Studio711.com – Ben Martens

From Batteries To Plugs

This year we received a gift of some battery powered ceramic Christmas tree decorations. (I’m not sure if this is the exact model, but it’s very similar.) They have a built-in timer that turns them on for 8 hours and then off for 16 hours. It’s very rudimentary, but it worked… for a few days. Each tree takes 3 AAA’s and we’d have to swap them out every few days.

After the Christmas season, I decided to convert them to plug power. I’ve done this type of thing before, but I’m not super confident in my abilities yet so I decided to purchase some parts to make life a little simpler instead of doing it from random scraps around the house. I bought a 4.5V power supply with three barrel plugs coming out if it and everything had white cords. I also bought power jacks that were the same size as the plugs and came with wires already connected.

From that point, I was able to figure out exactly where to connect the new wires. I did this with the continuity tester on my multimeter. This helped me figure out what was the start and end of the battery tray. I plugged in the power supply, connected to one of the jacks, touched the wires to the correct battery terminals and voila! Light! From there, soldering the wires onto the terminals wasn’t too difficult.

The trick was that without major surgery to the trees (or using a different connection), I wasn’t able to fit the jack into the footprint of the tree. And since the trees spend the rest of the year in styrofoam holders, I couldn’t modify the size of the tree. So the plan was to have those wires and jacks soldered in place but then the base would be removable.

I turned to Fusion 360 and modeled a base that is about 3/4″ tall and has a lip that surrounds the base of the tree. There’s a cutout in the bottom to feed the wires out to a hole for the jack. Since Fusion 360 is parametric, I was able to just adjust some parameters for each of the three trees and print out three different sizes. That worked but my initial design was a pure cone shape. It looked a little awkward, so I made the edges of the bottom wavy like snow and that improved things dramatically.

Thankfully the trees still work after this adventure and I’m excited to set them up next year. They will get plugged into the same setup and go on/off with the timer that controls the rest of the village. No more batteries to swap!

benmartens January 22, 2026 Maker No Comments

Automatic Cat Feeder Improvements

We are blessed to have quite a few people who can help take care of our cats while we are gone, but when we are gone for less than 48 hours, it seems like overkill to coordinate that and take time out of their day. We have an automatic cat feeder which works pretty well, but it only takes one failure to lose a lot of trust in it.

When we were in Yellowstone last summer, we had planned to only have Megan come over every 2 days and just use the automatic feeder. But one of the first nights, I checked our cameras (yes we have a camera in the cat room) and it looked like the feeder was jammed. I don’t know why the cats weren’t eating it but something was clearly wrong, so not only did we then need Megan over there every day, but she also had to make a late evening run over to our house to immediately fix the situation. (Thank you Megan!) Ultimately I think the problem was that the divider chute didn’t meet up with the bowls well but there might also have been an issue with the food not having enough room to drop out of the machine and onto the chute.

We haven’t used it since then but we have a coule more quick trips coming up so I decided to improve it. Through a LOT of trial and error in Fusion 360 and lots of 3D prints, I eventually designed a new attachment for the dispenser which not only shouldn’t jam as easily, but it is the perfect height for the bowls we like to use, it holds the bowls securely in place so they don’t slide away from the feeder, and it holds a piece of cardboard between the bowls so that one cat doesn’t get intimidated by the other. It even has a little hook on the back that fits into a spot on the feeder to securely hold it in place.

I learned Fusion 360 through Bob Claggett’s awesome Fusion For Makers class, but this was the most complex design I’ve ever attempted and I had to learn a lot along the way. I was 20 versions into my first attempt before I trashed it and started a new one that ended up at 15 versions. But now I have a super custom solution that should work great! I’ve run a lot of cat food through it to verify my solution and so far so good.

Fusion 360 is very intimidating, and I have a long way to go, but I’m slowly getting to the point where I can bring more complex ideas to life. Being able to model anything and then print it out is amazing!

If for some reason, you want this specific model, it is posted on printables.com.

benmartens January 19, 2026 Maker No Comments

Peak Craft Beer?

I rarely mention “drinking beer” as one of my hobbies, but I thoroughly enjoy trying new beers. My Untappd app tells me I’ve had well over 1500 unique beers. The Pacific Northwest is one of the best places in the world for craft beer, but lately, I’ve felt like maybe the fervor is dying down a bit.

I thought maybe some of it was just that my favorite brewery, Good Brewing Co, has effectively closed. The Sultan location still exists, but as far as I know, it was sold to new owners and no longer brews any of its own beer. Bummer!

But it’s more than just Good Brewing. When I visit Total Wine, the enormous selection of craft beer packs and singles has been reduced to a glimmer of its former glory. At Safeway, the craft beer section has been mostly replaced by cider and even more beer from the big/national breweries.

Expanding the scope, the picture doesn’t get better. Craft beer declined in 5% after a 4% decline in 2024. More breweries closed (434) than opened (268).

Craft beer isn’t dead, but it’s not expanding like it was before. Get out there and support your local brewery!

More info: 2025 craft beer year in review

benmartens January 15, 2026 Commentary No Comments

Lego Masters

Our family loves the Lego Masters TV shows. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a reality show that features about 8-ish teams that compete each week to build according to a theme. A judge picks the winners and losers and sometimes people get eliminated. The concept isn’t rocket science but the execution of it can be great.

Multiple countries have their own versions of it. The US version is ok, but honestly, if you’re just getting started, I recommend going through the Australia version. The host, Hamish Blake, is fantastic, and the judge, Brickman, has tons of knowledge and insight. I think the contestants in these shows are better as well.

If you really want to start with the cream of the crop, watch Season 5 which is a competition of some of the best teams from previous seasons. You’ll miss a bit not having their back story, but the quality of the builds is unbelievable. The only downside to starting here is that I don’t think any season from any country lives up to this one.

The Australia episodes are a bit difficult for us to watch in the US but we’ve been able to find them on Tubi for free with ads. I avoid ads whenever humanly possible, so the fact that we watch this show even with ads says a lot.

benmartens January 12, 2026 Links No Comments

Big News

Did you have a nice break for Christmas and New Years? Are you settled back in yet? Ok good, because we have big news: we are moving to Minnesota. (See? That title wasn’t click-bait!) It won’t happen right away though. We are planning this for the summer of 2027.

I realize that it’s going to be difficult for anyone else to understand the full picture of why we’re doing this, and honestly, that’s ok. We’re confident that this is a good move for our family. Some of the reasons are private of course, but here are some of the big ones:

  • In the summer of 2027, Elijah will be done with 8th grade. We’ve spent a lot of time researching high schools around here.
    • Our national church body operates a great high school down in the Tacoma area. We’d love to send Elijah there, but it would mean 5+ hours of commuting every day. If we moved closer, I’d still be within the radius where I’m required to commute to work at least 3 days a week starting in February so that’s unattractive too.
    • We’ve been through (literally) every Christian private school in the area and they were all rejected for adding/subtracting from the Bible. The current school we attend isn’t perfect either but it was close enough that we were comfortable working with Elijah as he went through it, but we couldn’t even find that situation for high schools.
    • We looked at non-religious private schools and mainly rejected those for cost. It’s not uncommon to find tuition prices north of $40,000/year.
    • Our public high school is very good, and this was our top choice if we didn’t move.
  • There are three great high schools in Minnesota that are affiliated with our national church body: West, St. Croix, and Minnesota Valley. We’ll be exploring those options more to figure out exactly where we want to land. Elijah has also lightly expressed interest in attending Martin Luther College so this will put him in touch with other high school kids thinking about that career path and also put us closer to the college if he does go there. If he chooses something else, there are plenty of other good schools to pick from (or we could always move again.)
  • In the big scheme of things, I don’t think we’d be called homesteaders, but we certainly want more land with room to have a big garden, an outbuilding or two, and maybe some animals. We currently own 1/6th of an acre and the bare land is valued at $700,000. That’s something like $4.2 million/acre if you could even find an acre of land to buy. We’ve always talked about moving further away from Seattle and Bellevue to spread out a little.
  • Tyla and I both grew up in the Midwest and furthermore, Tyla grew up southeast of Minneapolis. We feel at home in wide open spaces and empty two-lane roads. Contrast that with the view from our back yard where we can see 16 houses and endless traffic we sit in at all hours of the day on any day of the week. We are generally quick to say we love this area, but those feelings don’t always align with the current reality. The population has exploded in the last 20 years. That’s great for our property value, but bad for our comfort level.

There are definitely things we’ll miss around here. We have friends and family close by and there are few places in the country more beautiful than this area. The temperatures are mild, and our summers are incredible. We’re moving to a flat land of snowy winters, sweaty summers, and bugs. But, as cheesy as it sounds, home is wherever the three of us are. I’m hopeful that we’ll grow even closer together during this experience as we tackle this challenge together. And it’s also comforting knowing that wherever we land, there will be a church home waiting for us.

What about work? This is still a big question mark and could throw a wrench into our plans, but I can do my job from anywhere. I will need to get approval to work fully remote and talk to HR about the compensation changes that will come with moving to an area with a lower cost of living, but I’m hopeful that will all go smoothly. While there is an office in the Minneapolis area, I don’t expect I’d ever need to go there since nobody else on my team lives there.

Why are we announcing this now? In a blog post? We don’t know how to do this. This has been something we’ve been praying about for months. We decided we would go through Christmas and New Years like normal and then tell everyone at once so there were no secrets or groups of people with mismatched information. We wanted to get the news out so that we can start sharing this part of our lives.

There are many details left to discover over the coming year and a half. The first big step will be a trip to visit all three of those potential high schools. The hope is that all three feel like a good fit for different reasons, but we’ll take our learnings from that and see what real estate looks like. I can already tell you that when I property search around those areas, I have my search set to “No HOA” and “> 2 acres” and that turns up a lot of options that seem to fit the style we are looking for. We’ll see how those dreams play out.

I imagine that a lot of friends and family reading this will have a lot of questions. We’re happy to chat about it but please know that a lot of the answers will be “I don’t know yet.” We feel like this is the right move, but there are a lot of specifics to work out.

benmartens January 6, 2026 Family

AI Coding Update

Let’s take a quick minute to update where we are at with AI in my daily job. It’s changing so quickly that it’s hard to organize my thoughts around it.

Over the last year (and even the last 6 months), AI coding agents have gone from “overhyped party trick” to “fundamental necessity”. A lot of that comes from advancements in models (Claude Opus 4.5 is my current favorite) but it also comes from us learning better ways to interact with the models. There’s still too much hype, but my personal daily reality has been permanently altered by these new capabilities. At this point, coding without AI feels as unthinkable as coding without StackOverflow or a search engine did last year.

Stepping back for a moment, it’s good to note that Large Language Models (LLMs) are a great fit for software development. If you think about training a model on the English language, it’s a mess because there are so many different styles and rules and unwritten rules and colloquialisms, etc. But with code, there the languages are strictly defined and there are intense levels of documentation for every piece of every language. This gives the AI agent a very well-defined playground to do your bidding.

What really pushed this tech over the edge for me was learning to start by having it generate documentation about the work it was going to do. I’d explain the requirements, have it generate a plan, and then iterate on that plan document until I was happy with it. Then I’d have the agent tackle pieces of the plan, step by step, verifying its progress along the way.

I can’t tell you how much faster I’m able to get projects done! There have been two giant projects floating around in the back of my mind for years at work, but I could never justify the time to do them. Not only did I get them both done in just a few weeks, but I did it in my spare time at work without slowing down the rest of my job. My output is skyrocketing and it feels like I have a new superpower.

I have no idea where this is going or how it’s going to change our jobs in the future, but I don’t think it will be too long before I’ll move up the “AI management” ladder. Instead of directly commanding one agent at a time, I can imagine telling a “manager agent” what I want and then letting it create its own agents to do different parts of the job and make sure they’re all still heading toward the goal. That’s potentially another order of magnitude increase in my output. After nearly 20 years at the company, I have a very long backlog of ideas to try, but now I’m wondering if that list is long enough. I can churn through ideas so quickly now and see which ones pan out.

“Will AI take coding jobs” is a common question but my answer is that if your job is typing in code, then yes, you’re in trouble. But if your job is seeing things that can be improved and solving problems, then this is an incredible tool amplify your impact. In that case, AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI more effectively than you might.

benmartens January 2, 2026 Geek

2025 Recaps

Every app seems to send some kind of stats page for your year. I picked out some of them to share here. If I spent this much time on these things, they probably get my default recommendation. After reading this, let me know what you think I missed out on.

Pocket Casts (podcasts)

  • 18,051 minutes listened
  • Top 5 podcasts by time listened
    • Stuff You Should Know
    • Making It
    • Cordkillers
    • No Dumb Questions
    • Wood Talk

Spotify

  • 47,106 minutes listened
  • Top artists: George Strait, Andrew Peterson, The Piano Guys, Third Day, Johnny Cash
  • Top Albums:
    • George Strait: 50 Number Ones
    • Downhere: Downhere
    • FFH: I Want To Be Like You
    • Caedmon’s Call: 40 Acres
    • The Arcadian Wild: The Arcadian Wild

Duolingo

  • 1995 Spanish lessons
  • 3684 minutes of studying
  • Current streak: 1911 days

Trakt (TV/movie tracking)

  • Most watched:
    • Star Wars (including Clone Wars, Rebels, and all the movies)
    • Bob’s Burgers
    • Superstore
    • Chuck

Untappd

  • 139 unique new beers
  • All time total distinct beers: 1573
  • Top 5 rated beers
    • Fort George – Pizza Pals
    • Icicle Brewing – Enhchantments Hazy IPA Series – Windy
    • Stemma Brewing – It’s Another Double IPA
    • WarPigs USA Brewing – Foggy Geezer
    • Icicle Brewing – Alpenhaze Hazy IPA

Goodreads

  • 8670 pages read
  • 22 books read
  • Most popular book read: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

I didn’t include YouTube because the channels with the most watch time aren’t necessarily the ones I’d recommend for most people. I watch some homesteading and construction channels in the background when I’m doing other things. I’ll save a refreshed edition of my YouTube channel recommendations for another day.

benmartens January 1, 2026 Commentary

2025 Year In Review

Another year has come and gone. There are a lot of good memories shared below, but on a more global scale, I think when I look back at 2025 it will be the year of AI. Sure ChatGPT has been around for three years now, but this year AI was a force multiplier in pretty much every aspect of my life. Every few months feels like another level up and every step we take forward is bigger and bigger. While there are certainly challenges and concerns with using it, it’s impossible to ignore the positive impact it has had not just at work, but at home and at church too.

Zooming in from that global view, we had a lot of trips around the country. There was our annual trip to Leavenworth with Tyla’s family in January, visiting MLC with Elijah, a trip to eastern WA as we crossed off more counties, camping with Tyla’s family at Ike Kinswa State Park, my solo trip to the synod convention in New Ulm, a summer week in Indiana, our family road trip to Yellowstone, another trip to MLC, and a few days in Mazama with my parents. Looking back at that list, maybe this is actually the year of New Ulm, MN! I was there three times this year. It’s a lot of travel to that specific small town, but Tyla and I are both really thankful to be part of those meetings at Martin Luther College.

We had quite a few fun day trips too. There was a Boeing Factory tour, seeing the Piano Guys in concert, riding bike/train things, our Leavenworth chocolate tour, and seeing another professional disc golf tournament.

Church continues to occupy a lot of time on my calendar and space in my head. We spun up a new leadership structure last year that creates teams to handle a lot of the work that we used to handle on council. That has certainly helped and is going well, but somehow it seems like the work for council is still a very long list. Thankfully we are seeing a lot of growth and energy while record numbers of visitors are walking through the doors.

I’m thankful to have spent another year working from home. That will be changing next year when they bring us back to the office in February, but for now it’s nice to have lunch with Tyla while also not spending 1.5 hours in traffic every day. The return-to-work next year will be a big change for all of us, but I’m still thankful to have this job so I’m willing to make that commute even if I don’t know where that time will come from. It’s wonderful to have a supportive family that is willing to roll with the changes.

Woodworking remained near the top of my favorite hobbies even though the list of completed wood working projects feels very short this year. I spent a huge portion of the year playing with different ways to make coasters. I finally landed on a fairly repeatable process and I made a bunch of MLC coasters. I enjoyed being able to refine my approach and get better each time, but eventually I had to stop because it felt like I was just troubleshooting little issues and it wasn’t fun anymore. I also built a new desk top for my standing desk, finished a nightstand for Tyla, and built us our own nativity set. More recently I have been experimenting with machine a plastic called HDPE. It’s like milk jug plastic, but it has white material sandwiched between two layers of color so depending on how far down you cut, you reveal different colors. I started with an American flag in the shape of the United States and then also made an MLC logo and an eagle sign.

If I look at how much time I spend doing various hobbies, piano would probably be at the top by quite a big stretch. I don’t think of it as a hobby because I’m usually practicing for an upcoming church service, but even when I have a break in the church piano schedule, I still like to play every day. I like to record every song that I learn in MIDI and then render out a nice audio version. Sometimes I do video too and, in those cases, I throw them up on YouTube.

2025 was “just another year” without any grand events, but that’s something to be thankful for too.

Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

benmartens December 31, 2025 Commentary, Family

Good Eats Returns!

I loved Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” back in the early 2000s. It was a unique combination of cooking and science. Some of the things I learned on that show are still drilled into my brain like “Avoid single use kitchen gadgets.”

So you can imagine my excitement when I saw that he’s bringing it back on YouTube! The first episode went live on November 22 and he’s releasing weekly episodes.

There were a couple other sequel/spinoff series so while I hope this one will last for a long time, I’m here for whatever we get!

benmartens December 29, 2025 Links

Merry Christmas!

LUKE 2

THE BIRTH OF JESUS

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.

4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

benmartens December 25, 2025 Commentary