I recently downloaded an iPad game for cats by Hiccup for Luna to try out. For a cat that spends a lot of time surrounded by technology, including the iPad, she is quite reluctant to touch it, so I wasn’t quite sure how she would react.
The game features a little mouse that resembles a cat toy scurrying around the screen. When the cat (or human) hits the mouse, it emits a little squeak and the player receives points; and the process repeats. That’s it – very simple. I started it up for Luna, and she immediately went to tracking the mouse intently, her little head shifting back and forth in deliberate motions. Tentatively, after a while, she started to paw at it, and eventually managed to pounce on the mouse. She seemed to be quite enjoying it, though she was still a little nervous and often backed away from the device after a pounce.
Here a brief excerpt of her first day of playing:
This is really just a little diversion for both of us to enjoy together, Luna playing with a virtual toy that draws her attention, and my taking delight in watching her do so. But this is clearly a demonstration of user engagement in the app space, for both cats and humans. Sometimes simplicity wins out.
I set up the game again in the office/studio while writing this article, and managed to get a brief iPhone video of Luna’s play. As one can see, she has gotten a bit more confident, even aggressive with it.
This does not seem to be a good game to play a small cluttered space.
Weekend Cat Blogging will be hosted here at CatSynth next weekend, so do check then and submit your cat-related blog posts. New participants are always welcome.
The theme for this week’s combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt is Patch. We at CatSynth have an alternative take on the theme, as Luna poses with a Korg MS-20 patch on the iPad:
As a bonus, the app’s simulated interface features patch cords. They’re a little challenging to manipulate on the screen, but the make for nice visuals.
Appropriately for an iPad-centric post, Weekend Cat Blogging #320 is hosted by Meowza at his blog iMeowza.
Photo Hunt 275 is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is Patch.
I started this site on July 19, 2006 as a novelty when a friend and former colleague at E-MU systems suggested that I “should make a website about cats and synths.”
I still have that Novation keyboard, though it does not get used as often of late. Luna of course still is very territorial about that beanbag chair. Times have changed a bit, here is an iconic photo of Luna from this past year, this time with an iPad app (in this case, the Smule Magic Piano):
Another quirky way we like to celebrate is with statistics. First the basics:
1559 posts. 0.85 posts per day. 8784 comments. 5.63 comments per post. 476 posts featuring cats and synthesizers. 195 reviews (and gig reports). 381,735 visitors.
Even after five years, people from around the world continue to send us pictures of cats and music gear. These days most of those come via our Facebook, which together with twitter has become a major way people engage with this site.
From Google Analytics (which we finally got working properly over the past year), here is an overview of where our visitors come from around the world.
By far and away most of our visitors are from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Australia, France and Germany. I’m gratified to see so many visitors from India, though I’m curious why we never receive any comments from there…
It’s also interesting to look at cities.
Not surprisingly, the top cities are San Francisco and New York. In Google, it’s SF followed by NYC, while in Facebook, New York is the top city.
Our most popular posts judged by number of visitors are the annual endangered wild cats on earth day. Over the past year, our most commented posts were:
Thanks to all our friends (in time zones earlier than U.S. Pacific Daylight Time) who already sent in comments for the anniversary, and to the Cat Blogosphere for their anniversary shout-out!
And while we will continue to keep doing what we do, it has been more of a challenge over this past year to keep up with posts, especially the longer-form reviews. There is a trade between doing music and art, and writing about people doing music and art. But I still love doing everything here, and will find a way…
Our foggy, overcast summer days in San Francisco make for great cat photography:
Luna enjoys looking out the window, and a nice stretch.
Weekend Cat Blogging #319 is in honor of Sher, one of the original WCB participants we met back in 2006, who tragically passed away in July, 2008. Like many longtime participants, Sher was primarily a food blogger, and in tribute we made one of her recipes. Between work, music and social events we haven’t had much time to cook here at CatSynth HQ – and as I look back through the archives, that has happened each July since 2009. But we will make time this summer to try out a new recipe and share it on an upcoming weekend.
For Weekend Cat Blogging #318, a few interesting photos of Luna from multiple cameras. First a high-contrast picture in the window:
And here is Luna today, once again napping in her favorite beanbag chair:
This was done with the impulse-acquired Roboto Glitter lens for the Hipstamatic iPhone app. The first photo was with done with the conventional camera.
Like Luna, I am looking forward to a relatively quiet afternoon.
There is rarely a moment that we at CatSynth aren’t busy, thus it is an appropriate theme for this week’s combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt. Even going into the extended holiday weekend.
Luna poses once again with the iPad, but the app on display isn’t as exciting as the synthesizers and music controllers we usually show. It’s Toodledo, the cloud-based todo-list service that I use on iPhone/iPad and the web in a valiant attempt to keep ahead of the extreme busy-ness of the past two years. Not very exciting, but we do our best to make it at least look pretty in photos.
For those who obsessively try to do such things, the task being shown on these photos (strategically distorted via the Hipstamatic) is a daily reminder to brush Luna. There is also a weekly task for Weekend Cat Blogging. Many of the tasks on the list are about getting in touch with friends and professional contacts. I do need to catch up on those! On that note, we have been a bit remiss in visiting our WCB friends. We will try to do so this time.
Weekend Cat Blogging #317 is hosted by our friends Kashim, Othello and Salome. Even though they live in Vienna they honor us with a Fourth of July theme.
Carnival of the Cats will be up this Monday (rather than the usual Sunday) in honor of the Fourth of July as well, hosted by Nikita and Elvira at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.
Photo Hunt #272 is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is BUSY.
This weekend we are once again combining Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt. The theme is cards, and we start with an unexpected take on the theme:
I recently came across these older “Smart Media” data cards while cleaning. They’re bigger (and a bit more interesting to photograph) than the current SD cards my current cameras and other devices use, but they are essentially useless. I do have a reader that can read/write them, but no particular reason to do so. Anyone have any ideas?
Here is Luna with some of her past birthday cards:
I believe they are from 2010 and 2007. It’s not Luna’s birthday, but the cards are out because of the recent cleaning (similar to the memory cards).
Today we look back on my solo concert at the Center for New Music Technologies (CNMAT) at U.C. Berkeley back in early March. It was part of my U.C. Regents Lecturer appointment this year, which also included technical talks and guest lectures for classes.
This is one of the more elaborate concerts I have done. Not only did I have an entire program to fill on my own, but I specifically wanted to showcase various technologies related to my past research at CNMAT and some of their current work, such as advanced multi-channel speaker systems. I spent a fair amount of time onsite earlier in the week to do some programming, and arrived early on the day of the show to get things set up. Here is the iPad with CNMAT’s dodecahedron speaker – each face of the dodecahedron is a separate speaker driven by its own audio channel.
[click image for larger view.]
Here is the Wicks Looper (which I had recently acquired) along with the dotara, an Indian string instrument often used in folk music.
[click image for larger view.]
I organized the concert such that the first half was more focused on showcasing music technologies, and the second half on more theatrical live performance. This does not imply that there wasn’t strong musicality in the first half or a lack of technological sophistication in the second, but rather which theme was central to the particular pieces.
After a very generous introduction by David Wessel, I launched into one of my standard improvisational pieces. Each one is different, but I do incorporate a set of elements that get reused. This one began with the Count Basie “Big Band Remote” recording and made use of various looping and resampling techniques with the Indian and Chinese instruments (controlled by monome), the Dave Smith Instruments Evolver, and various iPad apps.
The concert included the premier of a new piece that was specifically composed for CNMAT’s impressive loudspeaker resources, the dodecahedron as well as the 8-channel surround system. In the main surround speakers, I created complex “clouds” of partials in an additive synthesizer that could be panned between different speakers for a rich immersive sound. I had short percussive sounds emitted from various speakers on the dodecahedron. I though the effect was quite strong, with the point sounds very localized and spatially separated from the more ambient sounds. In the video, it is hard to get the full effect, but here it is nonetheless:
The piece was implemented in Open Sound World – the new version that primarily uses Python scripts (or any OSC-enabled scripting language) instead of the old graphical user interface. I used TouchOSC on the iPad for real-time control.
I then moved from rather complex experimental technology to a simple and very self-contained instrument, the Wicks Looper, in this improvised piece. It had a very different sound from the software-based pieces in this part of the concert, and I liked the contrast.
The first half of the concert also featured two pieces from my CD Aquatic: Neptune Prelude to Xi and Charmer:Firmament. The original live versions of these pieces used a Wacom graphics tablet controlling OSW patches. I reimplemented them to use TouchOSC on the iPad.
The second half of the concert opened with a duo of myself and Polly Moller on concert and bass flutes. We used one of my graphical score sets – here we went on order from one to the next and interpreted each symbol.
The cat one was particular fun, as Polly emulated the sound of a cat purring. It was a great piece, but unfortunately I do not have a video of this one to share. So we will have to perform it again sometime.
I performed the piece 月伸1 featuring the video of Luna. Each of the previous performances, at the Quickening Moon concert and Omega Sound Fix last year, used different electronic instruments. This time I performed the musical accompaniment exclusively on acoustic grand piano. In some ways, I think it is the strongest of the three performances, with more emotion and musicality. The humor came through as well, though a bit more subtle than in the original Quickening Moon performance.
The one unfortunate part of the evening came in the final piece. I had originally done Spin Cycle / Control Freak at a series of exchange concerts between CNMAT and CCRMA at Stanford in 2000. I redid the programming for this performance to use the latest version of OSW and TouchOSC on the iPad as the control surface. However, at this point in the evening I could not get the iPad and the MacBook to lock onto a single network together. The iPad could not find the MacBook’s private wireless network, even after multiple reboots of both devices. In my mind, this is actually the biggest problem with using an iPad as a control surface – it requires wireless networking, which seems to be very shaky at times on Apple hardware. It would be nice if they allowed one to use a wired connection via the USB cable. I suppose I should be grateful that this problem did not occur until the final piece, but was still a bit of an embarrassment and gives me pause about using iPad/TouchOSC until I know how to make it more reliable.
On balance, it was a great evening of music even with the misfire at the end. I was quite happy with the audience turnout and the warm reception and feedback afterwards. It was a chance to look back on solo work from the past ten years, and look forward to new musical and technological adventures in the future.
This weekend marks the 6th anniversary of Weekend Cat Blogging. It was started by a group of food bloggers who took a break from the regular topics every weekend to post about their cats. It is not an in appropriate combination, as like their human counterparts cats enjoy good food and good company.
We at CatSynth found Weekend Cat Blogging back in 2006 and have been regular participants ever since. This is of course not a food blog, but we do appreciate food and have indeed made recipes posted by long-time participant. Indeed, a diverse collection of bloggers have participated on and off over the years.
If you would like to participate in this anniversary edition, please leave a comment below, or tweet us @catsynth with hashtag #WCB. We always welcome new participants!
We are also celebrating another anniversary this weekend: Luna’s adoption. If you have not had a chance to yet, please visit Luna’s Gotcha Day post.
And so let us get on with round-up.
Jules of Judi’s Mind Over Matter has been a regular participant, and he can be counted on to make an appearance whenever we host. Call it “black cat solidarity” if you will. In any case, we think he makes a very handsome outdoor model, though he sometimes wants to eat the props.
Catsparella has a Caturday post featuring several cats from around the internet, including Mar(aka Mar(ilyn) Manson aka Tuxedo Bad-Ass). In addition to having an interesting namesake, he is a cancer survivor. He also loves eating spaghetti. We wish him the best for a healthy and happy future!
Over at Gattina’s “My Cats and Funny Stories”, Rosie is practicing her seduction skills on one of the many cat statues that adorn their garden. It makes for some very cute photographs.
At Pam’s Sidewalk Shoes, Smudge is posing on the garden pathway in an apparent attempt to distract us from the garden weeds. We think it is a very handsome portrait. And the weeds in the stones of the pathway add a rich texture to the image.
Regular reads know that we at CatSynth are regulars in our local arts community in San Francisco, so it’s great to see our “TX furriends” Samantha and Clementine featured at a gallery near you. That’s a gallery near you, not near us. But it’s great to see their virtual art show – and nice prominent placement of their images (I particular like the big one of Clementine).
Our friends at Animal Shelter Volunteer Life present the cats in Cat Room 8 taking it easy on Sunday. Our Sunday is busy as usual, so we will just have to live vicariously through their great photos. These cats are likely dreaming of loving homes in their futures.
At Herman’s Hideaway, it appears that Herman and Emma are stuck in an infinite loop (are stuck in an infinite loop) as each watches, ready to pounce if the other does anything. Read the post to find out the full story.
Our dear friends from Vienna Kashim, Othello, Salome and Astrid have been participating in Weekend Cat Blogging just about as long as we have. They look back on WCB’s origins this week and link to their original post. They also discuss the fun and value they have received from sharing these posts over the years, and we could not agree more!
Our friends Georgia and Tillie along with the rest of their household stopped by for the WCB 6th Anniversary. Check out their Friday Close-ups!
It’s always great to here from another Luna! This week Luna T Katt and Zulu are remembering Luna’s littermate Keiko, whom they lost to the rainbow bridge last year. The kitten pictures are very cute – and they all miss her very much.
It seems that Gracie has been having trouble with the blogger monster and thus having trouble leaving comments for friends. But she was able to make it though and wish Luna a happy 6th Gotcha Day and everyone a happy 6th Anniversary of WCB.
We will continue to post entries throughout the weekend, so please continue to comment or tweet us if you would like to participate.
June 10 is Luna’s “Gotcha Day”. It was six years ago today that she was adopted from Santa Cruz County Animal Services and became the much beloved member of our household that readers have come to know and love.
As we often do on this occasion, we look back at some early photos in comparison to the present. This particularly cute one was taken during her first week at home in June, 2005.
By contrast, here is one of the most recent photos of Luna:
She is quite fond of that PurrPad at the moment.
Another interesting comparison. Here is Luna sitting with our often-featured glass table in June, 2005:
And here she is again in 2010:
Some things stay the same.
Please join in me in wishing Luna a Happy 6th Gotcha Day! It is a day to celebrate, and to remember what’s important in life.
