News

WWDC 2007: Keynote (aka "SteveFest"), Leopard and Safari

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…

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.)

lolcats in the news

Well, it's definitely news and commentary day here at CatSynth, and I found a much lighter story of cats in the news to finish things off. Those lolcat pictures that have all over the place, including on this site, are going mainstream with articles like this one from the Toronto Globe and Mail:

For reasons that nobody can quite explain – and not for lack of trying – the Internet is recently awash in photos of cats who are speaking like little hackers. “IM IN UR FRIDGE,” says one cat, “EATIN UR FOODZ.” A cat rolled up in a blanket says, “I IS BURRITO.” Another yowling cat has been immortalized beneath the caption, “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?”…
… The fad is called “lolcats” – the “lol” stands for “laughing out loud” in online jargon – and it's more than a genre for ridiculing cats; it's becoming a shorthand for describing an exaggerated, faintly derogatory way of speaking.

A few examples of lolcats that have appeared on this site include dj lolcat, are our very own “Mission Accomplished” parody. Here's another I found today on lolcats2 that seemed worth a repost:

Not quite a CatSynth pic, but close. It is tempting to turn one of the many CatSynth pics into a LolcatSynth, but it's generally impolite to mangle other people's photos, at least without their permission. Any contributors OK with lolcat-ification of their submitted photos?

Of course, the phenomenon has jumped species. Walruses, or lolruses, are quite common – they seem particularly obsessed with buckets. It seemed to be an obvious extension to apply the lolcat language and captions to our rather dim and inarticulate leader, and a quick Google search suggests that I'm not the only one who thought of lolbush. From Tensegrity Dan at flickr, another take on “mission accomplished”:

I can haz Iraq?

Why do people do things like this?

PARMA, Ohio, May 25 (UPI). An Ohio cat named Lucky survived being shot in the head with an arrow…Kristin Slovensky told WKYC-TV she was on her porch when the 8-year-old cat staggered up with an arrow through its neck.

…Police were investigating and Slovensky was wondering why someone would shoot an arrow at her cat.

“He's fixed, he's gentle, he loves to walk through the neighborhood, everybody on this street knows Lucky, and loves him,” she told the television station.

As the title of the article suggests, Lucky was a “Lucky cat indeed.” Another poor cat, Sammy from Georgia was not so lucky :(. You can follow the link to find out more, but is both sad and graphic, so please keep that in mind before reading. This was a couple's beloved pet, and we at CatSynth send them our condolences. It is worth noting that this tragedy occured in Georgia, which as discussed earlier recently upgraded its animal cruelty laws and has a strong veterinary forensics program. We certainly hope they catch whoever was responsible for both of these acts.


Radio Play

The KUSF (San Francisco) radio program Breakthrough in Grey Room recently featured my piece Neptune Prelude to Xi as part of the May 16 program. It's a great show for experimental music that you can hear both on broadcast at KUSF 90.3 FM in the Bay Area, and online.

There are now a handful of internet and/or airwave broadcasts that have played my music. In addition to Breakthrough in Grey Room, there is sfSoundRadio, andWTUL in New Orleans, and others.

It's too bad that just as I'm starting to get some airplay/netplay the economics of broadcasting threatens to curtail or even shutdown the small independent internet broadcasting venues on which musicians like us depends. This interview from truthdig helps spell out the issues better than most:

Wellings: Exactly. The broadcasters, regular terrestrial broadcasters, do not pay the actual artists and performers of the songs that you hear on the radio. It?s sort of the problem with music where the RIAA, the recording industry and the record companies, tend to be the ones that reap the profits from songs and the actual musicians, performers, are not actually getting those profits. With Web radio they actually are getting profits, and that?s part of the good part about Web radio. We want to make sure that that stays, that that is the case, that that remains. And satellite as well. But the problem is that satellite has a reasonable fee. The webcasters? fee has been set so high that it?s just going to kill the medium, and that?s not going to do anything for artists in the end. That?s actually going to hurt artists in the end. So we want to set a fee that?s fair and balanced for everybody across the board so that artists are paid and webcasters can survive.

I wish Wellings hadn't used the phrase “fair and balanced”, but she does make the point that it's not fees per se as much as exhorbitant fees. I get fees from MusicNet for personal radio station plays, for example, but they are pretty low. The issue is both the recent huge increase in broadcasting per-play fees for web broadcasters, and the fact that SoundExchange tends to represent mainstream musicians who record for RIAA remembers. Many independent musicians will not receive such fees from SoundExchange, and their online venues may be priced out of existence. It even affects such established broadcasters as NPR, or KUSF mentioned above, who have an online broadcasting presence.

And on top of this, there is now a move by the RIAA to bring a similar pricing structure to airwave broadcasters, as described in a recent Los Angeles Times article:

Now, the Recording Industry Assn. of America and several artists' groups are getting ready to push Congress to repeal the exemption, a move that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually in new royalties…
…with satellite and Internet radio forced to pay “public performance royalties” and Web broadcasters up in arms about a recent federal decision to boost their performance royalty rate, the record companies and musicians have a strong hand.

It looks like the RIAA has also lined up several artist groups to support them, mostly crusty mainstream acts that are complaining about having to tour for so many years. Apparently they are also having to embarrass themselves on American Idol, which I agree is unfortunate. But still, they have been paid pretty well to make music.

One potential silver lining from this that more radio stations and internet broadcasters will turn away from RIAA products and try new music and new show formats around small indepedent musicians…

Veterinary Forensics Pioneer Melinda Merck on NPR's FreshAir

I just heard an interesting interview on NPR's FreshAir with Dr Melnda Merck, who is a pioneer in the field of veterinary forensics. From the site veterinaryforensics.com:

Melinda D. Merck, D.V.M., has been studying and investigating animal cruelty cases since beginning her practice in veterinary medicine. After graduating with her veterinary degree from Michigan State University in 1988, she opened The Cat Clinic of Roswell in June, 1990, in Roswell, Georgia. In addition to private practice, she worked on cruelty cases with local animal control agencies.

That's Roswell, Georgia, not Roswell, New Mexico, of UFO-sighting fame. The interview focuses on Dr. Merck's practice and her investigations of animal cruelty. Some of these stories are quite disturbing and distressing, nonetheless I recommend that those interested in the subject listening to the program here.

Sad News: TeaCup

We just got the sad news, TeaCup passed away this evening.

At 9:12 tonite Dr. Duke called and said TeaCup was gone… Thank you to everyone who purred and prayed for my sweet baby. He isn't suffering now, but the pain is so great in my heart. TeaCup was special, and he will be missed dearly.

We've only briefly known TeaCup over the past two weeks or so, and he's gone just as we were getting to know him. It's a reminder to value the time with your friends and family. I'm certainly spending extra time with Luna right now.

You can leave your condolences for Megan and The Bad Kitty Cats here. We are also going to continue our CD offer to help support them.

UPDATE: A really lovely rememberance at the Cat Blogosphere by Sophia with a great poem and photo.




Teacup's race against time, and CD sales to benefit his family.

Our little friend Teacup isn't doing very well, and Megan says it's a race against time. He continues to receive surgeries to combat his gangrene infection, but now he has been diagnosed with the parasite Hemobartonekka Felis, which essentially destroys red blood cells. He received a blood transfusion, and now is attempting to recover from that in addition to his infection and surgeries. He is but a shadow of his former handsome self.

You can read more about Teacup's struggles, and the efforts being made to save him, and all the warm thoughts from other humans and cats being sent his way.

We also continue to send him our thoughts and hope he recovers. A sad truth, however, is that whatever happens, there will be huge vet bills for Megan and the rest of TeaCup's family. Several auctions are helping to raise money for his bills. You can find out more at the Cat Blogopshere, where you can also donate directly.

We are also going to donate all proceeds from CD sales during the month of May, so please do consider helping out if you enjoy both new music and animal companions. This will cover both direct sales and sales via CDBaby. Unfortunately, we cannot include digital download sales, it just is too complicated to manage. Click on the CD cover to the left for more info (I will update the page tonight with benefit info).