Winter food ideas from our WCB friends…

With the extremely cold nights and now the driving rain, winter is again upon us. My least favorite season, but an excuse to stay in and work on projects. Also to cook warm comforting food, like the Mexican Black Bean Soup With Sausage from our weekend-cat-blogging friends at whatdidyoueat.

This is a warm, protein-rich and spicy comfort food perfect for winter. It isn't that hard to make either, though I think mine came out a little too liquidy. But hey, it's a soup. Garnished with fresh avocado slices and combined with warmed soft tortillas and a red wine for a nice dinner. Plus, one recipe leaves quite a bit of leftover for the week, which probably isn't getting any warmer.



Election detritus

Readers may recall that I was in New Orleans on election night, in the middle of the district of William “frozen assets” Jefferson. Well, his runoff election is today.

Keeping cash in the freezer and taking bribes is one thing, but in my mind the reason he deserves to lose is that he has turned to bashing his opponent Karen Carpenter for her support of gay rights and abortion rights. Whether these represent his true views or a cynical attempt to appeal to socially conservative voters, either qualifies as a reason to vote against him. We'll have to see if at the end of the day his little “Republican” play works…

UPDATE: Looks like Jefferson pretty much trounced Carpenter in the runoff. I would like to think it's because of loyalty in the district, and not because of so-called “values issues.”





Weekend Cat Blogging #79: from the archives

For this weekend, we go back to the archives for this artistic sepia-toned closup of Luna:

The poster behind Luna is of a stabile by Alexander Calder, among my favorite artists. Calder is famous not only for his monumental abstract stabile sculptures, but also his abstract mobiles – his mobiles were influenced in part by the paintings of Mondrian, another of my favorite artists.

I think Luna's profile and sculpture complement one another quite nicely.

Check out more WCB fun over at belly timber Angry Cat Blog. I figure it's best not to ask…







Catsynth pic: actual cat with Octave CAT… and Kitten in Emulator X

Well, here's another cat sitting next to an Octave CAT – wonder why that comes up so much.

Actually I am quite interested in the Octave CAT and Kitten synths, I'm trying (yet again) to bid on one on eBay.

In the meantime, I have been trying several methods to emulate them, including building an Emulator X patch. The Kitten is definitely more feasible because it only has one oscillator and thus no FM – FM is nearly impossible to do on the Emulator platform. However, I did one out of MIDI controllers. So the end result is a “Kitten lite” that contains all the oscillator waveforms (Saw, Triangle and Square/PWM), the two independent sub-octave waveforms, square and sine LFOs, filter with realtime cutoff and Q and envelope mod, and of course ADSR envelope.

While not a real Octave Kitten, it's a nice little playable instrument.





Feline Alzheimer's disease

News of a studly on Alzheimer's disease for readers with ageing feline and human friends:

Ageing cats can develop a feline form of Alzheimer's disease, a new study reveals. Scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Bristol and California have identified a key protein which can build up in the nerve cells of a cat's brain and cause mental deterioration.

In humans with Alzheimer's disease, this protein creates 'tangles' inside the nerve cells which inhibit messages being processed by the brain. The team says that the presence of this protein in cats is proof that they too can develop this type of disease…

…”As with humans, the life expectancy of cats is increasing and with this longer life runs the greater chance of developing dementia. Recent studies suggest that 28% of pet cats aged 11-14 years develop at least one old-age related behaviour problem and this increases to more than 50% for cats over the age of 15.”

Perhaps one of the things that makes cats and other companion animals so endearing is that they go through many of the same life stages as humans, from kittenhood/childhood to old age. Having recently observed a 96-year-old relative and a neighbor's 20-year old cat who recently passed away, one can see similarities in both the strong and the sad qualities. The old cat liked to simply rest in her favorite spots in the neighbors garden, staring out into the world. Her physical state deteriorated very quickly towards the end, but I believe she crossed the rainbow bridge quietly and peacefully. My relative is still with us (saw her on my recent New York trip), though her health and mental state has deteriorated quite a bit as well. Again, I find myself thinking of the similarities between humans and cats in this stage of life – though just as with human infants in comparison to kittens, older cats seem to on the whole do a better job of staying independent than their elderly human counterparts.

I wonder if any of the stem cell research on Alzheimer's in applicable to cats…



Spotted Cat in the news

While I was back in New York thanksgiving weekend, the Sunday Times ran an article on New Orleans in the travel section. Not only that, they featured the Spotted Cat, both in the article and as the cover photo for the section:

Readers may remember that I also featured the Spotted Cat in my article on NOLA night life. It has unfortunately been getting bad press lately, but not because of the music or the club itself, which remains one of the best venus in New Oreleans. Rather, the Marigny neighborhood has seen a spike in crime over the past few months, including some nasty murders – the most disturbing one involved a former Spotted Cat employee. It appears to be part of an overall increase in crime in New Orleans since people returned after Katrina.

With such negative perceptions, it's important to highlight the positive in New Orleans and it's institutions. In addition to my articles, others are doing their best to provide some good press for the Spotted Cat.







Meow Chow (WCB follow up)

I mentioned in the most recent Weekend Cat Blogging that we got a book of recipes for both cats and humans for Luna's birthday: Meow Chow: Hearty Recipes for Happy Cats.

I decided to try the crabcake recipe from the book because it seemed like something we both might enjoy – Luna's favorite human food to date seems to be turkey, but I'm a bit turkey'ed out myself. I bicycled down to the fish market on the Santa Cruz wharf for some fresh crab meat, and procured the other ingredients from various stores around town. The one substitution I made was matzoh meal instead of unsalted “saltine” crackers (isn't that an oxymoron). The preparation was pretty straightforward, mixing the batter, forming it into small patties and dropping them in the frying pan. Here is the final result:

A little overdone perhaps, but I do like the crust and at least for my own consumption I wanted to make sure the inside was well cooked. Luna had one half of a crab cake for herself:

She managed to eat most of it (which I cut into smaller pieces after this photo was taken), but I suppose it is quite filling for such a small cat.

I'm guessing next time she might prefer the sardines in the silver tray.

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Warped Cannon

Courtesy of fellow experimental musician Gino Robair, we have the “Warped Cannon” page, which features the Pachelbel's Canon in a wide variety of tunings. The MIDI files on the site present the canon performed not in variants of the traditional just and equal-tempered scales, but several rather odd tunings as well. Of particular interest to me was the the Bohlen-Pierce variation, using the Bohlen-Pierce tuning that I have discussed in previous posts. While some readers/listeners may find this variation a little difficult to listen to, and even disturbing when contrasted with the original, I actually find it quite inspiring. I am always interested to hear pieces done in this tuning ahead any future BP compositions of my own.






Weekend Cat Blogging #78: Luna's Birthday

This weekend, D and her lazy co-hosts are hosting Weekend Cat Blogging #78. This is also the weekend of Luna's birthday, which was officially on November 30 (last Thursday). She is two years old now – the ketzelas grow up so fast, don't they…

Of course, what birthday would be complete without presents? Luna had plenty from her human friends (click on the pictures below to see larger images):

Her favorite seems to be this little blue mousey, she's been playing with it all weekend:

There's still more birthday fun in store. A friend gaves us a copy of the book Meow Chow: Hearty Recipes for Happy Cats.

Doesn't the kitty on the cover look a lot like Luna?

We're going to try the crab cakes this afternoon, if I manage to get my act together. I know a lot of WCB'ers are foodies, so please do check in again later to find out how the feline culinary adventure goes!

New Podcast

Today's podcast release looks to the past. My performance two years ago at the Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz received a lot of positive feedback from other musicians and audience members,, and it's one of my favorites. But it is largely overlooked by most visitors to my website. I encourage readers and listeners to check it out.

The performance was realized almost exclusively using Open Sound World, with a little backup from the Proteus 2000.