many readers are probably aware, the Lebanese army has been involved in a confrontation with Islamic militants that have taken up residence in Palistinian refugee camps. Nobody likes them in Lebanon, even reliably militant Hezbollah leaders support the Lebanese army moving against them (and of course the Palestinians in the camps are going to suffer more because of them). The attack in Beirut near the cat shelter is either a direct response, or by someone who sympathizes with the militants. I guess it's one I have trouble understanding. These Islamic militants have no redeeming value, even for those who want the US out of Iraq and Israel out of the Palistinian territories. It makes the suffering of people and animals in their path even more tragic, and we're glad the cat shelter was spared their violence.

Another feline story with some hope amidst the current events:

[This kitten was] rescued by a CNBC reporter from one of the mostly bombed Palestinian camp in the north of Lebanon. The reporter was kind enough to pick up the dirty starving kitten. A few days later, she also found the sibling of the kitten and also brought her to us. Both kittens are now boarding at one of the BETA members home, getting lots of food, affection, warmth and care and of course playing with lots of toys.

We at CatSynth are happy that someone cared enough to rescue the kittens, who of course did nothing wrong but ended up in the middle of a useless human conflict.

I should note that the sources for this article were BETA in Lebanon, Agence France-Presse and the BBC, so don't suggest this report is some US-orchestrated media plot. (There are plenty of those to go around already.)