Remember this picture submitted last week?
Well, according the site cleverCLAIRE (from San Francisco), the cat's name is Niki. You can see more Niki photos here.
Even without being able to read Chinese, one can easily get the gist of the post, though I did run it through babelfish just to get a better idea. It seems like they got a kick of Doktor Future's ailurophobic comments over at matrixsynth.
We've been busy working on new features for CatSynth, making it not just a blog but a full featured site. And two of those new features are being rolled out this week:
CatSynth has a rather eclectic readership, cat bloggers, musicians, photographers, and more. There is already a community forming through regular readers and their comments, and the next step is to bring this community to the new CatSynth Forum. We have space to discuss our core topics of “cats, synthesizers, music, art, opinion” and other frequent themes, such as highway and travel. We encourage all our readers and commenters to join.
We are also opening up the new CatSynth Store, which features not only our CD and downloadable music, but also the music, film, books featured on CatSynth, and we'll soon have a “gear” site from CafePress.
There will be more features and integration coming to CatSynth and my other sites. Please let us know what you think, either leave a comment here or on the forums!
Keeping with our recognition of the 2nd anniversary of Katrina, we present another selection from the album Requiems for a Submerged City, “An electronic tribute to the City of New Orleans and its people – to those who survived Katrina and to those who didn't.” The album is released via the great Internet Archive.
Tonight, we present the track “IkoNO” by KraftiM:
KraftiM's track is a personal, loving tribute to the soul of New Orleans, pulsating with rhythms and echoes of the sweet soul music he once grew to love. Sounds of wind and water mix to this carnival-like electronic potpourri as a natural part of the environment and its atmosphere, but at the same time casting a dark shadow over the passionate and creative spirit of the city and its soul.
In addition to being a tribute, this is a great album musically that would strongly recommend for anyone who appreciates electronic music. I am also going to try and find other releases by the artists who participated.
We at CatSynth will continue to keep this candle lit along with Kashim and Othello and all our cat-blogging friends. Please visit them for the full list of remembrances.
This week also marked the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. On Wednesday, we revisited my trip to New Orleans last November. I also wrote about the Cats of New Orleans, both real and imagined, and so we re-visit them this weekend.
(Click to enlarge)
We also visited with the Louisiana SPCA and got a tour of their cat facilities in their temporary home, several environmentally controlled units inside a large warehouse. You can see some photos from the temporary SPCA as well. The good news is that they have completed and opened their new permanent facility. So much of the rebuilding in New Orleans has been slow or non-existent, it's good to see this success…
In addition to the Weekend of Rememberance by Kashim and Othello, the other weekend cat events are going on. Bad Kitty Cats Chaos Festival #8 as at The Mad Mirror. The Friday Ark #154 is at The Modulator. And Carnival of the Cats will be at This Blog is Full of Crap with Laurence et al.
The “cat boys” Kashim and Othello are hosting a Weekend in Silence and Rememberance for Weekend Cat Blogging #117. As such, we at CatSynth are are joining them and our other cat-blogging friends by lighting this candle:
Well, we (or rather I) got tagged by Megan and The Bad Kitty Cats with the meme Seven Strange Things About Me. This was almost two weeks ago, though we at CatSynth remember it like it was yesterday…
OK, so I decided to dust off the list of interesting facts about me from my music-and-professional site. It's supposed be the sorts of facts that would not appear in an official bio, program notes, or in the normal course of writing for this site. A few of them needed updating, like switching the career-related stuff to the past tense. I added a few more as well, pushing the total up to 95. And from that list, I selected 7 that I have deemed to fit the “strange” requirement:
05. I have never been to Kansas, but have visted every state that borders Kansas.
11. I call myself a cynical optimist.
32. I have a large orange stuffed clownfish named “Big Fishy”.
46. I once slept in a car and discovered the next morning that another car only yards away was ripped open by a bear.
62. I used to regularly listen to Stockhausen while having a bagel and coffee and reading the Sunday New York Times.
70. I am fascinated by crumbling concrete walls, graffiti, vacant lots, the spaces around highway overpasses/underpasses.
73. I have camped in Death Valley during the summer time. The daytime temperature was over 120F, and the night temperature was about 90F.
Hey, the requirement was “strange”, not necessarily “exciting”.
So the next step is to tag some more of our blogging friends with this meme (hopefully they're still my friends after I do so):
1. Meeyauw.
2. Gattina (of Gattina's Writer Cramps)
3. Jason of Xenogere
4. Jellypizza (I know, that's two in less than one week, but I'm curious to hear the results).
Bears, you're on notice!
Submitted by ADM of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome:
Of course, we at CatSynth have a special fondness for black cats and synths.
UPDATE. ADM posted in the comments that the cat's name is Applejack. And Applejack has a LOLCat version of the photo:
It's been a little while since we've seen Mimì. But she's back, in a pair of photos submitted by our friend polynominal:
The blue synth is a prototype of a Dutch “Synton Syrinx”, which you can read more about here.
Polynominal has quite a studio of vintage synthesizers and other gear, and he has some new photos, including several of Mimì, on his recently updated website. The site is definitely worth a visit, and check out some of the new musical samples.
For the past three summers, I have photographed Luna basking in the glow of the morning light through our stained-glass window. You can see her previous photos here, from 2005 and 2006. Her new stained-glass photos are below:
These were actually taken on separate days, one in July and one in August, which demonstrates not only Luna's fondness for this spot of colored light, but her photogenic nature. I am very proud of her in these photos.
Weekend Cat Blogging #116 is being hosted by our friends at Belly Timber. I really like the new graphics.
The Bad Kitty Cat festival of Chaos will be held by Pet and the Bengal Brats at Pet's Garden Blog.
The venerable Carnival of the Cats will be hosted at The Scratching Post. I like this “busniess case for kindness” thing…
And of course Friday Ark #153 will be where it always is, at The Modulator.
