Bruckner Interchange, again and again

In writing about my trip to New York, where better to begin than with our old friend the Bruckner Interchange:

Most of my trips to New York pass through this interchange, which connects to and from JFK Airport via I-678 (the Whitestone Bridge and Van Wyck Expressway); and north into Westchester via Hutchinson River Parkway. However, this trip involved more encounters that most, and indeed a “complete” tour of the major connections. First, north via Whitestone Bridge via the Hutch on arrival. On departure, we came east along the Bruckner Expressway (I-278) and again to the Whitestone. Our family events involved travelling from Westchester to Long Island, again via the Whitestone Bridge. For the return trip, we took the Throgs Neck Bridge (I-295) and the Cross Bronx Expressway (I-295, I-95).

I almost always use the Whitestone for travel to and from Queens and Long Island, so it had been years since I travelled on the Throgs Neck Bridge. It seems in dire need of maintenance. Big rust spots do not give one a sense of confidence when travelling on a major bridge 150 feet above water. I would expect folks to take maintenance very seriously after the Minneapolis bridge collapse this summer. Especially after I find articles like this…

Autumn sun, Midnight Monday, and Site Improvements

Well, I am back home at CatSynth HQ in California. That means back home with Luna, of course:

Although she is calm and poised in this photo, it's been all purrs and cuddling today, even while I try to work. Not that anyone is complaining.

Today we enjoyed what I traditionally called the “August sun”, that really deep yellow sunlight that gives everything, but especially green leaves, a rich yellow coloring, that feels warm even as the air cools down. It is difficult to capture in a digital photo, but here is one attempt:

I think I should change “August sun” to “Autumn sun”, since the phenomenon extends well into September and even October. And not only here on the west coast. New York was exceptionally warm and getting plenty of “Autumn/August” sun this past week.

I have been working on several improvements for this site, including upgrading our software. As usual, a few things break in the process (e.g., comment displays were a little off, the “tag search” featured on the highways page and elsewhere was completely broken, our “cats synthesizers music art opinion” slogan was missing, etc.). Those are mostly fixed, and now we can proceed to making actual improvments.

Actually, the main change we need to make is in our hosting service. The good folks at A Plus net (the same people who messed up our domain name and left us stranded in the CatSynth FEMA trailer for a week) let us know that we have exceeded our CPU usage limits (not storage or bandwidth) and will need to switch to a more expensive hosting plan – all in a message from the friendly-sounding “abuse at aplus dot net.” So we could simply upgrade our plan, but since our lease is up on October 7 anyway, it might be a good time to shop around for an alternative. We welcome suggestions from our readers on good and bad experiences with hosts – please leave a comment or contact us. Of course, we have to act quickly on this matter…

Weekend Cat Blogging and more: It's all about Luna!

Well, I am still in New York this weekend, and meanwhile Luna is home at CatSynth HQ in California. I thought it would be appropriate to share some photos taken during some previous trips by our pet sitter Ronni West:

It's great getting to see these photos from Ronni, knowing that Luna is happy and being herself. Here we see her kneading some laundry left on the bed, which remains one of her guilty pleasures:

I make sure to leave some laundry out when I go away, I think it gives her a sense of familiarity and comfort.

Even though I do enjoy travelling, it's always great to come home and be reunited.

Weekend Cat Blogging #121 is being hosted this weekend at masak-masak.

The Bad Kitty Cat Festival of Chaos is going on the Mind of Mog. The theme this week is catnip, and while I know Luna is getting to enjoy fresh catnip during my absense, I don't have the photographic evidence on hand (yet).

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this week at Life from a Cat's perspective. And of course the Friday Ark #158 is at the modulator.

Finally, thank you to everyone who sent their kind thoughts this week, through comments here at CatSynth as well as via email or other media. I will try my best to answer individually as well, but wanted to say something here for everyone.

In memoriam: Millie Poris (1916-2007)

As a rule, I don't talk about family on CatSynth (except for Luna). However, I am making an exception for my grandmother, Millie Poris, who passed away this weekend.

She was the “quintessential grandma”, very warm and full of life and doting on her grandchildren even into their 30s. As young kids, that included bring us treats, taking us out a lot, or letting us get away with things, that were otherwise forbidden.

Despite numerous health challenges, I have to think this last year was a happy one for her. A huge baseball fan, she was a VIP for her 90th birthday at a professional baseball game during a recent family reunion. And earlier this year, she celebrated a grandson's wedding:

Yes, it was in Texas, and she was enjoying the whole cowboy-hat thing with the rest of us from the New York contingent.

The wedding was also the last event where we were together.

I will be going to New York this week for the funeral and to be with family. This site will remain quiet for the next few days out of respect. We may get some guest posts at the end of the week, and of course Luna will be here next weekend.







Weekend Cat Blogging: Beds, Pillows and Rain(?)

As usual these days, we are consolidating our weekend cat blogging activities. Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Kate and Puddy (one of Luna's look-a-likes) at A Byootaful Life.
This weekend's theme for the Bad Kitty Chaos Festival, hosted by Pets Garden Blog, is pillows and beds. Well, soft cushions are one of Luna's areas of great expertise:

Of course we have seen her curled up on the bed many times:

And it is one of those days where curling up on a bed or a cushion seems like the perfect thing to do, with a steady cold rain coming down around us:

That wouldn't be much of a problem, except that we have an outdoor music festival tonight! September is the usually the hottest, driest month here, so something is wrong…

In addition to WCB and the Festival of Chaos, we also have the Carnival of the Cats, hosted this week by This That and the Other Thing, with Amber, Kosmo, Mouse and Indigo (another fellow black cat). And of course, the Friday Ark at themodulator.

Preparing for Woodstockhausen 2007

It's only two days until the return of Woodstockhausen.


Woodstockhausen

A tiny, esoteric
outdoor festival of experimental
music and visual
spectacles.

September 22, 2007
7 PM
Glen Alba Gardens
12250 Alba Road
Ben Lomond, California 95005

Gates open at 6 PM
Tickets: $20 (plus $2 service charge) per vehicle in advance,
$25 at the door

I am going to try and keep things simple, given that the performance is out in the middle of the woods, and a total of 12 minutes in length. In fact, I am going for something very similar in setup and programming to the performance we did at the Skronkathon back in July:

It's just the MacBook running Open Sound World (the new version), the keyboard, mic, and the E-MU 0202|USB interface. The program is the same series of wavetables, with several minor modifcations to make the FM patch work without going unstable. For the math and DSP geeks: I simply changed the modulator from a sine function to a sine-squared function, and added a hyperbolic tangent to control the output levels. For the rest of you: I made it so the sound doesn't blow up constantly.

The input sources will be my workhorse Indian string instruments the ektar (on the left) and the gopichand (on the right). In addition, I am using these “acoustic” sources:

That duck has been a great instrument, and a mainstay of my live setup the last couple of years. I'm worried that the batteries will run out one day, and I won't be able to replace them unless I figure out a way to safely open the poor ducky without destroying him in the process.

So we've tried everything out, and should be ready to go. We'll have to make sure this is still the case tomorrow, and again on Saturday. My first performance at Woodstockhausn in 2002 (and at last year's related “micro-hausen” event) have been plagued by unexpected technical problems, so I'm a little cautious. Actually, I will probably make reference to that fateful 2002 performance on Saturday…

For those who are in the Bay Area, or anywhere in California for that matter, and wish to attend Woodstockhausen, the information is printed above. You can also visit the official website for more information.