# Still At It... - Site: Analog Industries - Author: Chris Randall - Date: 2009-08-20 - URL: https://analogindustries.com/2009/08/still-at-it/ Still baking in Phoenix, but we're getting near to done. We'll be leaving tomorrow morning, back to Fort Irwin, then a quick (well, not so quick, but with a quick mindset) trip up I-5 and back in PDX on Sunday. I've been doing absolutely nothing music related the last few days except some furtive poking at my current Pd patch, so I've really got nothing to talk about in that regard. In perusing my RSS feeds, it seems that nobody has done anything terribly interesting this week in any event, other than deciding that a webcam and some little cardboard boxes might be a good way to program drum beats. (Speaking as a musician and not someone easily enamored by all things blinky, I think I can safely espouse the view that it isn't, in fact, a very good way to program drum beats.) One thing I'll mention, which isn't in any way related to the normal content of this blog, is that I forget how alive the low desert is. The Pacific Northwest in general, and the Willamette Valley in particular, is explosively fecund in the area of flora, but it suffers somewhat where fauna is concerned. Not so the low desert that surrounds Phoenix. My wife's parents live on the very outskirts of the metroplex, in an area that could be described as "country" if it weren't for the laughably large mansions and 6-lane boulevards that run through it. Sitting here this morning as the sun came up, a bobcat sauntered (actually _sauntered_) through the backyard. This place is just thick with birds and critters of every sort, much more so than the northwest forests. I don't even mind the heat, truthfully. It's the dryness that gives me a workout. If we have to be hot anyhow, I'll take the sauna of a Chicago summer or New Orleans over this place any day of the week. Anyhow, big thumbs up for iPhone tethering, hoping that I don't get a thousand dollar bill from AT&T next month, and I'll be back to work on Monday morning. Until then, talk amongst yourselves. ## Comments (10) **chaircrusher** (2009-08-20): I can think of a worse way to program beats: paint girls in bikinis with conductive paint and slap them. One way to program that I really liked and have only seen in a children's museum: an electric motor swinging a metal arm tipped with one of those spring and rubber knob doorstops. You put various objects in a circle around the motor spindle and the metal arm thwacks them as it comes around. Stunningly intuitive and fun, and it's easy to quantize your beats or experiment with swing. **space_monkey** (2009-08-20): I haven't even driven up and down the 5 in probably about 6 years, and I still think I've done it enough times to last me my whole life. The actual doug fir forests in Oregon don't have much in the way of fauna (or else it all hears you coming and is long gone before you see it, I've never been sure which) but I grew up in rural Oregon near Eugene, and there's plenty of fauna there. More deer than you can shake a stick at, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, feral dogs, all kinds of birds, you name it, all over the place. It's not technically in the valley though, kind of more in the foothills. **Chris Randall** (2009-08-20): Yeah, the suburbs of Eugene are full of critters, no doubt. Not so much the rest of the valley. When we lived in Mill City, we'd see the occasional elk or deer, and there was a cougar that lived near town that would relinquish old ladies of their labradoodles from time to time. Nothing like here, though. This place is just thick with bobcats, coyotes, javalinas, quail, and all manner of examples of the orders rodentia and lepidosauria. -CR **synthetic** (2009-08-20): Doing iPhone tethering through jailbreak? I'm too much of an Eagle Scout for that. Waiting patiently for the crumbs that AT&T decides to dole out. :P **brandon daniel** (2009-08-20): It's not jailbreak, there's a file you can install on your iPhone without jailbreaking that enables tethering. **Chris Randall** (2009-08-20): No jailbreak. I didn't and won't jailbreak my phone. All it is is a mobile script that activates what's already in your phone. If you visit this link: http://help.benm.at/help.php ...using Mobile Safari on your iPhone you can download the appropriate script for your carrier and turn it on automatically. It works flawlessly, and is fairly quick. Not cable modem quick, but definitely ADSL quick. I will say that there is a risk AT&T will clamp down hard on those of us that do this. I am intrigued to see what my bill looks like next month. I haven't seen any anecdotes of people that have done this getting big bills, but you never know. -CR **boobs** (2009-08-20): "I grew up in rural Oregon near Eugene, and there's plenty of fauna there. More deer than you can shake a stick at, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, feral dogs, all kinds of birds, you name it, all over the place." and lot's of Hippies. "why'd all the hippies move to Eugene?" they heard there was no work there. zing! enjoy the desert CR. change of scenery from time to time is a nice thing even when it includes that dry heat. **Chris Randall** (2009-08-20): Oh, I'm loving it. I've been doing nothing but eating, sitting in the sun, and swimming. I love the desert. The only aspect I don't care for is waking up because I'm choking on my own blood, and having my eyes crusted shut. -CR **RFID** (2009-08-20): I spent my entire life in the desert, about half an hour south of Fort Irwin, before moving with my wife to Long Beach, CA. Used to be the Meth capital of the world. I don't miss the people, especially the wannabe nazis, but I definitely miss the place. If you stop in Barstow, near Fort Irwin, look for the first Del Taco. Probably the best of the two big mexican fast food chains in the southwest, and the original is even better. RFID **space_monkey** (2009-08-21): Huh, I always thought that Cottage Grove was the meth capital of the world. I guess Oregon will have to wait for the next tweakerlympics to win back the championship cup. When I was a kid, my next door neighbors (a couple hundred yards away up on a hill) ran a meth lab. When I was about 11 or so, I got to watch the cops chase them through the fields with dogs and tree them in my backyard. The coolest fauna I ever saw down near Barstow (east San Diego County actually, but close enough) were a whole shitload of low rider pickup trucks, all tricked out with pimp lights and shit.