Personal

Bloggers Choice Award Nominations

Well, it looks like we've been nominated for Blogger's Choice Awards in three categories:

My site was nominated for Best Geek Blog!

My site was nominated for Best Animal Blogger!

My site was nominated for Best Blog About Stuff!

Of course, half of all the sites I visit these days are nominated for Blogger's Choice Awards. But nonetheless, we at CatSynth ask for your support, if nothing else it's a bit of fun. I think our best chance is in the Geek Blog category. In the Animal Blogger category, there's very little chance of competing with sites like Cute Overload, dailykitten or the lolcats.

From the nominating statement:

“cats, synthesizers, music, art, opinion” Yes, it's a blog about cats and synths, a strange combination that seems to work. Lots of cute photos of cats posing with, and occasionally playing, music gear. Also features frequent appearances by the lovely black kitty Luna, pretty much the *star* of the site. This site is quite informative, in terms of various global issues, such as pet food recalls, interesting stats of highways, information about people and places (ie New Orleans). This website has many visitors, especially kitty lovers and those people who like music and synthesizers as well. It's got class, it's got variety, best of all, it's got kitties!

I'm glad someone out there appreciates my “highways” posts.

Worthless Kitty Interlude: 1990 and 2041

I was listening to the radio last night on the way home, and the program host was referring to an event 17 years ago, in 1990. Some thoughts:

1990 is 17 years ago, or half a lifetime ago.
2007 will be half a lifetime ago in 2041.
In 2041, I will be 68 years old.

many cats can live to 17 years or more

my grandfather (on my mother's side) died at age 68 in 1982.






Worthless Kitty Interlude: Summer in February and "There goes the neighborhood"

This is the sort of thing we like to see in Februrary, especially after a fortnight of gloom.

Crack open a window!

A perfect day to spend outside, perhaps in the garden. Things have an annoying tendancy to grow here in the winter, so there's a lot of cleaning to be done. And the notice I got this morning from a neighborhood group concerned about “blight” makes me think I better get the garden nice and clean before some crazy white suburban-types throw bricks through my window.

Speaking of blights on the neighborhood, one of those dog-beasts just wondered by on the sidewalk as I was working out front. No associated human in sight in either direction. We have a lot of cats (and small kids, for that matter), so I don't like to see unattended dogs. Plus, he decided to use the corner of yard for a very unneighborly purpose. 😛 I guess it's time to call in the Biohazard Unit. That kinda dampened my enthusiasm to keep working. I guess at least it gives me something to complain about should I choose to attend the March 6 meeting of “concerned neighbors.”

Maybe I should just go for a bike ride instead…

…ah, now this is more civilized. Relaxing at an outdoor cafe with a beer in 75F weather. Feels like Europe in the summer…

Crack open a window!


Fun with stats: V-day edition

Today's chart rates four ex-girlfriends against criteria from an article at everything2.com:

Just like how women can be treated badly, men can also be treated badly. And for some reason, men are socially engineered to take more crap from the woman. Here are some of the things women who treat men badly do:

S L M D
1. “Disapprove” of him and his likes in
attempt to change the man.		 X X
2. Keep reminding him that she wants to break-up with him on a
specific set date.
3. Taking for granted, his ability to understand and compromise. X X X
4. Taking advantage of his generosity. In this case, she
starts becoming a gold-digger.		 X
5.
Getting her way whenever there is a conflict. Some would argue the man may be
passive at this point. But usually, the only thing he wants to avoid is a
meaningless argument.		 X X X X
6. Flirting with other men either in front of him or behind his
back.		 X X
7.
Cheating on him.		 X X X
8. Not understanding that his personality can grow to
become more enlightened.		 X X
9. Having sex
only when she wants.		 X
10. Not respecting his private/personal life. X X
11. Arguing over every meaningless detail of either “what he
said” or “what he did”.		 X X X
12. Having little tolerance and patience of his own
“flaws”.		 X X X X
13. Not saying “sorry” when she’s wrong.
14.
Not admitting when she’s wrong and always trying to get him to admit he’s
wrong when he really isn’t.		 X X X X
15. Blaming him for everything or anything that goes
wrong.		 X
16.
Not going to important events with him. (e.g. his graduation, lifetime
achievement award ceremony, their wedding, etc…)		 X
17. Not sacrificing nor compromising anything of
hers for his benefit. (Aren’t relationships suppose to be a two-way street?)		 X X X X
18. Telling him “I don’t love you,” yet still wanting to
have sex with him.



men treated badly

RPM update

I haven't posted an update lately on my RPM challenge album. Needless to say, it hasn't been going all that well, you can read some musings/whinings on my rpm blog.

I'm hoping that getting restarted with a new more deliberate overall sketch of the album structure and energy, and a return to more experimental timbral-based tracks similar to my recent music for Dorian Grey, which is in a lot of ways the most inspired piece of done in a while. Can it save RPM? We'll have to wait and see…





on civilization and it's ragged edges

It's been a lovely, warm day, one of the best since our recent deep freeze. Lots of patches of grey haze (probably fog rather than smog) amidst the blue. The melancholy beauty of California “summer,” except it's February.

it's starting to feel civilized again.

Speaking of civilization, many of us took time to help out friends (who I might through my interests in electronic and experimental music, hence this post noses itself into the “music” category) who were moving, from one side of town to the other. With so many of us coming out to help, we got the whole thing done in a fraction of a day. Would that friends and community got together for one another like this more open.

Below is a map of our home little seaside town.

On the lower left is the “West Side”, our side, of town. It's known for including the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), and scenic West Cliff Drive bookended by Natural Bridges state park and the main city beach. We moved our friends from nearby in the West Side over to the area called “Live Oak” on the eastern edge of the map and beyond the city limits. The area has quite a different feel, a flat patchwork of new homes, commercial buildings, rundown blocks and vacant lots. It might be strange that I like to explore places like this, but I do, it feels like being on the rundown edge of a large city. I have a similar feel when biking through the neighborhood near the main city beach, a mixture of old houses, tourist hotels and vacant lots.

It's easy to wax romantic about a place when you don't necessarily live there. Consider the fondness many artistic and cultural figures have for 1970s New York, a time when the city was verging on bankrupcy, infrastructure was crumbling and the (violent) crime rate was far higher than it is now. Daniel Henninger had a great article in the Wall Street Journal two years ago discussing this idea. Among those quoted:

The actor John Leguizamo: New York in the '70s “was funky and gritty and showed the world how a metropolis could be dark and apocalyptic and yet fecund.” Fran Lebowitz, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair: The city “was a wreck; it was going bankrupt. And it was pretty lawless; everything was illegal, but no laws were enforced. It was a city for city-dwellers, not tourists, the way it is now.”

For me, there is probably also a nostalgia for the images of childhood, like the graffiti on subway cars and crumbling concrete playgrounds (I don't think any of those exist any longer). By contrast, Giuliani's cleaned-up Times Square elicits little more than a shrug and a few seconds looking at the big screen…
Most of my recent trips to New York have been in November and December (though I did go back in June, 2005 as well). New York in winter does have its charm, but I miss the sweltering summers, the terrific oppression of the big city…






Worthless Kitty Interlude: Cheering up with "Burbed"

It's the rare website that truly earns the title “I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats!” Burbed is definitely one of them. A colleage at work introduced me to it on Friday, and although this past weekend has seen a lot of ups and downs for me, I know I can count on Burbed for a good laugh at the expense of some of the Bay Area's worst real-estate deals. They just finished up Daly City week (for the geographically challenged: Daily City is a town just south of San Francisco), including priceless but overpriced gems like this SFMOMA permanent collection special.

If you live or own real estate in the Bay Area (as I suppose I do), you can probably appreciate the humor. If not, here's an opportunity to peer into the housing bubble and laugh at us.

If you don't think this site is funny, you are strange and weird.

It's also a reminder that my little foray into California real estate has worked out quite well on balance…