Luna

Bad Kitty Chaos Festival #4: The Round up

&cWell, it's Sunday afternoon and time for the round-up of the Bad Kitty Chaos Festival #4. The theme is Music and Cats, and Luna starts us off with a “CatSynth pose” next to a soon-to-be-bent Casio SK-10:

Meanwhile, Willow from sammawow has her own keyboard shot, where she channels the Ramones. Gotta love those 70s haircuts. We will probably feature some more photos of Willow as part of our regular “CatSynth pic” series.

Luna doesn't really play much, she mostly just likes to hang in the studio, as we've seen many times in the past:

For Gree, music is about purrrs. Purrs can indeed be a wonderful musical sound, there are several electronic treatments of purrs in the album I am currently working on entitled 2 1/2.

Next we take a little detour from art towards science. Living the Scientific Life asks the question “Can Animals Predict Impending Death?”, and features the much discussed case of Oscar who seemed to predict when residents at a nursing home were near death.

Oscar is also the subject of this week's contribution by TherapyDoc.

More music (or “mewsic”) can be found at the home of Kashim and Othello, where the boys try their own version of a faux reggae classic.

Meanwhile Victor Tabbycat presents Fursday along with Bonnie Underfoot.

Those Bengals are back, with all the Bengal cuteness, over at Pet's Garden Blog.

Mouse takes on the competition in this slideshow at This, That and The Other Thing (who hosted Carnival of the Cats last weekend). Don't worry Mouse, the toys are no match for you.

“When you?ve gotten bored of attacking your toys, there?s always your own foot to play with…”, as we are reminded at Dophin's Dock. Sage advice.

Have you ever considered a cat's whistkers? Well, you should. And this contribution from the Magick Cat Cauldron will help introduce you this amazing piece of feline machinery.

Samantha says thank you to everyone who helped with her surprise party. Sounds like it was a smashing success.

At Self Help for Cats, Herman Panther likes to sleep cuddled with his humans, “like a lover.” Reminds me of a bit of “kitty live” with our own little panther here, who loves to snuggle up in bed on my left side and fall asleep purring.

Aloysius joins our cats-and-music theme with his epic poem. Sing, Great Cat, the tale of Aloysius, mighty hunter of the line of Pangur Ban!.

Gemini sets off a bit of an argument at Chey's Place. Maybe time for her own blog? After all, there is no such thing as too many cat blogs.

Over at the Cat Realm, Karl dares us all with a challenge. Visit them to find out more. Oh, by the way, nice shades!


Finally, Biscuit has not come home, and Megan and bad kitty cats are losing hope that she will return. This is really sad news for our friends who started this “festival” – we hope that she does defy the odds and return, but our sympathies are with them now.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's Bad Kitty Cat Festival of Chaos. Next weekend, we'll be hosting the old favorite Weekend Cat Blogging.

Bad Kitty Chaos Festival #4

Luna and I welcome everyone to participate in Bad Kitty Chaos Festival, fourth edition. As Megan suggests, we are having an optional theme of Cats and Music:

To participate, you can [strinke] use the handy submission form, or leave us a comment right here on this post. We'll have the big roundup this Sunday!

UPDATE: Megan and the Bad Kitty Cats have another crisis on their hands. Biscuit is missing. We hope she is safe and comes home soon. In the meantime, please leave a comment instead of the submission form.

And lest we forget, it is also Weekend Cat Blogging #113 over at masak-masak, where Ms G the “elusive ginger kitty” hosts. Samantha and Tigger host this weekend's Carnival of the Cats; and of course the The Friday Ark is boarding at The Modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging #112 and Chaos #3: Unemployment Lifestyle

We at CatSynth are still getting used to this whole unemployment thing. For me, this is a very novel experience, not having work. However, there is a lot that cats can teach us about not working:

Our friends Kashim and Othello have a “mess” theme for the Bad Kitty Cat Festival of Chaos, and we have a recent pic that sums up both messiness and idleness:

I leave laundry on the floor, and Luna takes a nap on it. A little guilty non-working pleasure for both of us.

On more serious note our friends at the Bad Kitty Cats are dealing with more difficulties, as Braum has fallen ill and Zed Monster had an accident that severely injured his tail. We hope they both make a full recovery.

Of course, there is more feline fun with a Simpsons theme, D'oh!, at The Weekend Cat Blogging #112 roundup with Kate and Puddy. (I'm always struck how similar Puddy and Luna look.) And also check out Friday Ark , where we are late as always, and Carnival of the Cats at This, That and the Other thing. I think that's it for now.

CatSynth 1st Anniversary

Today we celebrate CatSynth's first anniversary.

It's been one year since we posted this photo on July 19, 2006:

The idea came from a friend who said something like “dude, you should do a website about cats and synths.” So I did. Really didn't have too much idea what I would write about. I quickly learned that there was quite an abundance of pictures of cats and synths, and sites like matrixsynth had been collecting such images for a while. Indeed, one of the first external “CatSynth pics” to be posted here was of matrix's own cat JD:

Sadly, we recently learned that JD passed away this month. We offer matrix our sympathies. It's always sad to hear about cat friends passing away (or human friends, for that matter), and we at CatSynth have seen our share this past year.

I expect to post more this evening reviewing the year with photos, not-so-useful stats and the other things we at CatSynth like to think we do well…





Bandwidth and image stealing

A few months ago I noticed some surprising links from a site called neopets.com. Turns out a few users there had appropriated this October-themed image of Luna for their own works. In the case of one neopet user, she was labeled as “Brokenessence: darkhearted girl”. Another user at neopets even got her gender wrong and impugned her honor by declaring her some male dark demon character.

Regular readers know how I feel about demonizing black cats, but that's not what this article is about. It's about the appropriation of images and the corresponding bandwidth from this site. The image in the example above now carries the “catsynth.com” label, as do most of my own images used on this site – some of the art photos carry my name and a date, but the idea is still the same.

But the issue also extends to the images appropriated for this site from others, e.g., the many “CatSynth pics” contributed by others. They have been used at other sites not by copying them, but linking directly back here, thus I end up serving these images to their sites using my bandwidth costs. And they don't even link back here. For those who link back and bring more people to CatSynth, I'm generally OK eating the bandwidth costs. But for those who just grab images from this site, that's just plain stealing.

The worst offenders appear to be forums – blogs and other sites are usually good about copying the images to their own locations and/or linking back. It's the forums where people dash off a random post with an image from CatSynth that are the problem. And this month these forum sites are the most common “referrers”, even though they don't link back.

The biggest offenders for July are:

low-bee.com, where someone used a pic of Mimì.
punkas.com, where I'm paying for a good laugh at a lolbush pic (though I do approve of people ridiculing W).
biggie.co in New Zealand, again serving up a lolbush.
therocksalt.net – looks like lolbush again.
And of course the long-term offender detroitluv.com.

I will probably from now on post the biggest (monthly) bandwidth stealers at least once per month.

While I am happy to see people use images from this site to link back, or to ridicule “W”, I don't appreciate serving up images for free. The bandwidth so far hasn't really cost me much, but it's a lot of work to keep this site running, including the many images which make CatSynth such a rich and rewarding place to visit.

If you want to use an image from this site, please link back and give us credit. Failing that, at least copy it to your own site or one of the popular image hosting sites like photobucket or imageshack (I use ImageShack for sites where I don't have real storage space, like MySpace).

Preparing for tomorrow's today's performance, part 2

Things were looking pretty dire yesterday afternoon, with major audio problems on both the PC and Mac. Without going into details, I was getting intermittent pops, clicks and stutters on the PC, and the Mac was simply outputting something wrong. Eventually, I was able to get the mac working with clean audio, so that became the computer for today's performance, together with an E-MU 0202 | USB and an Xboard.

Basically, the mac is running Open Sound World, more specifically, the latest version that works with my new Python interface. Without the pesky graphical interface, the system is rock solid and a lot more efficient to program. It's more akin to SuperCollider or the practice of “live coding”, if you are familiar with either of those. So with this setup, I was able to get things up and running for today very quickly. And it is rock solid, though I don't want to jinx the actual performance too much by describing all the things that didn't happen.

The “instrument” for today allows two live recordings to be played back at various rates, controlled by the MIDI keyboard and knobs. I will be playing several of my Indian instruments to feed the recordings, in particular the ektar (single-string instrument) and the gopichand (also single string, with a bendable neck for pitch modulation).

Of course, the ketzela wants to get in the act again, too:

One last-minute change was dealing with my Xboard killing itself (something stupid on my part, really). Fortunately, I also have the Novation keyboard as a backup, and although the keyboard itself isn't as good, the controllers are a better fit.

The setup is also extremely compact. This is all I have to carry:

Well, actually, this and the folding table I usually bring. Still, it will be very light and relatively easy to set up (especially as the mac boots very quickly).

Weekend Cat Blogging #110: Preparing for tomorrow's performance, part 1

With my performance for the 7th Annual Skronkathon neary upon us, I am spending more time in the studio trying to prepare musically but mostly dealing with technical glitches.

Of course, Luna wants to participate:

But it's really about what she wants, which as always is a little love and attention:

So while we continue to get some actual prep-work done, you can go visit the WCB roundup, hosted by our friend Dragonheart, who celebrates his first birthday next week (just one day before we at CatSynth celebrate our first anniversary).

And for more feline-blogging fun, check out the Friday Ark (where we are always late), and Carnival of the Cats. And lest we forget, this weekend is the first Bad Kitty Chaos Festival (not that we would ever consider Luna or any of our feline friends to be “bad”).

And if you have a chance, Luna has been writing a few journal entries of her own over at Catster, including the much dreaded trip to the V-E-T this past week.

Weekend Cat Blogging #109: Summer Heat and Reading

It looks like our hosts Upsie and Sher are facing the full force of the western heat wave as they host Weekend Cat Blogging #109. Upsie is enjoying an cold pack to beat the heat. You can see the roundup of cats in all colors and climates.

Here on the coast things haven't been quite so extreme, but we, too, have been experiencing higher than normal temperatures, especially earlier in the week. The upper floor of CatSynth HQ got quite toasty, and Luna spent a lot of time napping, especially on her comfy blue towel (which I occasionally sprinkled with cold water):

Fortunately, the weather has cooled down quite a bit this weekend here, so now we're back to enjoying summer, including our summer reading:

The book is Lizard, a collection of short stories by Japenese modernist writer Banana Yoshimoto.

Don't forget to check out the Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats.

We hope all our friends in the Western U.S. and elsewhere are keeping cool and safe.

Weekend Cat Blogging #108

WCB #108 is being hosted by Pet's Garden Blog, and in honor of the “bengal brats”, we are offering some more photos of our bengal-like neighbor:

On hot summer days, he sometimes would stop and drink out of the fountain sculpture in the yard.

The fountain is an original sculpture of mine titled Imbalance, completed in 2004 and then renovated in 2006. It has been featured on this site before.

Some neighbors do leave out water bowls as a safer alternative, though like many places there are controversies about outdoor cats. We prefer to simply think of them as part of our neighborhood.

Of course, it wouldn't be WCB without Luna starring, so here are some recent relaxing photos of la gatita bonita:

Check out all the other cats at Weekend Cat Blogging #108 and Carnival of the Cats #171 (at a still secure undisclosed location, I'll update when I found out where). We are also showing up late, yet again, for Friday Ark #145.

Speaking of strays, we're going to continue our experiment with Open Trackbacks for this post. Feline related trackbacks preferred.

Weekend Cat Blogging #107: Peek-a-boo and Stray Cats

WCB 107 is being hosted this weekend at ScamperDude.com, where Scampy is playing both Rock Star and Super Hero.

Luna has some antics of her own, ratcheting things up in our regular hide-and-seek games:

I noticed that that Luna's eyes appear yellow instead of green in this an many other photos taken in the more earth-tone bedroom. Regular fans of Luna know that she has unusually green eyes for a black short-hair cat.

Her antics and affections have been quite welcome of late, it seems like a bit of a melancholy week despite the beginning of summer, and the brightness and warmth in abundance.

On a recent series of morning walks I saw several cats, most of whom were probably strays, like this rather thin character with a striking coat and photogenic appearance:

He/she was one of several cats taking up residence in the large vacant trying separating a large residential neighborhood (my neighborhood, actually), from a Safeway parking lot and strip mall. I hope they get enough to eat.

A few weeks ago, I stopped at the semi-annual rummage sale for one of the main local groups that helps stray cats in our community, Project Purr.

Picked up a few books while I was there, some summer reading. I was mildly tempted by a full set of “Left Behind” paperbacks, but thought better of it.

Also check out Friday Ark #144 (Saturday is the new Friday), and of course Carnival of the Cats.