CatSynth FEMA Trailer

We're back home

2008-12-28T22:00:00.000-08:00

You can find all our latest posts at the new CatSynth.

Thanks to everyone who visited us here at the "trailer" while we rebuilt our site, and offered their support and encouragement.

Upcoming Shows: Saturday, Sunday and tonight!

2008-12-04T08:22:00.001-08:00

In the midst of everything else going on, I have three upcoming shows, including two this weekend:

Saturday, December 6, 8PM
:plug4: headphone festival
5lowershop, 992 Peralta Ave., San Francisco.

The headphone festival returns. I will be performing ofter electronic music, with a playful bent. It is a "headphone" event where people live at the venue as well as those listening online will be using headphones. For those who are interested, you can also listen live online on Saturday. visit http://www.deletist.info/plug4.html or http://www.leplacard.org for more info.

____

Sunday, December 7, 7:30PM
Musicians Union Hall, 9th St @ Mission St, San Francisco.

SIMM Series Outsound Year End Blow Out Show

Polly Moller/Amar Chaudhary duo
CJ Borosque/Matt Davignon duo
Conure
Rent Romus, Philip Everett, Pete Martin, John Vaughn
and more guests! solos, duos, trios, and the Outsound SuperSize Ensemble.

The mission of Outsound Presents is to raise public awareness of sound and unique events not otherwise made available by presenting public performance, co-op promotion, and education throughout the year. Donations from this evening will be used to support Outsound's future programming efforts...

_____

And a bonus show, tonight:

Thursday, December 4, 8PM
Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market Street @ 6th Street, San Francisco
Outsound Presents Ad-hoc experimental freeform improv.

Ad-hoc experimental freeform improv like dude whatever jam, followed by Chris Skebo (trumpet)/Luigi Marino (computer)/Karl Evangelista (guitar)

Wordless Wednesday: MoMA Atrium, NYC

2008-12-02T21:59:00.001-08:00

MoMA, Miró, Modernism and Theremins

2008-12-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

In addition to my adventures on the F train, I did have a small amount of time to enjoy art and music while was in New York for the Thanksgiving holiday.

One of the featured exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927–1937. Miró often appears in my artistic travels - I have been to multiple retrospectives and visited the Miró Museum in Barcelona. This exhibition was more specific, focusing on a single decade of his career, during which he challenged the definition of "painting." It opens with his declaration in 1927 "I want to assassinate painting” and features several examples of "non-painting", including collages (such as Composition with Wire, shown to the right) and wooden sculptures. At the same time, however, many of the works are things we would consider paintings. Some of the canvases are unprimed, and several use new media such as masonite. But there are still primarily two-dimensional works involving paint on a surface. And most of the paintings and non-paintings include Miró's signature elements in his more famous works such as bulbous abstract figures, curing shapes, stars, and scarabs. In addition to the theme of "anti-painting", the exhibition follows the events in Europe, and particularly in Spain, in the late 1920s and 1930s, with the impending civil war and rise of Fascism. It ends with the Fascists coming to dominance in 1937 and the painting Still Life with Old Shoe that marks the end of Miró's period of anti-painting.

The MoMA's website includes a detailed online exhibition.

A few of the smaller exhibits also caught my attention. Dreamland: Architectural Experiments since the 1970s featured experiments in architecture, primarily centered around New York, or the modernist urban ideal of New York, as seen be architects. Some of the ideas, such as those in Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, can be quite fantastic, such as an island oasis in a glass bubble atop a highway. Others were not only more realistic, but also realized, including some impressive homes in the country surrounding New York. It's always great to see a celebration of modernism as it once was, before contemporary design and architecture took a turn away towards more mundane ideas.

Keeping with the idea of the 1960s and 1970s as particularly modern decades, the exhibit Looking at Music features visualizations of music from the era. This includes direction visualizations, such as the scores of John Cage, as well as early media works by Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, Steven Reich and others.

I did have a chance to hear some music as well. The weekend after Thanksgiving is often low on opportunities for new music (which is probably why I was able to book an NYC show without much difficulty after Thanksgiving in 2005). But the reliable Issue Project Room in Brooklyn hosted a show sponsored by the New York Theremin Society. The first set featured rather graphic stereo photos from World War I - still a horrific war when viewed a century later - with theremin accompaniment, presented by Robert Munn and Sara Cook. By Munn's own admittance, this was not a performance for the faint of heart. The second set featured "Master Thereminist" Kip Rosser, who treated us to a series of jazz and pop standards that would be very much at home at a wedding or bar-mitzvah. It is interesting to think about a hybrid program featuring Rosser's light jazz on theremin against Munn and Cook's disturbing images from the Great War. But perhaps that would be a bit too ironic.

hpnyc.org on the F train

2008-11-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday while was in the F train in New York, a young blond man came through the crowded car soliciting donations. I would not have given him much notice, except that as he was carrying a small black cat, and supposedly collecting for an organization called "Homeless Pets NYC" with a website hpnyc.org. The URL will take you to a site that describes the person I saw and his black cat, and suggests that like most subway solicitations it's a scam. Very sad.

The Miracle Cats that survived a wildfire

2008-11-27T16:58:00.000-08:00

I had planned to post the story of Adam and Abe, the cats that survived a wildfire for Thanksgiving after reading their story on Monday. That was before more of the world started burning - some of the fires are natural, some human-made, and all are tragic. But perhaps this story is still appropriate, to know that these beautiful and much-loved black cats both survived the terrible wildfires in southern California and that small joys are always possible.

Weekend Cat Blogging #181: More Luna in Exile

2008-11-22T22:46:00.000-08:00

As the construction at CatSynth HQ drags on longer and longer, Luna remains at her home away from home. I go to visit her quite often, and she is usually happy and excited by my arrival. Here is one of her many greetings, she has gotten quite good at standing on her hind legs to head-butt:

She is quite active and social, and enjoys cruising the hallways. Also playing in her own room:

and especially looking down from her alcove:

This is often where she sits as I leave, peering through the outer door at me. These visits are both joyous and melancholy. It would be better to be back at home. But I do know she is being well cared for, and is happy and healthy.

There is a radio on in the cats' area, usually tuned one of our many pop-music stations. Usually, I don't notice it much, but when I'm sitting on the concrete floors and some R&B from the 1960s or 1970s comes on, the whole image feels "right." Again, quite melancholy, but still somehow positive, something out of a story I haven't bothered to write down...

I do try to keep these visits as unmediated as possible, and often don't bring the camera at all. But today is one of those days that I did. Of course, I couldn't resist taking a few city photos in the waning November-afternoon sun. It's been a little while since I have done that.

We're going to take a break for the holidays, and hopefully after that we'll be back in our real homes, at both the reconstructed CatSynth site and the reconstructed CatSynth HQ.

Weekend Cat Blogging is hosted this weekend by the Cats in Maryland. Extreme cuteness alert, with baby pictures.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos will be hosted by
Miz Mog and the Kitties. Chaos is an apt term for life these days.

The Carnival of the Cats is going up this Sunday at Artsy Catsy.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Preview of the new CatSynth

2008-11-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

Here is a preview of the new site. Still very much a work in progress, though at least all the posts and comments are there.

It has actually been fun working this - though I wish I had more time (doesn't everyone?). I'm looking forward to concentrating on more of the design work now. Wordpress has been great in terms of bringing in data from disparate sources, adding and modifying design elements, and even doing some of my own programming...

Wordless Wednesday: Justice and Fairness

2008-11-18T21:25:00.000-08:00

Midnight Monday: Luna away from home

2008-11-17T08:18:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos of Luna at her home away from home:

She is actually doing well, comfortable and confident, and even greeting the other cats. She seems to particularly enjoy wandering the long corridors.

And her quarters of quite comfy, which lots of places to climb and play, and indulge her fondness for soft things:

It looks like Luna will have to stay away for a bit longer, as the construction at CatSynth HQ stretches out. I'm glad she's doing well, but it would be better to have her home again.

Marriage Equality (aka "No on 8") Rally, November 15

2008-11-16T22:44:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, demonstrations were held throughout the country in support of marriage equality and against the recent passage of Proposition 8 here in California (as well as similar measures in other states). Of course our local event in San Francisco was one of the more prominent.

It was an exceptionally warm and sunny weekend here, considering that it's the middle of November. It was already getting hot when people started gathering at City Hall ahead of the 10:30 start time.

And the crowd grew rather quickly.

Indeed, it was hard to see the speakers, or hear them. In that sense, it was a bit frustrating and gave the event a sense of poor planning. At the same time, it was great that the crowd was so large. And it was worth it to be there in support of my friends and all the other people whose marriage rights were taken away. This is part of the way to win them back.

Some more colorful banners, playing on the California and U.S. Flags (we featured the "rainbow Bear Flag" in a past Wordless Wednesday).

After a while of standing in the heat and attempting to listen to speakers, we all decided to march from City Hall along Market Street towards the Castro District.

That is where my participation ended for the day, but this is too important an issue to simply end at a street corner...

Weekend Cat Blogging #180

2008-11-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

We at CatSynth welcome everyone to Weekend Cat Blogging #180.

We are away from home, both virtually and physically. Luna joins us from her home away from home during our construction. And of course we are here at the "trailer" while we rebuild the main CatSynth website. But we're looking forward to a good WCB round-up amidst the dust and the distance. Please leave you submission as a comment, and we'll post updates throughout the weekend.

And with that, let us being this weekend's round-up.

The "Cat Boys" Kashim and Othello are helping there momma in the kitchen this weekend. The did their part to help bake a banana nut bread. It also looks like they are helping with the computer and blogging duties.

We welcome back some old friends at Belly Timber (often known as the "Angry Cat Blog" in past WCBs). We are treated an image of Port and her "serious face." Ironically, this is from a carefree day in the garden this past summer. They should come visit us in San Francisco for this fantastic mid-November sunshine.

Joanna of A Cup of Jo shares a picture of her cat Buttercup doing the classic "Cat in a Box" pose.

Visit Chey's Place for a special edition of Find Chey. There are lots of hints in the building and the vegetation, for the astute observer.

Then visit Sidewalk Shoes for a A very sweet portrait of Patchouli. It looks like they were also named a "Blog of Note" by the folks at Blogger.

Parker has a new layout for Perfectly Parker. Check it out and let her know what you think. It was a collaborative effort with Zoolatry and Chica and Pumuckl's mom.

Rosa of Rosa's Yummy Yums reminds us of the words of Paul Gray, "Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were created to serve man." We at CatSynth are all for disproving dogma...and serving cats.

Sarah of First Draft: Fledgling Freelancer found Weekend Cat Blogging via blogs-of-note, and is now joining us for the first time. Ranger is one of five cats in the family. Please welcome them to WCB!

We have lots of photos of Cece this weekend. First, a fine stretch atop a wall at iInfidel. He deftly avoids wet paint at Mind of Mog. And all this attention on Cece has Meowza upset and being "less than cooperative" when it comes to photographs.

Freya demonstrates motherly love at the House of Chaos. She is very protective and doting, but at the same trying to wean her kitten and teach him independence. Of course, chances are he's going to spend a few years wanting nothing to do with her and then move back in.

Tristan invites you find out more about him at Tabbylicious, as he participates in the "8 Random Things About Me" Meme.

Meanwhile Diamond Emerald-Eyes explores the woods out back with several of her friends (including Tesla, whose picture appears above). Go visit all of her friends.

At Artsy Catsy, is focusing, meditating, purring, purraying and sending positive healing thoughts for his dear friend Moki. We are sending our healing thoughts for Moki as well. Don't forget, Artsy Catsy's auction to benefit both Moki and Criz ends tonight at midnight.

It's Kitties, Kitties, Everywhere with Samantha and Tigger at Life from a Cat's Perspective.

CathyJDiscoveryBay, another first-time participant, presents Quotes for Cat Lovers. Welcome!

We will continue to post updates throughout the weekend. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Rock Kitty shall put an evil curse on CatSynth hackers

2008-11-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

From our friends Alex and Austin of alex ookpik.

Building the new CatSynth

2008-11-10T23:07:00.000-08:00

Rather than simply attempt to restore things as they were, we at CatSynth are using this disaster as an opportunity to build an even better site. I am created a new version of CatSynth based on Wordpress, and I have already imported all 737 posts. There is quite a bit of clean-up to do, and I have to locate some missing images from more recent posts. I have also had to convert formatting form our old system to Wordpress.

Actually, this is turning out to be fun, writing Perl scripts and SQL commands to do all the text and data munging. It is a return to my what I did in my old job circa 2000 at an Internet start-up, and a rather stark contrast to what I do for a living now. With scripting and web hacking, one can realize changes within minutes, rather than the hours or days for a small change in commercial software development.

The next challenges will be getting all the comments into the new site and linking up the old URLs to the new system, so that all the old CatSynth links on the web will still work.

Thanks to everyone who commented this weekend, wishing us well, and (more importantly) wishing ill upon whoever destroyed our site. ;)

Meanwhile, the construction at CatSynth HQ continues, and Luna remains at her temporary abode. We'll post some pics soon.

CatSynth.com attacked!

2008-11-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

On the afternoon of November 7, our site CatSynth.com suffered a major cyber-attack!
Everything was erased, all of CatSynth, my professional music website, the popular Mondrian Machine. Everything.

It is possible I can coax my service provider to restore things from a backup. Meanwhile, I have an older full-site backup, and I have recovered all the text and comments through Friday. So hopefully I will be able to restore the site with a few days to a week.

I have also been going over the logs (which were intact after the attack), and I have pieced together exactly when they got in, and to a certain degree, what they did. I would rather not go into technical details, but I can see a script being run, and after that all webpage access starting to fail with "404 not found." I also found a piece of assembly code left behind. It looks like that was only for clean-up purposes after the deed was done.

As far as I can tell, the only thing done was getting in and erasing the site. There was no evidence that they used their access to send emails or attack other sites, or steal information. They just wanted to destroy the site. I can't say whether it was a random act of senseless violence - there are people who just attack random sites for fun or bravado. But the timing and fact that all they did was destroy the site suggests it could have been deliberate. Possibly even political. We at CatSynth were outspoken in our support for certain people and issues, but in a mild low-key sort of way. But if an angry person was going through hundreds of sites looking for a vulnerability, we could have just been an easy target.

CatSynth 2nd Anniversary!

2008-07-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

Well, our second anniversary is upon us, and this year we are celebrating on our main site. But we're posting here as well, in tribute to our "first anniversary in exile."

Please come visit us at catsynth.com.

Please visit our regular blog at CatSynth.com

2007-11-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

It seems that a few folks have been coming here wondering where the CatSynth blog has gone. Well, this was our temporary home during a brief outage in the summer, and we have returned to our regular site at CatSynth.com. So please do visit us there for all the latest on cats, synthesizers, music, art, opionion and more :)

We're back!

2007-07-23T18:55:00.000-07:00

We'll, it looks like ptank.com get switched back on at around 6PM tonight. Yes, it seems like it was just flipping a switch (actually, updating a few DNS records) and then everything happened exactly is I figured it should have...five days ago.

Of course, I am very happy to have CatSynth, my music site, and my personal email back. But the experience leaves me with a lot of questions, including whether I should continue to shop for a new Internet hosting service...

This will probably be the last post at the trailer, as we happily migrate back to our real home at CatSynth.com!

Tech support transcripts

2007-07-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

Well, day 5 began pretty much as the last four had, with no ptank.com and thus we're still here in the trailer.
Since it was "normal business hours", I decided to try chat support this time instead of phone support. I tend to think that one gets better support on the phone in general, given the immediacy and tendancy to be "stuck in the conversation" (something that telemarketers rely on). But I actually got more info about the situation from this first chat session that in the previous phone support over the past four days. Though that's not saying much. You can judge the quality of the conversation for yourself:

henryg: Hello! How may I help you?
Visitor87718: Yes, I am continuing to have problems with my domain
ptank.com since last Thursday
henryg: have a nice day, talk to you later
henryg: opss sorry :)
henryg: May i have your registration number, please
Visitor87718:
henryg:
Visitor87718:
henryg: the problem is that the domain expired
Visitor87718: yes, it should have been renewed with the current plan
Visitor87718: and the previous two support people on Thursday and Saturday
said this was in process
henryg: but the domain is located in different account
henryg: let me find that account for you
Visitor87718: huh? It should be same account as the Solo XR hosting
henryg: i found it, our admins still working on the issue
Visitor87718: any estimates on how long this is going to take?
henryg: sorry for the delay i will put it on the highest possible priority
Visitor87718: ok, thanks
Visitor87718: is it going to be part of the same account when this done?
Visitor87718: if not, i should probably get the old account info as well...
henryg: part of this account
Visitor87718: ok
henryg: and as soon as we fix it we will notify you to your contact email
Visitor87718: when is good time to check back to see if things are working?
Visitor87718: ok
Visitor87718: thanks
henryg: i understand
henryg: you are doing good :)
Visitor87718: ok, then...i think that's it for now
Visitor87718: thanks
henryg: you are welcome

So, that did have a new piece of information, the whole "not part of the same account" thing, which seems strange but not impossible. OK, let's check back in a few hours and see how the admins did on this high-priority request:

henryg: Hello! How may I help you?
Visitor51520: hi, wanted to check on the issue w/ ptank.com from earlier
today
henryg: hi
Visitor51520:
henryg: ok let me check
henryg: we still waitin our admin to restore it
Visitor51520: hmmm, seems like a while...are there any updates on progress?
henryg: no sir, the ticket is still pointed to the admin
henryg: as soon as he fix it he will point the ticket back to the level1
Visitor51520: ok, so no change since it was sent to the admin this morning
(i.e., no follow up comments)
henryg: and we will inform you as soon as we get it
henryg: no :(
Visitor51520: ok

OK, so absolutely nothing had happened. That's pretty much the end of my patience. I did find an escalation contact, who I gave the whole story (including the fact that it was four days over the 24-hour waiting period to contact them), but also started looking into the VP of Customer Care and others I could send my cancellation to, for dramatic effect of nothing else...Let's see how things are by tomorrow morning...

Beating the heat with cold packs and music

2007-07-22T19:13:00.002-07:00

It has been hot here on the California coast. For a lot of folks 85F isn't that hot, but it is for this location, where we traditionally have heavy fog and sea breezes in the summer. This is the hottest, driest season I have seen since I moved to Santa Cruz. And while I'm generally OK with heat, Luna is not. It gets hot in that little fur suit, and I've been leaving a cold pack on her favorite blue towel to cool things down a bit.

Let's crack open all the windows!

We can also stay cooler by going downstairs to the music studio - the main upstairs area has been getting extra hot in the evenings, baked by the afternoon and evening sun. It's good to be downstairs this weekend, though, as I have plenty of musical tasks to keep me busy in the evenings. First, there is our proposals for the revived Woodstockhausen Festival. Hopefully we're in. Plus, I got a surprise phone call from a fellow musician I saw at last week's Skronkathon performance, inviting me to join her band this coming Friday. I'll be performing live electronics, mostly processing an electric guitar. I think some of the same programming I did last week for the Indian string instruments will be applicable again. I've been reviewing some of the pieces for the Friday set to get ideas - I can't play them here as they are unreleased commercial recordings. The thick textures with voice, electronics and bass suggest I do something much more sparse and articulated, though that in part depends on the guitarist. We have a rehearsal scheduled for Wednesday...

Sunday has been a bit more reasonable (or at least felt that way), so plenty of time out by the ocean and in the garden. Plus, on Sunday some of the annoying tourists leave.

Once things cool down, there are some good films to watch here at CatSynth, too...

Calling tech support again

2007-07-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

Well, we're still here in exile, and it looks like it will last though the rest of the weekend at a minimum. We talked to another nice man at tech support late this morning, who said it would take 24-48 hours to reinstate the domain. And this is 24-48 hours after the first call where they said the same thing.

I can't understand why it takes multiple days to re-register a domain name. I've registered plenty in my time, and they usually come up within an hour of payment (e.g., catsynth.com and amar-music.info). I even tried to simply re-order ptank.com myself to prove the point, but of course that didn't work because someone already owns it...

What may not be apparent is that losing ptank.com affects not only CatSynth, but my main music site, direct CD purchasing, and my main personal and artistic email address. This is a huge mess.

Weekend Cat Blogging #111 and Chaos in Exile

2007-07-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

This is bad kitty chaos indeed, as we head into day 3 of CatSynth in Exile. But that won't stop us from participating in Weekend Cat Blogging #111, hosted by our friends Kashim and Othello. They were nice enough to stop by Luna at Catster to cheer her up a bit.

We miss our real home, of course.

Meanwhile, we'll also try and find our way to the Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats.

CatSynth 1st anniversary in exile

2007-07-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

Well, all this of course happened on what should have been a happy event for CatSynth, our one-year anniversary. We've done our best to mark the event elsewhere, such as at Luna's Catster Page and Synthwire, and of course, here at the trailer.

Thanks to our friends for their support...

Welcome to our temporary home

2007-07-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the temporary home of CatSynth.com. We'll park ourselves here in the "trailer" while we get things sorted out.

Actually, the site is still up and running fine. It's our primary domain "ptank.com" that is the problem. Apparently our ISP neglected to renew our domain name. Simple bureaucratic incompetence. Unlike FEMA, there's not even a pretense of their helping us find temporary housing. So here we are.

True, it could be a lot worse, we could actually be in a FEMA trailer after having our entire town trashed".