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
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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
No, not “me”, but leslie.paige at flickr. Her photo comes to us via matrixsynth:
Leslie says the she found the cat “near a dumpster.” We at CatSynth are always happy to hear about cats being rescued.
He reminds me a lot of Morty, who some readers might remember from this post.
Morty was also a rescue. He was found as a kitten by a rescue group and raised until he was ready for adoption. He was the original “Supa-Bad Kitty,” and quite a mischief-maker, really the opposite of Luna in a lot of ways. I still miss him sometimes, though.
The mini-conference that brought me to Berkeley on Monday and Tuesday ended fairly early, and I took the opportunity to wander the streets up into the Berkeley hills. This is something I used to do all the time, but haven't in years.
I started out by heading out of the campus on Piedmont Ave., passing by the Greek Theatre, which I hereby dub the “scene of the crime” from end of my time here.
At the northeast corner of the campus, Piedmont becomes La Loma and heads up into the residential neighborhoods of the Berkeley hills, an area that is apparently called La Loma Park. I always enjoyed wandering through these streets, which start out very much like city residential blocks and get more and more sparse and wooded, yet somehow remaining “part of the city.” Again, that is a bit different from Santa Cruz, which feels like a town squeezed between the ocean and the mountains and redwoods. I do walk downtown and along the shore a lot, but the hills here just haven't seemed as interesting to explore. As I write this article, however, I will note that the sunsets here in Santa Cruz are better than they were in Berkeley apartment.
Beyond Cedar Street, the city-block feel ends and La Loma continues up a steep hillside with retaining walls on one side and rails to another.
It is a view I remember quite well. The first time I wandered up this way, I was simply curious to see where this ended up – indeed, I never really “planned” out these walks and simply relied on my strong sense of direction to get me home again. Around the corner, the road comes to the top of the steep canyon cut by the Codornices Creek, with spectular views of the bay.
]It is hard to get a sense of the canyon from a photograph, unless you place it in context, such as the houses built along the steep grades. What looks like a flat ranch from the top of the canyon turns out to be a five-story monster built into the hillside:
This view is from the street below, Shasta Road. Shasta and LaLoma aren't actually connected, but one can make use of the numerous public staircases throughout Berkeley. In this case, I took stairs descending from La Loma to Rose Street, which then connects to Shasta. At the bottom of the stairs, one can see the supports that hold up La Loma on the side of the hill:
Upon seeing the support structure, I was immediately reminded of the architecture of Gaudì at the Parc Gruel, which I visited in 2005.
Longtime readers have already seen some images of Gaudì's residential architecture, in the context of parabolas (indeed, both “parabola” and “Gaudì” are among the most popular search terms by which people reach this site). The connection to Gaudì is not one I would have made while I was still living in Berkeley, having not yet visited the Parc Gruel or Barcelona in person.
I eventually made my way back to campus via Euclide Ave and Scenic Ave. “Scenic” is a very bold name for a street, and more the most part it doesn't live up to its name, except for a couple of blocks near the Pacific School of Religion, whose main walkway I crossed often.
Driving out of Berkeley on Telegraph Ave. towards highway 24, one cannot help but notice the incredible contrasts between the neighborhoods in the hills and those in South Berkeley and northern Oakland. I still think that it all fits together, somehow.
