New Cat Photos Up

There are some new photos of the kittens here on my flickr site. I’ve got that set arranged so that the most recent uploads come first, so you can just click that link and then click the Slideshow button and you’ll see the most recent ones first.

Another Kitten Video

This video shows what Edwin and Madeline do for most of their waking hours. It kind of amazes me that kittens generally get through this phase with both eyes intact.

Alas, poor Pluggo! I knew him, Horatio…

It was announced late last week that Cycling ’74 has discontinued Pluggo and related plug-ins. Since I had a hand in the creation of Pluggo, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect and reminisce a little. My own involvement with Pluggo ended six or so years ago when I left Cycling ’74, but I was there at Pluggo’s conception and birth.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by the decision. According to Harmony Central, whose memory is better than mine, Pluggo was originally released just over 10 years ago. 10 years is a long sale lifespan for any software product. Pluggo was a particularly complex product since it not only contained over 100 plug-ins but was also based upon the Max/MSP runtime engine. Getting this runtime engine to run within various plug-in hosts as a VST, RTAS, and MAS plug-in was a pretty remarkable feat of engineering in the first place. Maintaining it across all of the changes that have taken place in the hosts and the operating systems during those 10 years must have been something of a nightmare. (To put it in historical perspective, consider that the first release of Pluggo listed Mac OS 7.5.3 as a minimum requirement, and that I did much of my work on Pluggo on a “Wallstreet” Mac laptop which had a 266MHz G3 CPU.) read more

Oh, Happiness! Mother’s Cookies are Back!

Last winter I wrote with much sadness about the demise of Mother’s cookies. It was sometime in March that I finally cracked my last package ever of Mother’s Iced Oatmeal cookies–a bittersweet event indeed. Imagine my delight when Tracie came back from the grocery store the other day bearing two packages of Mother’s cookies!

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Close examination of the bag revealed a mention of Kellogg’s, so I did a little googling and found the official announcement of Kellog’s acquisition of Mother’s trademarks and recipes. read more

Paper Jade Now Carries Elephant Hide Paper

The exotic paper I mentioned in my previous post is now on sale at the Paper Jade site. It’s called Elephant Hide paper, presumably because of its durability and not because it’s made out of the skin of pachyderms. (Honestly I don’t know what it’s made out of, but it doesn’t feel like it’s made from fibers commonly used in either domestic or Japanese papers.) It’s made by one mill in Germany and is difficult to obtain–or rather, it was difficult to obtain until Paper Jade started carrying it. I learned about it from Eric Gjerde’s wonderful book on origami tessellations, but my understanding is that it’s also used for book binding, exotic stationery, wine lists (so I’m told!), and so on. Click here to visit the appropriate section of Paper Jade’s site. read more

One of Those Stupid “Sorry For Not Blogging” Blog Posts

Yeah, it’s been sparse on this blog lately. That’s because the blogger has been stupid-busy. The kittens have some sort of digestive ailment and are quarantined to main-level bathroom, with forays into the kitchen for exercise. Yes, this is rather a PITA, but they should be all better in about a week.

Paper Jade should receive a shipment of rather exotic paper today. I’ll post more details once it’s available for sale in the store. It’s taken so long to arrange to get this stuff that I don’t want to jinx anything by even mentioning it by name until I actually have it in my hot little fists. read more