Seriousness with Highways: MacArthur Maze

I had planned to do a “fun with highways post” on the MacArthur maze, which connects highways I-80, I-580 and I-880 to the Bay Bridge in Oakland:

Well, it turns out not to be so “fun” at this time. A major tanker truck crash and explosion in the southest corner of the maze. The resulting conflagration on the elevated southbound I-880 melted the steel of the even more elevated eastboard connector from I-80 to I-580, which eventually collapsed onto the lower highway.

Please visit this article to view images. You can see a video taken by an eyewitness at the time of the fire. Watch it here instead of at the YouTube site in order to avoid the boorish and in some cases quite inappropriate comments.

This looks like it was rather intense, and scary. Indeed it was rather freaky to see the charred freeway photos last night when first logged on last night. I know that section of freeway quite well from my time in Berkeley and frequent trips to San Francisco and the East Bay since then. That section of southbound 880 had only re-opened a few years ago, having been closed and then rebuild after the infamous collapse of the 880 double-decker freeway in the 1989 earthquake.

Fortunately, the driver of the truck escaped with only moderate burns, and nobody else was hurt in either the fire or the collapse of the freeway. Presumably when you see something like that ahead of you, you opt not to keep heading into it. The area is also fairly spare industrial land, so no homes in West Oakland were threatened. Could have been a lot worse, I suppose…







Weekend Cat Blogging #99: May Flowers

First time WCB hosts Spot, Mel, Shishi and Sirius have decided upon a floral theme for Weekend Cat Blogging #99. We at CatSynth are of course happy to oblige with this lovely photo of Luna posing with a California poppy:

As we saw last October, the color orange really brings out something in Luna. I thought this living-room photo of orange with black and grays was quite striking:

While the California poppy is aesthetically and geographically “purrfect” for Luna, it is not safe for cats. These photos were taken under very close supervision and the flower was immediately removed from the house afterwards. We at CatSynth want to remind our feline friends to enjoy May flowers responsibly. The Cat Fanciers Association has a list of plants considered non toxic for cats. Another list of resources on plant safety can be found here.



Keep Our Pets Safe Cybermarch and latest Recall News

We at CatSynth are hanging a brown ribbon today as part of the nationwide march to Keep Our Pets Safe. Marches and other events are being planned in several cities throughout the US (though not in the bay area), but everyone is encouraged to participate online by displaying the brown ribbon to support pets and and the families who have lost pets due to the pet-food recall.

We also heard from artsy catsy about the “My Pet Counts” postcard blitz. Mail postcards today (April 28) to the FDA, the White House, your representatives and senators, and others who have actually been involved addressing this issue. Among those listed is Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, who held hearings on the pet-food contaminations and the FDA response. He has also launched a public internet campaign asking “FDA to improve the safety of our pet food supply now!”

It was a bit odd to see Anderson Cooper of CNN specifically listed as a postcard addressee. I don't watch television at home. Apparently he did some early reporting on the pet-food contamination and did a segment in China. I haven't been able to find that video.

Speaking of China, they have admitted the presence of melamine and invited the FDA to help investigate, though the still have not admitted the link to the illnesses and deaths of any pets.

According to Pet Connection, more than 5,500 pet-food products, house brands and name brands alike, are now on the FDA's recall list. So far, Luna's favorite food remains safe – it contains corn gluten, but we are assured it is produced int the US (again, why would we important any corn products into the US?). Nonethless, it's still scary. What happens if it is later found to be contaminated as well? Switching to home-made food is not advised unless one really knows what he or she is doing. So while I'm happy to make treats for Luna from Meow Chow recipes and elswhere, I still rely on safe pet food for her continued healthy diet. We hope all our feline friends stay safe.

Pet Connection reports from its voluntary database that over 14,000 affected pets, of which 4500 have died.






CatSynth pic: little cat and modular

From sduck409 at flickr, via matrixsynth:

Quote from sduck409:

This little cat was a real spark plug when we got him back in January of 2006. He would jump up and into anything.

Like matrix, we are reminded of Moogy the Moggy

Funny how this photo is tinted blue, and only a day or so ago we had a catsynth photo tinted red…





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.

CatSynth pics: Mimì and Polyvoks

Remember Mimì, our intrepid little synth programmer?
Now she's taking her paws to the Russian (Soviet era) Polyvoks synthesizer.


Thanks as always to Eric of polynominal for submitting these photos of Mimì.

You can hear some samples of a Polyvoks at sequencer.de.

Seems approrpiate to feature a Russian synthesizer today, with the news of the passing of Boris Yeltsin today…