From rathergood.com original home of the “Viking Kittens”, comes this cool “chill-out” kitten combo. It's actually grown on me a bit, and it's been a nice diversion playing on the iMac in my office while I toil away on a nearby PC. Yes, it's been a pretty rough couple of days…
The music is “We Like The Music (latino remix)” by John B.
Thanks to our friend jellypizza for calling this out. Not sure I quite get the Soprano's reference, but ok…
Via matrixsynth, some demo videos of the most site-appropriate synthesizer, the Octave CAT:
Happy New Year?
Videos originally from OriginalJambo on YouTube.
Good news! Jezebel has returned home. We at CatSynth are delighted at this news.
We know that so many lost-cat stories don't end so well. There are currently at least two or three sets of lost-cat posters in my neighborhood. We hope they all come home.
Remember Daphne, who “loves bleepy sounds”? Well, she's back with some more photos from sushiluv.
First, via matrixsynth, here she is w/ a Moog:
And doing some “Fat Cat Beats” with an Akai box:
As if our friends Megan and the Bad Kitty Cats didn't have enough to go through already, Jezebel has gone missing.
Jezebel is tortie cat that Megan rescued several years ago after being thrown out the window of a moving car onto a highway. This isn't the first time we've encountered this phenomenon, remember Bruno, the “LBK”? It's hard to comprehend why someone would do that – it is just pure cruelty. Fortunately, Jezebel was recused and found a loving home with Megan and family. We hope she comes home soon.
I got up bright and early this morning and headed up to San Francisco WDC 2007, the Apple Developers Conference. This is my first time going, and its pretty aprropriate given the increasing amount of time I am spending on Macs both at work and at home.
So how should I file this article? I could certainly describe my pleasant trip up Highway 1 this morning, enjoying the ocean and avoiding traffic, and file it under “highways.” But it would be far more appropriate to place it under Software, the newest category in the CatSynth portfolio (several previous articles will be tagged with this category as well).
Upon arriving at the Moscone Center, I was greeted by a panhandler who yelled “Bill Gates is a thieving bastard” or something to that effect. I guess somebody did his homework this weekend.
Inside the hall it was, well, crowded. Here we are all somewhere in the main queue to get into the keynote address. I was looking around at the crowd and thinking how could all of us possibly be making a living writing Mac software? Of course, lots of us write software for Windows (and Linux) as well, but the question remains. And the tickets to this event aren't exactly cheap. Though I have to admit the throw in some good schwag, compared to some of the more economy events I have attended. And they even threw in free drinks while we waited in line.
OK so here we are, at the main event, with Steve. He made the obligatory appearances with the CEO of Intel, along with more gratuitous appearances with the leaders of Electronic Arts and id Software to promote the Mac as a gaming platform. But the main attraction, of course, besides Steve himself, was the latest of the “big cats”, Mac OSX 10.5 aka “Leopard”.
We at CatSynth of course have long approved of Apple's “big cat” theme for OSX – though Panther is of course our favorite in that regard. Nonetheless, I happily accepted my beta copy, complete with all the new features including the new “cover view” to browse through your files as 3D objects in a shelf (similar to the already established “cover view” for CD covers in iTunes, etc.), and a the related preview, that pops up a completely usable image of your file (e.g., paging through a PDF or Keynote presentation) without having to actually open your applications in the clunky old way. Like a lot of the showcase features in Mac OSX, these are about aesthetics and being a pleasure to use. One certainly can't argue with that…though I can say from experience that the interior of OSX isn't always that pretty, especially if you're a developer. We'll see how they handle that in the kernel and CoreAudio sessions later this week.
There were also a lot of comparisons, implicit and explicit, to Windows during the presentation, and I found my already low regard for Vista sink even lower. Apple managed to get a single version of the OS to support both 32-bit and 64-bit targets…why did Microsoft have to have separate versions? Just to make my life difficult, having to test everything on four different Microsoft OS's? In general, I get a sense that Apple is gaining ground in the personal computer space (in addition to art, music, video, etc, where it already had a strong position), while Microsoft will remain dominent in the big business space where nobody really cares.
One thing that appears to still be a shortcoming from Apple's technology is Quicktime deployment? Do the really still need Quicktime Pro? And why is it still hard to embed a Quicktime video across all web browsers – YouTube seems to have figured out how to do that. Anyhow, we'll see if this attempt to embed the full Keynote address actually works:
UPDATE: the Quicktime object is causing problems for some people, so instead follow the link below
If it doesn't work, you can always view it here (Quicktime required). Hehe, marscapone center…
In addition to Leopard, there was also the public beta release of Safari 3.0, including Safari for Windows. The draw for Safari is supposedly how incredible fast it runs, even on Windows, comparied to either IE or Firefox (everyone knows Opera is slower). Although Safari may indeed by fast for a wide variety of web pages, I have found that it often gets “stuck”, stopping to ponder the universe in the middle of a page load. Safari 3 seemed to have the same disease when I first loaded it under OSX 10.4, and Windows as well. Nonetheless, here is CatSynth running in Safari under Windows:
Coool….Safarilicious…
Now that I look back on today, I don't think they once mentioned the whole “movie rental” thing…
The Sunday's podcast is another great find from the Internet Archives. The album Requiems for a Submerged City is “An electronic tribute to the City of New Orleans and its people – to those who survived Katrina and to those who didn't.” Tonight, we feature the first track, “This is It” by Doc:
Doc opens his track and the album with an upbeat intro carrying some of the emotionally most charged moments from New Orleans Katrina/flood media reporting. After the initial blast of 'media energy' the track transforms into soft, relaxed, dreamlike ambience hosting a strange collage of media snippets, some tangible, some almost subliminal, floating gently in the stream of music.
Regular readers will know that we at CatSynth have been closely following, and often touched by, the events in New Orleans following Katrina. This was even more true after my visit in November, 2006. So am I happy to feature this collection as part of my regular podcast series.
I am also happy to announce that you can now subscribe to the CatSynth Channel far more easily via FeedBurner. From now on, every podcast post to CatSynth will include the “feed” icon below:
I will also be retrofitting previous podcast posts as time permits.
So not that it's this simple, you all no longer have any excuses to not subscribe to our podcast.
Today we celebrate the second anniversary of “Gotcha Day”, the day that Luna was adopted. Please see Part 1, with photos from Luna's first day in her new home two years ago.
Well, she's all grown up now, and sitting at the bar ready to celebrate:
Besides getting to eat at the bar, which is generally verboten, we have a special culinary treat for the occasion. Who needs cheezburger when you can has ahi tuna sashimi?
Luna was definitely interested in checking out the fishy goodness, but after a few sniffs, licks and nibbles she lost interest. One thing about Luna is that she is a very picky eater. So its a lot like taking a kid to a fancy restaurant for something special, only to have him/her insist on their favorite comfort foods like macaroni and cheese. Fortunately, I love tuna sashimi and helped myself to all but three of her pieces, which I let her keep for later.
Luna could probably learn a thing or two about the pleasures of fresh raw tuna from Upsie, who is again hosting hosting WCB again along with sher. Update: you can see the big WCB roundup here.
Of course, we all still love Luna even if she is a picky eater…
weekend cat blogging WCB WCB105 cat luna
tuna
sashimi
gotcha day adoption anniversary
hey, Luna Tuna, that rhymes!
“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.
weekend cat blogging WCB WCB105 cat luna gotcha day adoption anniversary
