Mr. Lee CatCam

Thanks to our friend matrix for finding this site. Although not musical, it is nonetheless an example of cats and technology. The project involves modifying an inexpensive digital camera to be wearable by a cat and take periodic photos as said cat goes about his/her daily routine. The site contains a lot of technical information, but most interesting are the photos from the cat's various excursions. There are several under-car views and feline encounters.



Live from Berkeley, Part 1

Tonight's posts are coming to you from Berkeley, my home for six years while I was a grad student at the university. I was invited up for a two-day mini conference by my former colleagues at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies and the recently created research group for parallel computing (aka “the View from Berkeley”). The interesting technical topics will have to wait for some other time – though I can't imagine the EECS faculty would enjoy seeing their research reviewed by a blog about cats…

For now it's simply worth noting that I'm sitting out with my laptop and a hot cider at an outdoor on a summer night. It's one of many things to miss from this much larger town, even as conference participants told me how lucky I was to now be living in Santa Cruz. I of course enjoy the ocean and the interesting cast of characters in my current home, but regular readers also know that I often miss being in a more urban environment…

It is interesting to compare Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Berkeley is much larger, more urban and culturally vibrant, better food, and spectacular streets to wander in the hills – stay tuned for more on that in part 2. Santa Cruz has the ocean, it's calm laid-back character, and an interesting community of creative and artistic people. Interestingly, Berkeley had little to no “night-life” in terms of live music and clubs during the time I was there. The nightlife in Santa Cruz is nothing to brag about, either, but it does have several live music venues that have managed to stay open despite the best efforts of residents to close them down – I never understand why people who hate nightlife live in downtown areas. In any case, almost every place in Santa Cruz closes by 10pm except a few clubs/bars, while in Berkeley things at least stayed open until 2am or later. I'm not sure one can conclude much from this comparison, except that either town would be a better place to live than most…

Not too much interesting to describe from a travel point of view, unless you count the Bay Bridge, which I don't think I have drivin in quite a while. There is a lot of contruction on the San Francisco approach, it looks like they might be trying to fix the remaining “errors” left over from the earthquake and subsequent demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway. With the changes to the 101 freeway described in a previous post, the 80/101 corridor might start to look civilized.

Then there is of course the new eastern section of the Bay Bridge (to replace the current seismicly dubious eastern span), which remains under construction. I wonder when they're planning to finish that…

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.)

New Podcast: "patty hurts" by DoCouto

Today's podcast is a track entitled “patty hurts” by the band DoCouto from a series entitled expire(ments) in patience. From their page at the Internet Archive:

recordings made between 1995 and 2006. ocations include texas,new orleans,seattle and new york.

This track uses a recording of Patty “Tania” Hearst with heavy electronic processing and overlaid with instrumentals. The result is a somewhat gritty mixture of hard rhythms and experimental voice work.

This work was made available under a Creative Commons license that allows for free sharing and distribution. Click the icon below for license details:

For more info about the podcast and to subscribe, follow this link or click the CatSynth Channel icon in the upper right corner. And as always, enjoy!

Weekend Cat Blogging #104 Roundup

Luna and I welcome everyone to the big Weekend Cat Blogging #104 Roundup. If you want to join in the fun, leave a comment here. Meanwhile, we already have several early entries, so lets get started.

First up are the funny goings on over at Kate in the Kitchen. Looks like Harmon cannot has cheezburger anymore, as he and Bustopher jump on the lolcat bandwagon, albeit involuntarily.

It's looking pretty dark over at lamiacucina, where they do a really great Luna-looking-out-the window impersonation. But what a great view of the old Rhine.

Kashim and Othello celebrate Gotcha Day at paulchen's food blog. Read the story of how they were adopted five years ago. You'll laugh, you'll cry, it's better than…um, well actually it is Cats! They are also holding a contest in honor of their new blog. Hopefully their contest goes more smoothly than ours did.

It looks like Sundance is still under house arrest at “What Did You Eat?“. Of course there is also Uspie, her arch nemesis Bubba, and the squirrels flippin' us off. What's up with that?

It's catch and release with a new friend, Aloysius at catymology. You can has chipmunk.

Kimberly of musicandcats misses her cats when she goes away on vacation. I know the feeling, I miss Luna when I'm gone. But like us, it sounds like they have found a great pet sitter to give love to the cats and peace of mind to their humans.

Taboo and whaleshaman are ready to party over at Jelly Pizza. Well, as long as party means snuggling up under your favorite red blanket. Looks comfy.

Sesame found a great spot with a view over at Just Sharlene and the Spice Cats. He apparently enjoys watching housecleaning unlike most cats who quite sensibly run for cover or the nearest exit.

Sunny Bob enjoys a blueberry pop tart over at Pet's Garden Blog. Many cats are very picky about what the eat, but apparently Sunny Bob is not one of them. Bon apetit.

It's Motown weekend over at sammawow…oh, ok, maybe not. But we do have China Cat and Willow contemplating Temptations. “Come on – You know what we want…”

Despite their “weekly idiotic fights”, Fridolin and Maruschka truly enjoy one another's company. See some really sweet photos of them curled up together at Rosa's Yummy Yums.

INTERLUDE. It's shaping up to be a lovely evening here. Sunshine, and a gentle cacophony of rustling leaves and multiple bands practicing in the distance. Although there is much that needs tending in the gardens and elsewhere, I prefer to relax on the patio with a light vino and continue with the WCB roundup…

It's Cats Galore at The World According to Pia. Among the many cats are a stately white shorthair from Pia's own breeding, and a host of adorable kittens. Collect them all!

The cats over at Lucky and Charmed enjoy Cat TV. But they are especially excitied this week because they now have bunnies!

INTERLUDE. I have been taking a shortcut on my morning walks to the local cafe this weekend via the train tracks. Yesterday, I saw several cats; one of them returned today, a little skinny calico who has probably taken up residence near the shopping center. More on local strays in a subsequent post. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging…

Laser cats have taken over the neighborhood over at I Got Two Shoes. And poor Kamikaze attempts to save a shred of dignity with frilly ribbons on his paws.

At chat kazte, Sasha spends all her time outdoors. She also enjoys the fine art of “found water.” Nonetheless, Sasha still manages to look pretty good after rolling in the dirt.

A Happy Birthday to Ywette from Anne's Food, who turns 10 today (June 3). See photos of her from kittenhood through the present. How wonderful to share all these stages of life with our feline friends.

There is one remaining tiny at Restaurant Widow, and it doesn't look like he's going anywhere. He's an adorable black kitten who enjoys computer typing and surfing the “innernets.”

Happy Gawai from Katz Tales, where Au is completely kitty collapso. We at CatSynth also enjoy being kitty collapso on the weekend.

We almost missed Willow doing her own blogging, but needs to Food Lady to help with the typing.

We have another Gotcha Day anniversary, this one from Megan and the Bad Kitty Cats. Biscuit Sinatra is five years old, and was adopted by Echo Baby and her human family soon after. LIke, Megan, we have some issues with our trackback system (it worked so well that we were inundated with spam/sping), but we always find the Bad Kitty Cats ourselves.

Some more WCB apocrypha: xenogere has lovely photos of the cats, and e.e. cummings as well! A shout out to Friday Ark #141 at the modulator. It looks like someone is posting a rerun of WCB 21.

We'll keep posting more cat blogging through Monday morning, so keep those links and comments coming.

Also, don't forget this is the last weekend of our CD sales to honor TeaCup and benefit his family the Bad Kitty Cats.

And we have a winner (or two, or three)

Well, the visitor counter passed 15000 sometime after 9PM tonight.

And the winner is…well, it looks like it might be a tie (possibly a three-way tie). I'll announce names once I've successfully contacted and verified everyone.

How could there possibly be a tie for the 15000th visitor, you ask? Well, it looks like the counter might have a bit of an issue, especially for sites with a fair amount of traffic. I run a version of sphpblog, slightly tuned and modified for my own needs/interests. Indeed, that's how I was able to program in the “contest” to declare a winner when the counter hit 15000. However, the counter seems to have stayed at 15000 over three visits from three unique IP addresses, which resulted in a “tie.”

I have gone through the site logs to verify this; and I will honor the prize for each of the people who can legitimately claim to have “won.”

As for the counter, I will either have to write my own to replace the current one, or use one of those outside services. It looks like the total visits for CatSynth may have been severely undercounted because of this, and I might try some simple statistics to get a better estimate. Note that this only affects the internal site counter, not any of the outside services, like “Top 100s”, or ads.

Certainly a reminder to question the reliability of some other electronic counters out there: