anniversary

Luna’s 5th Adoption Anniversary

Today marks five years since I first brought Luna home from the Santa Cruz County animal shelter.  Time certainly does pass quickly.  We celebrate this anniversary (otherwise known as Luna’s “Gotcha Day”) with a look back at photographs from our five years together.

Here she is back in 2005.

and then in 2006

and finally in 2007.

That series of photos ends after we moved to San Francisco in 2008, but there is no shortage of images of Luna basking in sunlight.  Here she is in 2008 (outdoors):

and 2009:

and finally this year:

(There are so many photos it can be hard to choose just one representative.)

Our friends at the Cat Blogosphere made an announcement today along with this nice banner:

Please join us in wishing Luna a “Happy 5th Gotcha Day!”

CatSynth 3rd Anniversary

Well, this site has now been running for three years. And we’re marking the anniversary the best way we can think of: with stats of questionable significance.

886 posts.
195,501 visitors.
4638 comments.
Over 15,000 spam comments squashed.
Over 400 cat-and-synth pics and videos

The top 20 terms (a term is either a tag or a category or both):

Cats   516
cat   356
Synthesizers   297
Luna   215
synthesizer   185
Music   171
News   146
weekend cat blogging   136
WCB   134
Personal   120
Art   115
Wordless Wednesday   96
Modernism   72
San Francisco   68
synth   61
Photography   61
Highways   60
electronic music   52
Reviews   40
cats on tuesday   48

The 11 most commented posts:

Dona Nobis Pacem   48
Wordless Wednesday: La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona   43
"Wayback" Wordless Wednesday: Green Kitties   42
Wordless Wednesday: A Great Moment   41
Wordless Wednesday: Luna Sun Triangle   41
Dona Nobis Pacem: BlogBlast for Peace!   40
Wordless Wednesday: 43   39
Wordless Wednesday: Cat and Geometry   38
Wordless Wednesday: Centered Cat   37
Wordless Wednesday: Alley behind 49 Geary   37
Wordless Wednesday: Maneki Neko   37

And the top comment contributors:

Kitty   451
Mickey   179
CatSynth   138
Gattina   136
whaleshaman   81
Andrée   73
Daisy   71
Dragonheart & Merlin   71
sher   65
SandyCarlson   60
jams o donnell   44
The Right Blue   44
kitikata-san   42
Hendrix   41
parker   40
Matthew James Didier   40
Katie   32
Randall   31
HotMBC   30
Gandalf & Grayson   30
Dennis the Vizsla   30

This list includes sites that are no longer active, and at least one person who has passed away.

I did also go back and look at those early posts from July and August of 2006, expecting to reflect on how much things have changed over three years. But instead I found myself noticing how much things on the site have stayed the same…

CatSynth 2nd Anniversary (and Weekend Cat Blogging)!

July 19 is the Second Anniversary of CatSynth!

And by coincidence, we are hosting Weekend Cat Blogging (really, it is a coincidence). So we invite all our friends to participate and celebrate with us. As always, please leave a comment with your link, and we’ll post it during the roundup later this weekend.

Of course, we must post the photo of Luna that started it all on July 19, 2006:


`
and some fun stats for the occasion. Over two years at CatSynth, we have:

657 articles.
2,476 comments.
106,000 visitors.
298 “catsynth pics.”

The latter is using some custom analysis tools I created for the occasion, which also provide the top 33 tags/categories here at CatSynth:

cats 738
synthesizers 444
luna 280
music 169
news 136
wordless wednesday 101
weekend cat blogging 97
wcb 94
art 90
highways 85
personal 79
modernism 54
san francisco 50
stats 39
electronic music 35
experimental 34
carnival of the cats 32
mathematics 29
podcast 29
mp3 28
kitty 27
keyboard 26
friday ark 25
analog 23
photography 22
reviews 22
video 22
cotc 21
black cat 20
cats on tuesday 20
festival 19
california 18
chaos 18

Some tags, such as “photography”, should really be much higher.

Many readers may recall that last year, on our first anniversary, the site went down due to a rather annoying problem with our service provider, and we were sent into exile at the CatSynth FEMA Trailer. So we are leaving an anniversary post at the trailer as well.

A year ago, we at CatSynth had no idea what was going to be in store for us over the next year. A new job, a new home, a new life.

We traded the sun and greenery of our old home:

for our new home:

and life in the big city:

But some things remain the same. Luna, of course, is always here. And our friends and family. And CatSynth!

And we’ll still be here, continuing to do what we always do…

Some other significant milestones this weekend:

The 200th Friday Ark boards this weekend at the modulator.

Our friend Dragonheart is two years old today.

This is week also includes several birthdays for friends, whom we won’t embarrass by announcing their ages on our rather public forum…

It’s only one weekend after the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos first anniversary, so let us include it as well. This weekend’s edition will be at Life from a Cat’s Perspective with Samantha and Tigger.


CatSynth 1st Anniversary

Today we celebrate CatSynth's first anniversary.

It's been one year since we posted this photo on July 19, 2006:

The idea came from a friend who said something like “dude, you should do a website about cats and synths.” So I did. Really didn't have too much idea what I would write about. I quickly learned that there was quite an abundance of pictures of cats and synths, and sites like matrixsynth had been collecting such images for a while. Indeed, one of the first external “CatSynth pics” to be posted here was of matrix's own cat JD:

Sadly, we recently learned that JD passed away this month. We offer matrix our sympathies. It's always sad to hear about cat friends passing away (or human friends, for that matter), and we at CatSynth have seen our share this past year.

I expect to post more this evening reviewing the year with photos, not-so-useful stats and the other things we at CatSynth like to think we do well…





Weekend Cat Blogging #105, Part 1 – Gotcha Day (June 10)

“Gotcha Day” is the day a feline companion is adopted, a fact that we at CatSynth did not know before last week, when we helped celebrate multiple Gotcha Days for fellow cat bloggers during WCB 104.

Well this weekend is Luna's Gotcha Day, also known around here as the “Lunaversary.” I adopted Luna from the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter on June 10, 2005. She was 7 months old at the time. Here are a couple of many photos I took that day:

Luna was quick to come out an explore her new surroundings, which was for the first evening limited to the bathroom. She quickly gravitated towards the softest object in the room and started kneading and purring, a habit she retains to this day.

Of course, the kitty bed has been largely ignored since she discovered my bed, where she often kneads a little nest and beds down for a nap.

It's interesting to look back and see how she's grown in the last two years.

The festivities for “Gotcha Day”, such as they are, will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm sure our friends Sher and Upsie will indulge us in a two-part Weekend Cat Blogging for the occasion. In the meantime, visit them for WCB 105, complete with squirrels. Update: you can see the big WCB roundup here.