Fat Cat in the News


All I can say is, “man, that it one fat cat!”
He has actually made quite a name for himself since getting stuck in a dog door while scavenging for food. The owners of the garage (and the food) were hoping to catch the culprit but did not necessarily expect the 20 lb “Goliath,” as he became known at the Oregon Humane Society, where he was taken after being freed from his little predicament.

You can watch a video of “Goliath”, whose actual name is Hercules, below.

Happily, Hercules was reunited with his family – you can see a nice picture of him and his human by following the link. One sad note to the story, however, is that Hercules was diagnosed as having FIV (feline immunodeficiency, similar to HIV for humans). But that should not stop him from returning home to lead a happy and contented (very contented, it seems) life.

Cute as such a fat cat might be, pet obesity is increasing in the U.S., similar to the obesity epidemic among humans, and can carry many of the equivalent health risks. Fortunately, Luna and I have both managed to avoid this trend so far – we are both naturally quite thin. Here are some resources for those who are interested or concerned with issues of obesity in their feline friends:

OBESITY IN CATS at the pet center
catnutrition.org




Super brrrrrr!

If we thought Saturday morning was cold, check out what showed up on Dashboard this morning:

It feels like the cold mornings back east that I thought I was getting away from. This is just incorrect! And ironically the northeast has been having a warm winter. Put it all together we're having some freaky weather. Are we seeing some of the effects of incipient climate change?





Dorian Grey's Box: Art Installation at Pajaro Valley Arts Council

My sound art installation described in previous posts is now on display at the Pajaro Valley Arts Council as part of the current exhibition “The Human Condition: The Artists’ Response.” The exhibition is “an artistic articulation of the connection between
the individual and world challenges, the exhibit
brings together artists responding to political and social tensions in today?s world”, and features 22 artists (according to my best count). The pieces in the exhibi are all of great quality when compared to recent gallery exhibits I have visited. Many are overtly political or social, dealing with many of darker subjects in current events and recent history. Some are quite realistic, others more abstract.

Dorian Grey’s Box, the piece on which I collaborated with local artist Michael Carson, is one of the more abstract in the exhibition. The main element is a large black cube with newspaper clippings in various patterns and sections of redder coloring. Surrounding the main cube are several small wooden “alphabet blocks”, some of which have also been painted black.


The sound (my contribution to the piece) is on a continuous loop that visitors can hear via headphones. The material is primarily ambient noise, gitches, percussive effects and sounds that only “hint” at speaking voices, arranged in a collage inspired by the sculptural part of the piece.

]The exhibition continues through March 4, and I strongly encourage anyone in the greater Bay Area during this time to check it out. It’s great to see such quality contemporary art locally (Santa Cruz-Watsonville-Monterey area).

I have posted an excerpt from the sound installation on the podcast for those who are interested in the piece but unable to visit in person.










Weekend Cat Blogging 84: brrrrrrrrr!

It's been a rather cold few days here in California. We woke up to near freezing temperaturs here on the central coast:

Luna and I share not only black fur and slim physique, but also an intense dislike of the cold, so we've been doing our best to keep warm. The heat has been running full blast, and Luna once again spends much time resting on the glass table above the heat:

Of course, readers of the forum have seen Luna pose in the same spot before on cold days. I love the way she dangles her paw over the edge in the photo, though.

Meanwhile, it's party time with Upsie and Sher, who are hosting Weekend Cat Blogging #84. Another thing both Luna and I share is a fondness for fish, and that ahi tuna suhi is looking mighty tasty…






Zip visits MacWorld

I had an opportunity to visit the big MacWorld Expo this past Friday, and of course Zip came along.

Of course, the big news this year was the unveiling of the iPhone. Here it is:

Can you see it? No? Well, neither could I. There was never a moment when there wasn't huge crowd surrounding the poor little device.

We decided to instead focus our attention on the well established and ubiquitous iPod:

You can barely stretch out your hand at MacWord and not come in contact with an iPod or something attached to an iPod. Indeed, much of the exhbition floor was devoted to iPod accessories and peripheral devices. I was most impressed with a device from Belkin, a six channel audio mixer that can record directly to an iPod (as well as to a computer if one so chooses). They expect to release it sometime later this year.

Among the more prosaic iPod accessories were numerous speaker systems:


Aesthetics and good design are key to Apple/Macintosh experience, so the emphasis is always on appearance and personality. This is true for speaker systems as much as for carrying cases and fashion accessories.

I quite liked the design of this offering from Harmon-Kardon:

And of course the extremely cute iWoofer from Rain Design:

This seems as good a time as any to discuss the use of the letter “i” for anything and everything at MacWorld. This is not only true for software and hardware offerings from Apple, but from the accessory vendors as well. You cannot escape the “i” in either the product names or the marketing surrounding them.

In reflecting on the “i”, I found myself thinking back to a favorite story of mine, Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar…. The community in which much of the story was set was called iDEATH, complete with leading lowercase “i”. There was also the somewhat villainous character inBOIL.

On the subject of modernist art and culture, there was also this ad from the good people at Roxio for the latest versions of Toast, which evokes the art of Lichtenstein and Warhol:

HP also offered modern-culture icons at its large digital photography presentation, including large-scale prints from photographer Joel Meyerowitz. Among them were several photos of 1970s New York. New York in the 1970s epitomized the crossing of high culture and urban decay, and the photographs capture that mix of the sleek and modern and the slightly rundown…

…but time to get back to the expo. I suppose I did get bored with the whole “digital lifestyle” thing, but I would be remiss if I closed without mentioning our friends over at Creative Technologies. They made a big push into the iPod and Mac space this year with several “designed for iPod” gadgets, including the oddly named Xmod. It seems that even when Apple makes it embarrassingly easy or accessory makers to be hip, Creative refuses to get it. Note to the folks at Creative marketing: the “i” is supposed to go at the beginning!

I do have to give them credit for letting E-MU Systems at least have one table at the show to present its Macintosh-compatible products, including the 0404|USB and 0202|USB with recently released Mac drivers.

It's actually a pretty decent audio interface for the Mac, and of course certain people busted their $#%es to make it OSX compatible, so you should check it out.

Well, that will wrap it up for our brief visit to MacWorld. I would try and leave you with some pithy remarks, but I'm still stuck on my whole “nostalgia for the big city” line of thought, and on the intersection of high and low culture afforded by Apple's vision of “digital lifestyle.” I doubt this is the last we at CatSynth will have to say on such matters…






oh-high-oh

This article goes out to my homegirl Tiffany (and kitty-cat Cleo), who asked for more information about the Buckeye State. Here's a few facts I can immediately access from memory (i.e., without having to go to Wikipedia):

0) Ohio is nicknamed the “Buckeye State” (redundant, but included for completeness).
1) It is the seventh largest state (by population)
2) The capital of Ohio is Columbus.
3) The three largest cities are Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati
4) It is the only state whose three major cities begin with “C”
5) It is bordered by Lake Erie to the north
6) To the south is the Ohio River, from which the state derives its name (duh!)
7) It borders Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky and West Virginia.
8) It is tall in the middle and round at both ends
9) Miami University is in Ohio, as opposed to the University of Miami in Florida. This causes much confusion.
10) The Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland, is famous for catching on fire several times. (Generally speaking, rivers are not supposed to do that.)
11) Interstates 90, 80 and 70 all run through Ohio.
12) No Republican has ever been elected President (of the USA) without winning Ohio.
13) The Cincinnati Reds were the first professional baseball team (which begs the question, who did they play against?).
14) The Ohio state quarter has an astronaut and the Wright Brothers' plane on it (as the Wright Brothers and a few astronauts are from the state).
15) William Howard Taft, the “fattest president”, is from Ohio.
16) The Buckeye is a tree, actually the state tree of Ohio.

You can find out lots of things I don't know about Ohio here and plenty of other places by googling “Ohio.”

Please feel free to contribute your own Ohio facts in the “comments” section!


Guess the Electronics

Inspired by a discussion on the Bay Area New Music maling list about electronic-acoustic music as well as different electronic tools/technlogies (e.g., MAX, CSound, etc.), I present the Guess the Electronics game.

Simply listen to each of the challenges below and leave a comment on how you think each was one created. You can also take a guess as to which examples include acoustic material.

It's fun for the whole family ?

challenge 1
challenge 2
challenge 3
challenge 4
challenge 5




E-MU Introduces Beta Mac OS X Drivers For 0202 And 0404 USB 2.0 Interfaces

I suppose on the eve of MacWorld, I can take a moment to brag about a recent Mac-related accomplishment of mine:

E-MU® Systems has announced the release of a Beta Macintosh OS X driver (Apple CoreAudio) for its 0202 USB 2.0 audio interface and 0404 USB 2.0 audio/MIDI interface…
…E-MU's new Beta Macintosh OS X driver is now available for free download at www.emu.com.





Weekend Cat Blogging #83: Luna New Year

New year, new kitty photos:

Luna poses elegently on her “purr pad” on New Year's Day.

This weekend's round is being hosted by…well, actually, it's not quite clear who if anyone is scheduled to host this weekend.

So…we at CatSynth will take the initiative and present the Provisional Weekend Cat Blogging Roundup!

First off, we have the lovely white Skeeter, a recent and welcome arrival to kitikata-san's neighborhood. Pretty kitty, it's like someone used the “invert” command on Luna.

Bowser loves cuddles up at a cat in the kitchen. Who doesn't love to cuddle up? Also, Bowser is an uncle because…

…over at annesfood, Glinda just gave birth to four beautiful kittens! Check out the newborn pics, and congrats to Glinda and Anne.

More snuggliness at kitchenmage. We agree that there's nothing better when it's cold and rainy outside.

If it's action you're looking for instead of hibernation, check out the climbing antics of the Spice Cats over at Just Sharlene.

Meanwhile, Tigakat Cleo wakes up from her nap and is ready to socialize.

That looks like it for WCB83, the first of 2007.

We do have some volunteers and a new 2007 schedule (not counting this weekend) at the Cat Blogosphere. Thanks to our friends at the House of the (Mostly) Black Cats.






George W. Bush's Acrockalypto

A friend forwarded this cartoon to me today after seeing it in The Mississauga news. (For the geographically challenged: Mississauga is a suburb of Toronto, Canada).

This cartoon is from Canadian cartoonist Steve Nease. Check out some of his other work.

It's interesting how cartoonists capture W's ugly inbred features, like his beedy eyes and pointy ears. Oh yeah, and his failed war policies, too…