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.

CatSynth pic: dj kikovas with Roland SP-404

From dj vivi pedraglio, who left this photo for us on myspace:

dj kikovas…with his roland sp-404.

dj vivi pedraglio comes to us from Argentina and has some really interesting beats and sounds. Check out her link above. She has also been featured recently on matrixsynth.

dj kikovas has at least one other photo, so we'll see more of him soon here at CatSynth. As for dj vivi herself:

Looks like she has the same idea here as Mimì 😉




San Francisco May 13 Part 1: Highways, Mothers Day, Music and Art

I definitely needed to get out of town today. A change of scenery and activity was in order, plus Santa Cruz becomes a complete tourist trap on sunny weekends like this. So north to the city we rode…Of course, before leaving, I called my mom in New York, and got the change to wish both her and my grandmother a Happy Mothers Day. I hope you all had an opportunity to do the same.

Our main routes into San Francisco are highways 1 and 280, which together form the Junipero Serra Freeway upon entry into the city. This is an amazingly scenic freeway, traversing the largely undeveloped valleys along the San Andreas fault south of San Francisco. 280 splits off to the right to become the Southern Freeway, as illustrated in the map below (pay no attention to the “official” names that no one actually uses).

Usually we take the 280/Southern Freeway route, which crosses highway 101 and empties out in downtown. This time, we stuck with highway 1, which continues north as the Junipero Serra for a few meters before becoming 19th Avenue in the Sunset distrcit. Big mistake. We got stuck in traffic all the way to Golden Gate park. Interestingly, the highway 1 freeway was originally supposed to continue all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. The stub of the highway 1 freeway and US 101 / Golden Gate Freeway (Doyle Drive) does in fact exist, but is disconnected from the highways in the south of the city:

But they have nothing to do with today’s story. Instead we left highway 1 at Golden Gate Park and headed to the Haight district, home of the Haight/Ashbury neighborhood of 1960s fame, and more recently of Amoeba Music, San Francisco. Amoeba is one of the best brick-and-mortar music retailers left, at least here in California, and they do carry and extensive experimental-music selection. I was there to make sure that my CD Aquatic was part of it. Such is the life of the independent recording musician, I have to physically bring my CD to the stores and get them to take a copy or two. Amboeba did accept it, though there terms are, well, the are what they are.

We also paid a visit to Streetlight Records in the Castro district. I have sold a few CDs at Streetlight Records in Santa Cruz, so why not in San Francisco as well? They took a couple of CDs on the same consignment terms as the Santa Cruz store, which unfortunately reminds me I need to check in with the local shop and see how things are going. While in general these things work out OK, it is the sort of chore that makes me think about signing up with a small indie a label (or a small indie label bigger than my own). Of course, that has its drawbacks as well, not the least of which is being able to do things like the current CD benefit for TeaCup’s family.

In addition to trying to peddle my own music, I always take the opportunity in SF to see other people’s art. Galleries are mostly closed on Sunday, but I did have a few exhibitions I wanted to see at the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art[/url]. The two main exhibitions were a juxtaposition of works by Pablo Picasso with those of American artists inspired by his work – I had actually seen this exhibition in New York last year – and a retrospective of American artist Brice Marden (who is still very much alive). My critiques the exhibitions there deserve a separate article, which I will probably post tomorrow. The other galleries will probably have to wait until June for another visit…


Again, we usually exit the city at the Sixth Street terminus of 280, but because we were coming from Streetlight in the Castro, we ended up using the 101 / Central Freeway ramp at Market Street and Octavia Blvd. This stub of a freeway used to continue north of Market as the Central Freeway until Oak and Fell Streets heading towards Golden Gate Park. Indeed, all the freeways, except for I-80 to the Bay Bridge all seem to empty out onto city streets.

The tiny bit that remains of the Central Freeway (the section north of Market was recently demolished and converted into Octavia Blvd, see this article at SFGate) was originally designed to connect up to the Golden Gate Freeway (also highway 101) shown in a previous illustration. This, along with the highway 1 freeway (Juniperro Serra extension / Park Presidio Freeway) and the now defunct highway 480 (Embarcadero Freeway) were all supposed to connect to the Golden Gate bridge, but all were cancelled in the 1950s/1960s due to opposition. You can see some of the early plans for San Francisco’s freeway system at California Highways and kurumi. At least one connection between the south, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate would have been good, but there really isn’t any way to do that without a nasty tearing apart of neighborhoods along the lines of the Cross Bronx Expressway in New York (one of the freeways in the previously blogged Bruckner Interchange, it just keeps coming back). To bring things back to Mothers Day, my mother grew up in one of the neighborhoods in the central Bronx that was rent asunder by the construction of the Cross Bronx.

WCB 101: Video tribute for TeaCup, and Kitty Love

Megan and family have put together this wonderful video entitled Good Night Sweet TeaCup

Very sweet and touching, and also quite amusing at times. I particularly love the pictures of him sitting inside the red fish bowl.

This tribute to TeaCup seems a fitting segue into Weekend Cat Blogging #101. He was in our thoughts a week ago during WCB100, and now a week later we remember him and keep his family in our thoughts. We have seen so many in this online community come together around this one little soul. He was indeed more than “just a cat.” As all our little animal companions are. They are family, we enjoy and honor them in life, and grieve for them when they pass. How could it be any other way? It's sad that some people refuse to accept or celebrate that. The recent pet-food contaminations have added to the sense that our animal companions are precious, and also served to remind others in society of their value. I hope that Luna and I will have many years together before we need to think about such matters ourselves, and in the meantime I am proud to “love my kitty” here in this public forum. She certainly deserves no less.

The recent pic on the left was taken with the built-in webcam on my MacBook, I was probably posting something to CatSynth at the time.

And of course, check out the other cats who are very much loved at Weekend Cat Blogging 101. This weekend's roundup is being hosted by Sher, Upsie and Sundance, who remind us all to be good to our mothers this Mothers Day weekend. We at CatSynth will be making the call back to New York on Sunday. Mmmm, Sher and friends have some delicious looking cheese, too.

And don't forget that all CD sales in May will benefit the family of TeaCup and Bad Kitty Cats. Please help support them and support new music at the same time. I will post this info to the right-side column so it won't get lost in the depths of blogging.









Fluxus

I needed some intellectual diversions over the last couple of days, and last night I took another look at concept of software art that has intruiged me recently.


Fluxus is a system for live software art that combines programming with audio, visual and interactive elements. It comes to us from the same people who made Quagmire, in which programs ran inside of monochrome images.

Some interesting statements from the Fluxus website:

act of a flowing; a continuous moving on or passing by, as of a flowing stream; a continuous succession of changes

On a more technical level:

Fluxus reads live audio or OSC network messages which can be used as a source of animation data for realtime performances or installations. Keyboard or mouse input can also be read for simple games development, and a physics engine is included for realtime simulations of rigid body dynamics.

The use of OSC is of particular interest, as such a system becomes an interesting companion to Open Sound World. It also rekindles my idea of providing an OSC-based livecoding environment for OSW.

Unforunately, I have had some difficulty getting it installed (or compiled) for Mac OSX, so I haven't been able to do much myself. Hopefully I will be able to get that working soon…

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).