Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Learn About My Job

If you’re curious about what I’m thinking about at work, two recent videos will help give you a taste.

The first one is a presentation by my manager at the Open Compute Project Global Summit. He talked about how AI training data centers cause massive and rapid power fluctuations which are problematic for electrical grids and introduced the shared approach taken by Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI to solve this.

The second one is Satya. He talks about the development of the Fairwater 2 data center and the path to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). While his scope is obviously way bigger than my team’s, we are closely involved in the projects he discusses.

Satya says that this AI revolution might just be the biggest thing since the industrial revolution. It’s an amazing time to be in this industry and I’m super thankful to have a behind-the-scenes seat for it!

benmartens December 4, 2025 Geek No Comments

PC Part Prices

In 2020, I built a PC right before COVID hit and all the prices went sky high. This year I built a PC and… prices are going sky high (but thankfully no global pandemic yet.) The PC that I built in September was right around $1500 but now those same parts would cost me over $2500! I knew I was getting a great deal on the video card, but the real shocker is how much memory prices have increased. I paid $240 for two sticks of 32 GB DDR5-6000 memory. That same purchase now would cost $880! RAM prices started increasing almost immediately after my purchase and haven’t stopped.

Prices are climbing because the memory and storage market has been hit with a perfect storm. Manufacturers have cut back on consumer production while shifting more of their supply toward enterprise customers who are trying to meet the massive AI demand spike. At the same time, consumers started increasing demand for new parts.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this issue to get resolved, but I’m thankful to be writing this on a brand new machine that was bought literally days before the price increases started!

benmartens December 1, 2025 Geek No Comments

Canon 24-70mm First Impressions

Shortly before Elijah was born, we justified buying a nicer lens for our camera so that we could take baby photos. Buying the lens was cheaper than a session or two with a professional photographer. We’ve had that Tamron AF 28-75mm f/2.8 SP XR Di LD for over a decade and it has taken a lot of great photos, but after getting my first taste of a fancy Canon L-series lens, I could see what I was missing. So this year, we sent our Tamron lens to keh.com and applied the trade-in value towards a used Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L II USM EF!

I once again went with the older EF mount instead of the newer/lighter RF mount, but the price delta was too much to ignore. It’s a great time to buy EF lenses with a lot of people upgraded to RF. Maybe some day we’ll trade both of these in for RF lenses, but I think this will keep us happy for a long time.

I wish I had taken a specific comparison photo with both lenses, but I expect it would be very similar to the comparison I did with the last purchase.

I can no longer blame my gear for poor photos. This body and the two L-series lenses are way above my pay grade so I have plenty of room to grow.

benmartens November 27, 2025 Photography No Comments

Golazo Release

It has been just over 10 years since I was first introduced to a team process called “Golazo”. It as developed inside the company and there wasn’t much information available on it publicly… until recently. I’ve been spending time gathering various documents and recordings about it, attempting to remove any internal jargon, and then publishing it on GitHub. Today I also made a blog post on the official Azure Compute blog.

It’s a bit difficult to get people excited about a team process, but this one has had such an enormous impact on my job trajectory and satisfaction that I’m happy to get to share it externally. I won’t go into the full sales pitch, but here are three of my favorite parts:

  • I’m limited to working on two things at once. Context switching and multi-tasking is not only proven to be inefficient, but personally it also adds a lot of mental weight. Focusing deeply on only one or two tasks at a time keeps me from feeling like I’m getting buried and also lets me do better work because I’m not having to reload all the context.
  • It’s hard to get people to write documentation, but writing down what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and why I’m doing it does amazing things for not only helping me sort out my own thoughts but also for getting feedback from others, teaching newer team members, and keeping a written history of our decisions. We do this for every task (where a task is something that takes between 1 day and 2 weeks.) It has made the code reviews at the end much more enjoyable because we’re not having architecture arguments after someone spent a bunch of time writing code. Plus, we have a huge knowledge base of information that has just grown organically. I don’t have to waste brain space trying to remember it all because I know I can look it up at any point (and increasingly, I can ask AI questions about it.)
  • We succeed and fail as a team. Generally this is fun. Sometimes it is awkward. But forcing yourself to take shared responsibility for everything on the team improves design discussions up front and encourages more ideas about how to make improvements to avoid problems in the future.

This is by no means the most common method of working inside the company, but it’s the best one I’ve seen. There have been a few points in my career where I’ve had the unique experience of starting up a new team or working by myself for a while, and even when I’m working on my own, I still follow this process. It helps me visualize the work that needs to happen, stay focused, and keep a log of my past decisions.

While I tried to organize the GitHub docs into something consumable, I know that it can be intimidating to try to make sense of it all so please feel free to contact me directly for more information!

benmartens November 20, 2025 Geek

HDPE Flag

High-density polyethylene is that super slick plastic that is used to make things like cutting boards, milk jugs, and gas cans. It’s also a very interesting material to use on the CNC because they make it with layers of colors. So for example, you can buy a sheet of red/white/red or blue/white/blue and that’s just what I did. I got the blue in 1/4″ and the red in 1/2″. I also picked up two special bits called O-flute bits which have a single large flute and a special coating to help turn the plastic into chips instead of a big melted mess.

My first project was an attempt at making an United States flag in the shape of the continental US. All CNC projects start with a lot of computer time and to help decrease the effort required, I bought an SVG file of that from Etsy. But as I started working with it, I realized that the flag was not accurate. I use an online calculator when I make flags and I was quickly able to verify so many problems that I ended up redrawing the flag from scratch. I was still able to make use of the US outline but that required work too to decrease the detail enough that it could be cut out cleanly but not so much that it looked like too simple.

I began with the blue/white/blue sheet and nervously cut out the stars. I had looked up some feeds and speeds for cutting this material with my new bits and thankfully it worked well. I used an 1/8″ bit to remove most of the material and a 1/16″ bit to clean up the fine detail. The star below the cutout was my first test and then I left off the two inside the cutout because they wouldn’t be seen in the end anyway.

On the thicker red/white/red sheet, I pocketed out an area for the union to sit into and then also carved off the top red layer on all the white stripes.

Gluing the union onto the base flag was a challenge because nothing sticks to this, but I found some epoxy that worked. Apparently there is also some super glue that you can use if you have the right additional chemical to help it bond to HDPE.

After the epoxy had set, I nervously started the program to cut out the shape of the US.

After that it was just a little cleanup to remove the tabs of material that I left so that the piece wouldn’t fly out when it was cut all the way through.

I love the way it turned out and it’s neat to be done with a project at this point instead of having to apply finish. If I did it again, I think I would smooth out the US outline more and shift the flag image to the left so the ratio of blue to red/white looks a little better.

I’m not really in the business of selling stuff, but this is a fun project that I’d like to do more of. If you want one, let’s chat. The material cost is high, but I think I could make them for about $75 each.

benmartens November 13, 2025 Woodworking

Piano Thoughts

I play the piano for services at church about once a month. It’s something I’ve done off and on throughout life starting with chapel services in high school. Pretty much every time I play in a situation like that, I’m amazed at the thoughts that run through my head. And after chatting with other pianists and organists, it sounds like I’m not alone in some of them. So if you’ve ever wondered what that person playing music in front of church is thinking, here are some possibilities:

  • Oh no, what verse am I on? Am I supposed to play one more? What if I start playing the next vers but I’m wrong and nobody sings?
  • Am I playing too fast?
  • Am I playing too slowly?
  • What verse am I on?
  • Did I do enough of an introduction to this hymn for people to be ready to sing and know what they’re supposed to sing?
  • Did I play too much of an introduction and people are bored?
  • What verse am I on?
  • Remember when that one person told me ___ after the service? It was so mean.
  • Why do I only think about that one mean person and not all the other people that say nice things?
  • How did I get this far into the song without knowing what key this is written in?
  • What do other people think about when they are playing?
  • Hey, I’m playing this hymn pretty well and I haven’t even screwed… oops. Never mind.
  • What verse am I on?

In chatting about this with someone else, I learned a good tip of singing along with the hymn melody but just repeating the verse number. “One one one one one…” So then instead of wondering what verse I’m on I think “Oh man, I forgot to sing the verse numbers! What verse am I on?”

benmartens November 6, 2025 Music

Watch Duty App

Wildfire season is winding down so this is probably the worst time of the year to make this post, but consider downloading the Watch Duty app or at least bookmarking the website. If you’re following information about a fire, this is one of the best ways that I know of to get accurate and up to date information. The fire team posts updates that are directly reflected in the app and you can even watch videos of their briefings for the bigger fires. This app is a great way to keep up with fire growth, evacuation notices, and road closures.

benmartens October 30, 2025 Links

Mazama 2025

My parents flew out to visit recently and we decided to take a trip with them to Mazama, WA. Mazama is on the east side of the Hwy 20 pass that goes through North Cascades National Park. I did a motorcycle ride through there in 2009 and I’ve been wanting to go back ever since.

We left Monday morning and took the route through Darrington. We stopped at Pressentin Park in Marblemount for a quick picnic lunch and then continued on our way.

Our next stop was the North Cascades Visitor Center but it was closed for some combination of it being the end of the season and the government shutdown. So we continued on to Ladder Creek Falls just a little farther down the road. There’s a suspension bridge over the river and then a steep climb up to see the falls. There are some interesting signs along the way explaining the history of the park and the effect of electrification from the dam.

We hopped back in the truck and pulled off at Diablo Lake. We had sunshine for most of the drive up to this point but it started getting a bit cloudier. The lake didn’t quite have its famous green color, but it’s still a beautiful view. We also stopped a little bit up the road at the Ross Lake overlook.

I had hoped that our next stop would be the trail to Rainy Lake but even though it was the middle of October, there was a foot of fresh snow! That would have made the hike too difficult for us anyway, but we also arrived in early afternoon and parking along the trailhead was a zoo. So we continued on to the Washington Pass Observation Site. The parking lot wasn’t plowed and there were quite a few cars there already, but we found a parking spot and despite not having good shoes for walking in snow, we made our way down the packed snow trail. The wet feet were worth it. It’s already and amazing view and it was magnified by all the fresh snow. If you’ve never driven through this pass, I highly recommend it! It’s my favorite of the Washington passes through the Cascades, and the addition of fall colors was incredible.

From there we headed down the east side of the mountain to our Airbnb just past Mazama. We filled our days with a lot of food cooked at the house, two short hikes, exploring the western themed town of Winthrop, visiting the Shafer Historical Museum, and playing a lot of games at the house. The weather was cool but the sunny skies gave us beautiful views.

For the drive home, we took the slightly longer route east to Hwy 97 and then south to catch SR 2 west across Stevens Pass. We had to stop in Leavenworth for brats at Munchen Haus and fudge from the Fudge Hut.

That’s a lot of miles to cover with three people in the back seat and I appreciate everyone being willing to do this trip! It’s a gorgeous area and while Winthrop is still touristy, there’s a lot fewer people around and the whole area feels a lot more peaceful. It would be fun to go back there again and use that house as a base camp for a bunch of day hikes in the mountains!

benmartens October 23, 2025 Family, Outdoors, Travel

Another Visit to MLC

About a year and a half ago, Tyla and I were trying to figure out how to work in a visit to Martin Luther College. Since then, I have been there FOUR TIMES. We had no idea that we’d be asked to be on the President’s Advisory Council or that I’d end up going to synod convention.

Tyla and I just got back from our latest trip. Elijah stayed home this time (thanks Megan!) and we got a weekend to ourselves. Visiting Minnesota in late September is a roll of the dice but we had beautiful weather with temps around 80.

Our meetings were wonderful. I feel like our group is really hitting its stride now that we have more context about the challenges that are being faced and the type of feedback that is helpful. Plus, now that we know more people, even our time outside of the meetings leads to valuable conversations whether we’re having dinner or watching a volleyball game. We also got to say hi to a couple friendly faces among the student body too.

Outside of the meetings, we did get a chance to watch two volleyball games and we toured Schell’s Brewery too. The Schell’s tour was rich on history. They have a lot to cover since the brewery has been around since 1860! In the picture below you can see that we got to visit their cave where they barrel age a special fall brew.

Thanks again to MLC for hosting us and we look forward to our next visit!

benmartens October 3, 2025 Travel

2025 PC Build

February of 2020 was the last time I built a PC. I had decided to build something that would do a better job handling video editing because I was just starting to teach myself Davinci Resolve. A month later, COVID hit, prices skyrocketed, and I was spending 5-10 hours a week editing video for our online church services. It was a huge blessing to have that new PC to speed up my work.

Fast forward to today and we’re nearing the end of Windows 10 support. The old PC that I use for a file server, cloud backup client, and security camera server is not able to upgrade to Windows 10 and I’m ready to replace it anyway. But instead of just building a simple PC for that, I decided to replace it with my 2020 PC and that leaves me “needing” to build a new main PC. Yay!

As usual, I spent a long time researching all my options. I recently bought the full license to Davinci Resolve Studio so I was targeting its requirements. I don’t game much on my PC but the video editing is nearly as taxing in many areas. Ken had just had a great experience buying a PC from Skytech Gaming and they had a pre-configured option that was almost exactly what I was planning to build anyway. I ended up building myself anyway because I could save money on the Windows license (with my company discount) and get double the RAM while saving myself a couple hundred bucks. Here’s what I chose:

  • AMD Ryzen 7 7800 X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor
  • Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler
  • MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard
  • Corsair Vengeance RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB)
  • Samsung 990 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
  • Asus PRIME GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB Video Card
  • Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case
  • MSI MAG A850GL PCIE5 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

It was really interesting designing this using AI to help me. It was able to pull in a lot of reference material about my specific use case and compare multiple options so I felt like I was making a pretty educated choice.

All the parts finally arrived and I carved out some time on a Saturday to start the build. Pretty soon, I was very much regretting not buying the pre-built system. The first problem I hit was that I could not get it to POST. The motherboard just showed lights indicating it couldn’t find the CPU and RAM. I hadn’t done a partial test before putting it all in the case so eventually I gave in and completely undid the build, tearing it down to its bare components. It still didn’t work. So I pulled the CPU cooler off, cleaned off the thermal paste, carefully reseated the CPU and… it still didn’t work. I exhausted long checklists and after hours of work, I was nowhere. At this point I was looking up return policies to see if I could just get most of my money back and go with the pre-built system.

But then I finally noticed a line in a response from AI that pointed me to a video where a guy commented that he’s noticed that with recent AMD CPUs, you sometimes have to wait 5-10 minutes after it boots for the BIOS to figure everything out. Huh? It seemed crazy but what else was I going to try. I set a timer and walked away to cool down.

I came back to a glorious green light on the motherboard! I plugged in a monitor and could see the BIOS. Victory!

Almost. You maybe have noticed I started this part of the story with “the first problem”. That’s because when I plugged in my fancy video card, I couldn’t even get to the BIOS. I eventually got to a state where I couldn’t even boot to the BIOS with the video card removed! I had to reset the CMOS by using a screwdriver to jump two pins on the motherboard. I’m not sure if I changed something in the BIOS to get it working or if just reseating the card was what fixed it, but voila, it worked. I was then able to install Windows, add all the drivers, and that was pretty much the end of the build.

Oh and I should also mention that when I took the build apart, I broke the USB header on the motherboard. The specific connector used by Fractal for the front USB ports on the case is pretty much impossible to remove. Numerous other people have apparently had the same problem. I tried to repair it but eventually gave up and just bought a USB hub to sit on top of the case instead. It’s a frustrating reminder of the difficulties I hit, but in the end, it’s not that big of a deal.

With this rocky start, I keep nervously waiting for something to go wrong, but the machine has performed great! I had debated about liquid or air cooling, but the setup I have seems to be keeping everything cool and it’s much quieter than my last machine.

Even better, it runs Davinci Resolve Studio incredibly well! The last video I made for our trip to Yellowstone took 3:50 minutes to render on my old machine but this new one did it in 1:25! And when I’m editing the video and moving around in the timeline, it’s buttery smooth.

I’ll let the old machine sit for a bit before I pave it and turn it into my file server and security camera server. Hopefully this new machine continues to serve me well for many years… and next time I’ll buy a pre-built one.

benmartens September 22, 2025 Geek