Cats

Weekend Cat Blogging 84: brrrrrrrrr!

It's been a rather cold few days here in California. We woke up to near freezing temperaturs here on the central coast:

Luna and I share not only black fur and slim physique, but also an intense dislike of the cold, so we've been doing our best to keep warm. The heat has been running full blast, and Luna once again spends much time resting on the glass table above the heat:

Of course, readers of the forum have seen Luna pose in the same spot before on cold days. I love the way she dangles her paw over the edge in the photo, though.

Meanwhile, it's party time with Upsie and Sher, who are hosting Weekend Cat Blogging #84. Another thing both Luna and I share is a fondness for fish, and that ahi tuna suhi is looking mighty tasty…






Zip visits MacWorld

I had an opportunity to visit the big MacWorld Expo this past Friday, and of course Zip came along.

Of course, the big news this year was the unveiling of the iPhone. Here it is:

Can you see it? No? Well, neither could I. There was never a moment when there wasn't huge crowd surrounding the poor little device.

We decided to instead focus our attention on the well established and ubiquitous iPod:

You can barely stretch out your hand at MacWord and not come in contact with an iPod or something attached to an iPod. Indeed, much of the exhbition floor was devoted to iPod accessories and peripheral devices. I was most impressed with a device from Belkin, a six channel audio mixer that can record directly to an iPod (as well as to a computer if one so chooses). They expect to release it sometime later this year.

Among the more prosaic iPod accessories were numerous speaker systems:


Aesthetics and good design are key to Apple/Macintosh experience, so the emphasis is always on appearance and personality. This is true for speaker systems as much as for carrying cases and fashion accessories.

I quite liked the design of this offering from Harmon-Kardon:

And of course the extremely cute iWoofer from Rain Design:

This seems as good a time as any to discuss the use of the letter “i” for anything and everything at MacWorld. This is not only true for software and hardware offerings from Apple, but from the accessory vendors as well. You cannot escape the “i” in either the product names or the marketing surrounding them.

In reflecting on the “i”, I found myself thinking back to a favorite story of mine, Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar…. The community in which much of the story was set was called iDEATH, complete with leading lowercase “i”. There was also the somewhat villainous character inBOIL.

On the subject of modernist art and culture, there was also this ad from the good people at Roxio for the latest versions of Toast, which evokes the art of Lichtenstein and Warhol:

HP also offered modern-culture icons at its large digital photography presentation, including large-scale prints from photographer Joel Meyerowitz. Among them were several photos of 1970s New York. New York in the 1970s epitomized the crossing of high culture and urban decay, and the photographs capture that mix of the sleek and modern and the slightly rundown…

…but time to get back to the expo. I suppose I did get bored with the whole “digital lifestyle” thing, but I would be remiss if I closed without mentioning our friends over at Creative Technologies. They made a big push into the iPod and Mac space this year with several “designed for iPod” gadgets, including the oddly named Xmod. It seems that even when Apple makes it embarrassingly easy or accessory makers to be hip, Creative refuses to get it. Note to the folks at Creative marketing: the “i” is supposed to go at the beginning!

I do have to give them credit for letting E-MU Systems at least have one table at the show to present its Macintosh-compatible products, including the 0404|USB and 0202|USB with recently released Mac drivers.

It's actually a pretty decent audio interface for the Mac, and of course certain people busted their $#%es to make it OSX compatible, so you should check it out.

Well, that will wrap it up for our brief visit to MacWorld. I would try and leave you with some pithy remarks, but I'm still stuck on my whole “nostalgia for the big city” line of thought, and on the intersection of high and low culture afforded by Apple's vision of “digital lifestyle.” I doubt this is the last we at CatSynth will have to say on such matters…






Weekend Cat Blogging #83: Luna New Year

New year, new kitty photos:

Luna poses elegently on her “purr pad” on New Year's Day.

This weekend's round is being hosted by…well, actually, it's not quite clear who if anyone is scheduled to host this weekend.

So…we at CatSynth will take the initiative and present the Provisional Weekend Cat Blogging Roundup!

First off, we have the lovely white Skeeter, a recent and welcome arrival to kitikata-san's neighborhood. Pretty kitty, it's like someone used the “invert” command on Luna.

Bowser loves cuddles up at a cat in the kitchen. Who doesn't love to cuddle up? Also, Bowser is an uncle because…

…over at annesfood, Glinda just gave birth to four beautiful kittens! Check out the newborn pics, and congrats to Glinda and Anne.

More snuggliness at kitchenmage. We agree that there's nothing better when it's cold and rainy outside.

If it's action you're looking for instead of hibernation, check out the climbing antics of the Spice Cats over at Just Sharlene.

Meanwhile, Tigakat Cleo wakes up from her nap and is ready to socialize.

That looks like it for WCB83, the first of 2007.

We do have some volunteers and a new 2007 schedule (not counting this weekend) at the Cat Blogosphere. Thanks to our friends at the House of the (Mostly) Black Cats.






Weekend Cat Blogging #82: Black Pride

This New Years edition of Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Champaign Taste. We wish all our WCB friends, feline and human, a happy and healthy new year!

Our contribution this week continues our tribute to James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, who is a hero of ours here at CatSynth; he passed away this past Monday. In addition to his music (which is playing in the background as I write this), he made contributions to civil rights and the “Black Power” movement, through his efforts to promote African American ownership of the distribution of music on records and radio, and of course his classic anthems such as “Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud.” It is in honor of this anthem that Luna strikes a proud, stately pose this week, reminiscent of the iconography of the Egyptian goddess Bast:

The connection between black cats and civil rights isn't entirely gratuitous. Consider the well-known symbol of the Black Panther Party. Although founded in Oakland in 1966, the story goes that the party took its symbol from the Lowndes County (Alabama) Freedom Organization:

We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people, an animal that never strikes back until he's back so far into the wall, he's got nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.

Getting back to James Brown, I would be remiss if I did not also recognize one of my former cats Morty, the original “Supa-Bad Kitty”:

He got his nickname for his constant mischief, like sitting on the dining room table, but remainingly devilishly lovable. Plus, he could shake his money maker like no other kitty I've met. I miss him – he was taken by a former girlfriend and although I haven't seen him in many years, I hope he is doing well.











Weekend Cat Blogging #81: A CatSynth Channukah

Here at CatSynth we get into the holiday spirit with the traditional lighting of the channukah candles in our not-so-traditional music-inspired menorah:

The astute observer might see Luna in the background of the photo above. She keeps a good distance from the candles, as is appropriate. However, we'd like to remind everyone not to take any chances with candles this holiday season, especially with animal friends. Please make sure all candles are lit on safe, non-flammable surfaces (such as granite) and observed at all times.

For safer holiday kitty fun, Luna got some new toys in the appropriate blue and silver colors:

Not exactly a dreidel, but still fun!

Our family has a tradition in which we try to guess which candle is going to last the longest. In the photo below, the likely candidate is number six (third from the right, the center candle doesn't get numbered).

Sure enough, in the end the sixth candle was the last one alight. Watching the candles go out is fascinating. The flame dims to just a point, then sometimes flares up again in a last push before flickering and going out in a beautiful puff of smoke.

Hmm, this is starting to sound a little depressing, isn't it? Better hop over Tiggy the Tiny Tiger for some more feline holiday cheer!

Catsynth pic: cat in Serge

From m/n/m/l we have a cat under a Serge synthesizer kit. Looks like a comfy little spot.

m/n/m/l has some interesting music available on CD and for download. Judging from the quote on the website, I am guessing m/n/m/l shares my frustration with low CD and download sales:

June 2006

people from all over coming here. USA, Germany, China. But why?? read, look at pictures? download a couple tracks?

sales from downloads and CD's was up during the winter, lately it's dead again. don't really feel like spending all my time doing marketing marketing marketing,too much else going on now anyway.

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Weekend Cat Blogging #79: from the archives

For this weekend, we go back to the archives for this artistic sepia-toned closup of Luna:

The poster behind Luna is of a stabile by Alexander Calder, among my favorite artists. Calder is famous not only for his monumental abstract stabile sculptures, but also his abstract mobiles – his mobiles were influenced in part by the paintings of Mondrian, another of my favorite artists.

I think Luna's profile and sculpture complement one another quite nicely.

Check out more WCB fun over at belly timber Angry Cat Blog. I figure it's best not to ask…







Catsynth pic: actual cat with Octave CAT… and Kitten in Emulator X

Well, here's another cat sitting next to an Octave CAT – wonder why that comes up so much.

Actually I am quite interested in the Octave CAT and Kitten synths, I'm trying (yet again) to bid on one on eBay.

In the meantime, I have been trying several methods to emulate them, including building an Emulator X patch. The Kitten is definitely more feasible because it only has one oscillator and thus no FM – FM is nearly impossible to do on the Emulator platform. However, I did one out of MIDI controllers. So the end result is a “Kitten lite” that contains all the oscillator waveforms (Saw, Triangle and Square/PWM), the two independent sub-octave waveforms, square and sine LFOs, filter with realtime cutoff and Q and envelope mod, and of course ADSR envelope.

While not a real Octave Kitten, it's a nice little playable instrument.





Feline Alzheimer's disease

News of a studly on Alzheimer's disease for readers with ageing feline and human friends:

Ageing cats can develop a feline form of Alzheimer's disease, a new study reveals. Scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Bristol and California have identified a key protein which can build up in the nerve cells of a cat's brain and cause mental deterioration.

In humans with Alzheimer's disease, this protein creates 'tangles' inside the nerve cells which inhibit messages being processed by the brain. The team says that the presence of this protein in cats is proof that they too can develop this type of disease…

…”As with humans, the life expectancy of cats is increasing and with this longer life runs the greater chance of developing dementia. Recent studies suggest that 28% of pet cats aged 11-14 years develop at least one old-age related behaviour problem and this increases to more than 50% for cats over the age of 15.”

Perhaps one of the things that makes cats and other companion animals so endearing is that they go through many of the same life stages as humans, from kittenhood/childhood to old age. Having recently observed a 96-year-old relative and a neighbor's 20-year old cat who recently passed away, one can see similarities in both the strong and the sad qualities. The old cat liked to simply rest in her favorite spots in the neighbors garden, staring out into the world. Her physical state deteriorated very quickly towards the end, but I believe she crossed the rainbow bridge quietly and peacefully. My relative is still with us (saw her on my recent New York trip), though her health and mental state has deteriorated quite a bit as well. Again, I find myself thinking of the similarities between humans and cats in this stage of life – though just as with human infants in comparison to kittens, older cats seem to on the whole do a better job of staying independent than their elderly human counterparts.

I wonder if any of the stem cell research on Alzheimer's in applicable to cats…