Tag: cat
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Portland
I am reporting on Portland after Astoria, even though we visted and played a day earlier. That’s just how things sometimes work.
We did have some time to spend in the Rose City before our show at Rotture:
Click to enlargeWe experienced Portland’s famously variable weather. Fortunately, many of the city’s attractions are indoors. This includes Powell’s Books. I could have spent the whole day in the Pearl Room, which contained the art and architecture offerings, as well as their extensive rare book collection.
Portland also has abundant public art. Across from Powell’s is this “brush,” a noted landmark:
And this “recursive elephant” was quite intriguing:
This sculpture includes other animals besides the elephants. I think I see a cat on the trunk:
It always comes back to cats, doesn’t it.
The show that evening was at Rotture, a club on the waterfront, conveniently located next to a construction zone. Although our audience was small, the show went well; and I did like the space, a converted early-20th century industrial brick building.
Click here to enlargeThey also had an interesting mural in the main audience area, and a nice large stage. We shared the bill with Emily Hay, who also does improvisation with flute and voice (although with a very contrasting sound and style from Polly); as well as Tim DuRoche and Resolution 51 (free jazz improvisation). So it was definitely worth sticking around after our performance to hear everyone else – although the entire evening was probably branded as “experimental night” or “improvisation night”, there was a great variety among the three groups, and I think the ordering worked well with us first, both musically and energy-wise.
More on Portland, our show at Rotture, and the trip up from the Bay Area can be found here.
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Luna CatSynth pic: Evolver
While enjoying her beanbag chair, Luna deigned to be photographed (again) with the DSI Evolver synth:
I think this is an appropriate post as I head out for the tour. It is music related, and Luna gets to hold the top spot for a couple of days…
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CatSynth pics: Niki Fried Rice
Remember Niki? Well, she has some more gear photos:
Looks like a Nord micromodular in the first pic. And in the second, is that an E-MU Xmidi? Well, at least someone bought one. I wonder if that is a standalone unit, or the one that comes with Emulator/Proteus X2? (The fact that it's not connected to any MIDI cables suggests the latter)
sigh
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Cats on Tuesday: Luna Lap Cat
A rather spontaneous moment with Luna and the MacBook on my lap.
That cheap built-in “iSight” camera does have its uses 🙂
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CatSynth pic: Sound Transform Systems Serge
Originally posted on matrixsynth, from a long-completed eBay auction:
In another photo fromt he set, one can see a bit of tail near the patch cords:
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Weekend Cat Blogging and more: Happy Tail
This weekend's theme for the Bad Kitty Cat Festival of Chaos is “tails and toes”. And we know that Luna has quite a talent for posing her tail:
…even while simply resting:
The “crook in her tail” is actually pointing out towards the camera.
Watch this video (originally posted at Luna's Catster page) as Luna swings her tail:
Weekend Cat Blogging #122 is being hosted by Astrid and the “cat boys” Kashim and Othello. That “nip beer” concept sounds pretty good to me.
The Bad Kitty Cat Festival of Chaos is being held at This, That and The Other Thing, where we expect to see other “happy tails.” UPDATE: the round-up is posted, and features a slide-show video with background music – I believe the technical term is “finger snapping.” Check it out.
Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by StrangeRanger. And of course Friday Ark #159 is at the modulator.
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CatSynth pic: Appliancide
I just discovered Appliancide and this photo via matrixsynth
Look forward to reading and hearing more…
…Peek-a-boo…
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CatSynth pic: Metasonix TX-1D Agonizer
From Deviant Synth, via matrixsynth:
Mommy the cat likes it, so…
😉
Beautiful tabby cat, though. And it's Tuesday.
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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…