Weekend Cat Blogging: Desaturation

Our first Weekend Cat Blogging of 2010 begins in grayscale:

Luna is on her favorite beanbag chair in a relatively clean studio. Nearby is a crate full of old audio interfaces – it seems we have quite a few E-MU, M-Audio and Digidesign interfaces, some in various states of disrepair or obsolescence.  We rely on one or another of these portable interfaces for live shows.

Meanwhile, Luna drifts off to sleep…


Weekend Cat Blogging will be hosted by Pam at Sidewalk Shoes.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Mind of Mog.

The monthly Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos will be hosted on Sunday by Samantha and The Orange Kitty at Life from a Cat’s Perspective.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Farewell to 2009

So this is the time when we choose to look back on the year that has just ended.  Or in some cases, not look back.  It seems that this past year was a difficult one for a lot of people, an annus horribilis or a “year to forget.” For me, that particular title could be better applied to another year that was far more tragic and difficult.

So I feel a little at odds looking back at 2009 and seeing a really rich year, one filled with visual and personal experiences.  I actually learned a lot, about other people around the world, about myself, about what is important to me, and I think that is actually reflected on these pages in a strange way.

I expect this coming year to be more of a transitional one, though I am not exactly sure yet where that will lead.  But in the meantime, we at CatSynth will continue to do what we do…

Weekend Cat Blogging: Hannukah

For this holiday edition of Weekend Cat Blogging, we present some of our images from Hunnukah, the Jewish festival that concludes at sundown tonight. Our menorah, not surprisingly, has both musical and modernist elements, with a band of musicians behind the candles.

Menorah with musicians

As one can see, this was taken on the seventh night, which for a variety of scheduling reasons ended up being the main night on which we were able to celebrate. Luna received her gift, a blue fish toy – it is our personal tradition that designated Hannukah gifts have to be blue.

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She seem to quite enjoy this toy, and immediately took to batting it around th floor; and play hunting with it by pushing it underneath the table and then pouncing on it. I was able to get some videos of her play:


Weekend Cat Blogging #237, Holiday Edition is being hosted by Samantha at Life from a Cat’s Perspective.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted by Kashim, Othello and Salome. We wish Kashim a happy 11th birthday.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging: a rainy morning

Here Luna watches as I work on some more art and music reviews to post later this weekend.

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It is a good day for indoor activities, as it has been cold and rainy the last few days:

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Perfect weather for drifting off to sleep.

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especially for Luna who has been recovering from a cold (cats can get colds, too). Fortunately, she is feeling much better this weekend, and ready for the adventures ahead on this cold day…


Weekend Cat Blogging is hosted by LB and breadchick at The Sour Dough.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday at The Carnival of the Cats home.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

1000th Post

Today we at CatSynth publish our  1000th Post!

To mark this milestone, I created this mosaic featuring a few of Luna’s appearances:

Mosiac of Luna's appearances on CatSynth

[click to enlarge]

A few fun statistical facts about our first 1000 posts:

  • Luna has appeared in 238 posts almost 25%.
  • To date, there 270 cat-and-synthesizer posts.
  • As of this writing there are 5439 comments, or an average of 5 comments per post.
  • Over 150 Weekend  Cat Blogging posts.
  • 115 Wordless Wednesday posts.
  • Approximately 10% of posts feature our current hometown of San Francisco.

Here are the top 25 terms:

Cats 582
cat 414
Synthesizers 348
Luna 238
Music 200
weekend cat blogging 153
WCB 152
News 149
Art 145
Personal 133
Wordless Wednesday 115
San Francisco 97
Modernism 88
Photography 86
Reviews 77
Highways 70
synth 62
electronic music 59
cats on tuesday 56
analog 45
carnival of the cats 43
video 43
Music 40
Travel 38
midnight monday 36

Carnival of the Cats #299

Luna and I welcome everyone to Carnival of the Cats #299.

We have unfortunately been experiencing technical difficulties with the main Blog Carnival submissions page. So this week’s Carnival is a little on the spare side. But we’re here for all the cats who made it, and we will leave the Carnival open for submissions through Monday by leaving a comment on this post. So without further adieu, here are the cats:

First up, Nikita reports on his recent visit to the Vet at Musings of a MadMacedonian. Looks like Nikita survived the experience and came home with a little less fur, but a few more “rewards” waiting for him. We at CatSynth also like the artwork in his vet’s office.

At Laurence Simon’s This Blog is Full of Crap, Piper is remembered and missed. Check out the video of Piper lashing her tail. “She was such a strange little cat.”

At Mind of Mog, Meowza demonstrates advanced yoga positions as part of his Wordless Wednesday offering.  He also reminds us that cleanliness and wordlessness go together. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is his reaction to receiving his secret paws package today.

One thing that comes with the holiday season is an increase in sickness. This seems to hold true not only for humans, but cats as well, and the cats a When Cats Attack are dealing with the own round of plague and pestilence. We certainly hope they recover soon.

Sniffie and the other cats at Friends FurEver wish their canine family members a Happy 9th Birthday. We can’t think of a better present for a pair of handsome dogs than to be featured in a blog article devoted to cats :).

Sounds like things are getting a bit cold in Houston, and although Momma Grace and Company received almost no snow, it sounds like they got a decent covering of frost. Frost and snow are certainly pretty, but the cats have the right idea by staying toasty warm inside.

That concludes the Carnival of the Cats for now. If we missed you due to our technical difficulties, or you would like to be included, please let us know.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Preparing for next week’s performance

Today I had a rehearsal for next week’s Pmocatat Ensemble performance at the Luggage Store Gallery. Pmocatat stands for “prerecorded music on cds and tapes and things”, and among the prerecorded sounds I plan to use this time are some recordings of Luna:

The name of the microphone I used this morning to record her is also called Luna. It is a pretty decent microphone, though recording a cat is going to be challenging with any equipment. Here is a recording of her purring:

You can hear a recording here.

I also used the audio from Luna’s chattering videos.

For those “in the business,” I would like to mention that using Pro Tools (my default option) to extract the sounds from the video did not work at all – it was difficult to do and produced really noisy results – while using Final Cut Pro plus the free program Audacity worked great.

All this preparation work got us rather tired, so time for a nap:


Weekend Cat Blogging #235 will be hosted by Kashim, who stepped in at the last minute.

And don’t forget that Carnival of Cats will be hosted tomorrow right here at CatSynth! To participate, please submit your post here.

Reunion

This morning I brought Luna home. She immediately went about reacquainting herself with her domain:

In addition to being reunited, we marked her birthday with gifts and treats. She also received a card from a far-away friend of ours:

Doesn’t the cat on the card bear a striking resemblance?

We also had a belated Thanksgiving, complete with leftover turkey from New York:

It’s great to be home together again.