remembrance

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.

Code 46 / "With All Her Heart"

Our friend jellypizza posted this wonderful video of Taboo from 1997, peeking out from inside a drawer.


I haven't embedded the video, but I do encourage readers to go see it (you can click on the photo or the “related link” below). In a way, it is also a posthumous “CatSynth Video” for Taboo, featuring the very ambiet/electronic/synthetic track “Mother” from the soundtrack of the award-winning film Code 46. (The soundtrack is also available at iTunes .) I really thought it added something to the video, giving what was already a very sweet moment a unique quality. Of course, one would expect music from a soundtrack to work well with video, but it's still interesting how well it worked given the stark contrast to the actual film.

I had not heard of Code 46 before JellyPizza's recommendation, but did get a chance to see it last week. The ambient music is a backdrop to a tale in the near future where technology is more advanced but still very recognizeable. In the film, the world seems to be separated into a very high-tech “inside” world that includes major developed cities (e.g., in Asia, Europe, North America, etc.) and “outside.” People carry genetic IDs and bio-tech permits to travel. Additionally, the goverment or governments of the “inside” have genetically driven limits on who can and cannot have children together. This is all meant to sound very sinister, I'm sure, but I think the folks in this near-future world might have a point on the reproduction/population issue. And the world painted by the visuals and the music seems very inviting, both futuristic and very familiar at the same time. There is also an interesting take on fusion among “inside” languages (e.g., English, Chinese, Spanish).

Check out the soundtrack or the movie if you have a chance, and then re-watch Taboo's video.