black cat

Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt: Square…and Rememberance

This weekend, we have another combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt. The theme this week is square. Geometric shapes, including squares, abound at CatSynth HQ. But with the exceptionally gorgeous weather, we turn our attention once again to the patio:

The patio is covered in square slate tiles on which Luna enjoys rolling around. We are still doing some work to fix things up for spring now the construction is in the past. New design ideas to emphasize the industrial and geometric aesthetic.

This weekend we are also joining our friends the Three Tabby Cats in Vienna ~ Kashim, Othello and Salome ~ in a Weekend of Remembrance. We participated when they hosted a similar weekend back in 2007, lighting a candle like this one.

As we have made more friends online, so we have also lost many friends. We said goodbye to Mickey only a few weeks ago. Last year, we lost DJ Kikovas, the feline companion of our friend and fellow electronic musician Vivi Pedraglio. We also said goodbye to Tali and Sniffie. It is interesting to look back and see the diverse collection of people, mixture of musicians, engineers and cat lovers, who cross paths in these stories. We have also lost many heroes in music, art and mathematics in this same period of time; and some personal friends. We remember them as well.

Our thoughts for all our friends who lost love ones (human and non-human) over the past year, and for those who are struggling in the current storms in southeastern U.S., recovering from the disaster in Japan, and living through the seemingly greater number conflicts around the world.

Weekend Cat Blogging #308 is hosted by Samantha and Clementine at Life From a Cat’s Perspective. They are dedicating their post in remembrance of Praline.

Photo Hunt #263 is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is SQUARE.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up tomorrow at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging #306

Luna inspects the equipment for the next show during a recent practice session:

UPDATE: Luna just posed more regally next to the Nord keyboard. I think it’s a better picture (what do you think?).

The Nord Stage continues to be the main workhorse for idiomatic music, such as the jazz, caberet, etc. that may work its way into the performance.  The iPad (barely visible here) will provide the experimental counterpoint.

And here is Luna with some of the “analog” instruments:

The prayer bowl will be part of the show tomorrow, but the toy piano and tablas probably will not.

Weekend Cat Blogging #306 is at Pam’s Sidewalk Shoes. Check out the great close-ups of all three cats.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Pet and the Bengal Brats at Pet’s Garden Blog.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging #303: Red Stripe

Our busy schedule here at CatSynth continues unabated, with preparations for a second photo event in a couple of weeks and a new music project that requires quite a bit of practice.  Yesterday, instead of the usual Saturday morning Weekend Cat Blogging, I pulled off the cover of the Nord Stage keyboard to practice, and dropped the distinctive red dust cover (everything related to Nord keyboards is bright red) on the edge of Luna’s beanbag.  But that didn’t in anyway discourage her in anyway from curling up to take a nap – indeed, the dust cover almost looks like a brightly colored blanket.

It’s amazing how Luna can nap through just about any type of music.  This morning it was songs by the Cardiacs – a little different than our usual fare, but fun and challenging. You can get a taste for what this sounds like (and what Luna is putting up with) below:

Then again, it can’t be more challenging than some the very artificial experimental sounds that she hears living here.

Weekend Cat Blogging #303 is hosted by Kashim, Othello and Salome at PaulChens FoodBlog?!

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted today by Billy SweetFeets.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Video and photography

For Weekend Cat Blogging, we present another video of Luna looking out the window.  She is exciting about something she saw and is chattering away.  There is also a very cute expression about 30 seconds in.

Yes, I have quite a few videos of Luna chattering or “window-hunting.” It’s in part because it’s one of things that makes me want to record video rather than take still images. There is no time to edit this down, as I am busy preparing for the photo show next week. Here one can see one of the featured prints being prepared, as Luna shows her disdain for the whole process.

Weekend Cat Blogging #302 is being hosted by Samantha and Clementine at Life from a Cat’s Perspective.

Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Pet’s Garden Blog.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging 301: A Sad Day

March 11 was a sad day.

It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our friend Mickey.

As mentioned earlier this week, he fell very ill and passed away on Friday. He (through his mom) first visited us in late 2007, and they have been regulars on our site ever since, as likely to comment on experimental music shows and photography as Luna’s feline antics. And in turn, we enjoyed getting to know them better through their site. Our thoughts go out to Mom Nancy and the rest of the family today.

We have been closely following the tragic events in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami. Images such as these are heartbreaking, and our thoughts are with the people of Japan right now. While every year brings multiple huge disasters, when it happens somewhere you have visited or affects people you know, it hits harder.

Our friends at Cats of Wildcat Woods have compiled a list of relief organizations. The Red Cross is always a good place to start, and now you can donate via text messages.

There is no information currently on Tashirojima, or “Cat Island”, which is off the eastern coast of Japan in Miyagi Prefecture, near epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami, but the fear is that the island was lost.

Weekend Cat Blogging #301 is hosted by Pam at Sidewalk Shoes.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Two Little Cavaliers.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

IWW General Strike Poster

Saw this poster on BoingBoing:

Hugh Electronic sez, “The I.W.W. hired Eric Drooker to design posters for a general strike which he is told, now appears imminent in Wisconsin. The Industrial Workers of the World asked him to design versions in Spanish and Arabic, for international solidarity.”

I doubt that general strike is actually imminent in Wisconsin, but one has to admire that poster. Of course, we love black cats, and black and red is great color combination.

Some preparation for March 4 concert

A late evening preparing for the upcoming Regents’ Lecture concert, with an assist from Luna:

Here Luna poses with TouchOSC on the iPad, which is becoming one of the main control surfaces I will be using to control Open Sound World.  Last night I was building the synthesis infrastructure for the new piece, a combination of drum sampling and spatialized additive synthesis – at least four separate additive synthesis models that are algorithmically generated based on input from the iPad.  Against this will be electronic drum sounds and an Afro-Cuban rhythm detail.  I really won’t know the exact shape of this piece until I work with CNMAT’s speaker array.

I also learned from the Saturday’s performance in Oakland that I will need to refine the control on TouchOSC for the new implementation of my piece Charmer:Firmament.  It was very well received, with descriptions like “beautiful” and “meditative”, but it was difficult to control compared to the Wacom graphics tablet.  I will try a different mix of controls on the iPad to see if it works better.