Weekend Cat Blogging: New Year and Photohunt:Fuzzy

We at CatSynth attempt to wake up to the new year…slowly.  Here is our first published photo of 2011:

The theme of this weekend’s Photo Hunt is fuzzy, which is easy with Luna around.  One can easily see the fuzziness of her thick winter fur.  Cats do seem to get thicker fur in the winter…and contrary to stereotypes, we do have a winter season in California.

This may end up being about as much as we do today.


Weekend Cat Blogging #291 New Years Edition is hosted by Pam and the cats at Sidewalk Shoes.

The Photo Hunt is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is Fuzzy.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted by Nikita Cat.

And life goes on…

Farewell to 2010

[Click image to enlarge.]

This is not a convenient day for the year to end.

January 1, 2010, was a calm, and truly monochromatic day, which set the initial tone for the year and the first photo I posted reflected the tone.  It was turning away from the excitement and adventures in 2009 towards a more inward and local focus on creativity and relationships…and finding a new job.  And at the end of the year, much of that remains true: more creative output, both musically and visually than ever, new friends (and deepening ties with old friends), and I did get that new job.  But the pace and energy are anything but calm.  Life has been hurtling forward at a faster and faster pace, with an ever higher density of activity and experience, and that can’t keep going forever.  There are limits.  Limits in time, in resources, and in my body.     Slowing down is not easy, and may not even be necessary, but this coming year is going to be about doing the best I can within those limits. In terms of this site, there is always the tension between experiences and writing about those experiences, and lately I have been erring on the side of experience versus writing about it.  It’s a continuous process to learn how to balance that.

Things don’t always look particularly bright when you’re in the middle of them.  This year (like most) was riddled with mistakes and failures, missed opportunities, and more.  But if, say, “2008 me” got to look ahead and see “2010 me”, he would probably be amazed at how much has changed…mostly for the better.  I saw another interesting perspective yesterday when a friend, in saying good riddance to 2010, pointed around the table and said (and I paraphrase) “your 2010 sucked”, “your 2010 sucked” and then when she pointed to me said “yours was actually pretty good”.

So tomorrow I will simply pick up where things left off today…and keep in mind the phrase from a show I saw at the beginning of the year (by Anthony Discenza), “Everything Will Probably Turn Out OK.”

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…

New Years Resolutions

This past year has had some great moments, such as moving to the city and the recent elections. But it was also a difficult year, not in the same way as 2007 with its many tragedies and personal challenges, but nonetheless full of things we at CatSynth would like to put behind us.

In the spirit of looking forward, here are some resolutions for the new year:

  1. Write down everything. To-do lists, shopping lists, story ideas, art concepts, blog posts, reactions to things I see, books and music I want to look into, opinion pieces, random thoughts, and more.
  2. Write more consistently on CatSynth. Keep up with posts, especially timely things like music and art reviews, or reactions to news events. Of course, there will always be a focus on cats and music.
  3. Maintain the current schedule of at least one significant musical performance per month.
  4. Have at least one visual-art (i.e., photography and graphics) show before the end of the year.
  5. Join at least one additional volunteer or service program.
  6. Make five new close friends within the city limits.
  7. Re-make my studio into a space I want to spend my creative time in. That includes removing the clutter, and connecting everything up in a way that works.
  8. Remove things I don’t want, with the goal of reducing the contents of CatSynth HQ by 10%.
  9. Respond to all personal correspondence in under a week.
  10. Release a second album.
  11. Keep my financial decisions slightly less stupid that than those of the world at large.

This list may seem like a lot, but at the same time it is far from comprehensive if one looks back at the past year and things that could have been done better. But it’s a start. And a year from now, it will be interesting to look and see how many of these were successful, or at least still valid.

Fun with Stats: CatSynth 2006 Year in Review

What better way to reflect upon the year than with marginally meaningful statistics?

The following table represents the frequency of tags in all 2006 articles on CatSynth.com (except for this one). Tags are either those funny words at the bottom of every post or the category names that follow the dateline at the top of every post.

With 285 distinct tags during 2006, it is rather difficult to show them all in the graph above. However, most are only used once. As can be seen in the following pie chart (hey, who doesn't love a good pie chart?), the top 15 tags account for almost 50%:

Here are the top 33 tags for 2006:

cats			85
synthesizers 54
news 34
music 33
luna 26
weekend cat blogging 20
worthless kitty 17
kitty 17
art 17
wcb 14
new orleans 9
photography 9
experimental 8
electronic music 8
lebanon 7
modernism 7
osw 6
emulator x 6
stats 6
kitties 6
e-mu 5
beirut 5
fun with stats 5
podcast 5
jazz 4
computer music 4
analog 4
improvisation 4
open sound world 4
funk 4
sculpture 4
mathematics 4
resonance 4

Happy New Year!