CAC - The War Kitty Chronicles

This is the GorillaTorch from Joby and it is cool. A nice design.

I have a USB LED light but that takes up a USB port and can sometimes gets in the way. I found this. It uses 3 AA batteries and it’s tiny, flexible, and waterproof. You can place it just about anywhere by using the legs as a tripod, a wrap around grip, or attach it to metal using the magnetized feet. The LED light is super bright but it does have a dimmer switch. It’s made out of ABS plastic and comes in 4 colors. I got yellow so that I could see it.. lol.

I use it in my office/studio for all sorts of things… I’m thinking I may need one for the car.

Cool, hip, and useful for 30 bucks.

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Blue Steeler – a minimal, deep, housey and sometimes psychedelic groover suitable for all funsters at large.

This song started, as a lot of them do (for me), as an exercise. I was messing around with different cymbals… hi hat patterns, and this just stuck I felt like I wanted to build something around the beat. Have the beat be the driver and not some melody. So, the minimal approach suited that idea and then I went deep because I like to… no really, I like to get lost in the music so that it can take you to different places.

More info here: The CAC War Kitty Warriors.

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I’ll keep this short and sweet…

Sylenth 1 is a polyphonic subtractive software synthesizer from LennarDigital. It is ‘warm’, phat, easy to tweak, straight forward in design, has unlimited modulation options… and, it’s not a CPU Pig! What’s not to like.

I mentioned to a friend that I wish I could find an analog soft synth that I could really use for a variety of production stuff and the suggestion was Sylenth 1. I downloaded the demo and had at it. 3 days later the full version was mine.

This is a friendly synth: 4 oscillators with a variety of waveforms to mix and match, a standard filter section (with ‘drive’ control), 2 mod envelopes, 2 LFOs, and 2 routing banks. There are no superfluous knobs to get in your way. Everything here is functional and obvious. It has a copy/paste osc and env feature that I really like. And, all the modulation and routing can be handled from drop down assign menus each with its own control knob.

The warmth of this synth is amazing and the filters are very responsive and full of dynamic range. They nailed it:

“Two of the main aspects of any subtractive virtual analog synth,” states Lennar, “which determines its sonic character are its oscillators and filters. I’ve always liked the screeching sound of resonating analog filters like those from the TB-303 or the Minimoog for example, but I’ve never been able to find a VST synth with filters that could produce sounds like that really well. A lot of them simply end up in a pure sine wave when brought into self-oscillation, while others don’t even get to that point. As for the oscillators in other VST synths, I found that some of them sounded dull at low frequencies while others produced audible digital aliasing at high frequencies. So my starting point was to overcome these problems by designing my own filters and oscillators from the ground up.”

The center screen allows access to the menus and effects. The effects are fantastic; very top drawer and include distortion, phaser, delay, chorus, EQ, reverb, compression, and an arpeggiator. The arp is incredibly cool. You can not only program the normal stuff but also hold and velocity… and it can me used as a modulation source allowing you to create some wild gating events.

There are some drawbacks: you cannot route the filters in series and there is no pulse width modulation that I could find.

The Sylenth 1 comes with a ton of presets, 700 or 1300. Whatever, more than you need and no I haven’t gone through them all. It is just so much fun to make your own sounds and this synth makes that easy… even for a novice (like me).

Yeah, I recommend the Sylenth 1… it is the bomb…

LennarDigital

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We love us some bikes and this one is a whopper.

Built by Benny Ohrman, the weird thing about this bike is that they used a real alligator. Yikes! The bike was commissioned by Wildlife Rehabilitation Of Hernando (Florida) and they intend to action it off to raise funds for the charity.

No mention of performance or whether the snake is included.

Man, those are some choppers…

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Cats… you either love or hate ‘em. I’m a cat person. Well, actually, I’m an animal person. I have a cat. She is old and cranky, pron to jumping on the bed in the middle of the night and giving me head butts, and picky about her food. Yup, a normal cat.

I saw this cartoon/illustration over at cracked.com and thought I’d share. It is so true.

Blah blah blah…

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Shaggers Delight - You just never know where inspiration will come from. I was watching the movie ‘The Spy Who Shagged Me’ (yes, I’ll admit it) and this tune just came to me. So I laid it down with a bit of humor in mind… at least in my mind. It’s meant to be a comic look at disco/club cruzin. Nothing heavy here.

So, do we shag now… lol. Enjoy!

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For more info about this song visit The CAC War Kitty Warriors group page on Facebook.

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I don’t have a disco ball hat and I’m not a DJ. But, I was listening to my player as I drove around running some errands. My player is almost always on ’shuffle’. Keeps you on your toes. Here are that last 10 songs that played…

Bobby Rush - She’s A Good’un
Madonna - Love Tried To Welcome Me
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
Sandy Denny - Farewell, Farewell
Portishead - Roads
Shannon - Let The Music Play
Chic - Dance Dance Dance
Bic Runga - Sway
The Easybeats - Friday On My Mind
Modonna - Everybody

I know… some days you just get lucky…

Have a great weekend.

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That Moment Held

That moment was held
For just an instant
Before doubt and talk
And things like life
Got in the way

From whispered desire
A conversation of tongues

A trap so finely sprung
To catch us unaware
In clinging shadows
Torrid
The nature of
Passion

Into the night
With blinding speed
A race to get there first

Reckless with danger
While biting the flesh
For the taste
Of what is real

Then gone
By chance
To replay
Again and again
But never quite the same

Yet
That moment held
For just an instant
Was worth it all

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cacwarkitty

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With “Doctor Jumbo’s Ju Ju”, I attempt to understate the psychedelic vacillations inherent in a mind bending jungle romp. This is where darkness meets goodness. There is a gray area between insanity and acceptability. The sane call it ‘crazy’. The artist calls it ‘life’.

As Jim Morrison wrote: Break on through to the other side. (Man, I love The Doors.)

Good Ju Ju or bad Ju Ju, that is for you to decide.

Try some of Doctor Jumbo’s Ju Ju… and enjoy…

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Ever wonder what’s on the Pope’s iPod… yeah, me neither. But the Vatican has come out with it’s ’semiserious guide’ to the top ten rock and pop albums of all time… published in L’ Osservatore Romano, the official paper of the Vatican.

Here’s the breakdown:

10. “Supernatural,” Carlos Santana
9. “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory,” Oasis
8. “Achtung Baby,” U2
7. “Graceland,” Paul Simon
6. “Thriller,” Michael Jackson
5. “The Nightfly,” Donald Fagen
4. “Rumours,” Fleetwood Mac
3. “The Dark Side of the Moon,” Pink Floyd
2. “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” David Crosby
1. “Revolver,” The Beatles

The albums are perfect listening material for anyone who finds himself marooned on a desert island, the Holy See’s newspaper noted.

Good stuff… I believe I have all these on my player.

The article by Giuseppe Fiorentino and Gaetano Vallini said that Dylan was excluded from the list despite his “great poetic vein” because he paved the way for generations of unprofessional singer-songwriters who have “harshly tested the ears and patience of listeners” with their tormented stories.

Everybody’s a critic…

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