Studio711.com – Ben Martens

2015 Year In Review

2015-numbers1The year 2015 is over?! Crazy talk. It’s not so much that this year went fast, but that this century has been going fast. I still remember sitting in grade school thinking about what the 21st Century would be like and how far into the future that seemed.

I started this year with a clear idea of what I wanted my end-of-year post to be about: simplification. I had too much going on in my life already and with a toddler running around the house, it was just too much to deal with. So I set out to simplify my life. Here’s a list of some of the things I did to try and achieve that goal:

  • After being on the church council for eight (?) years, I asked for a one year break. I had been doing the property maintenance work for the last six years and it was taking up a ton of my time. I felt really guilty about saying no to this. If I’m going to volunteer ANYWHERE, church is at the top of my list, but in retrospect, I’m glad I did it. It was good to step away for a bit, give someone else a chance, and recharge. I’m already signed up to jump back into that role starting January 1, 2016. But this time I’ll have two other people helping me.
  • In early June, I sold my motorcycle. I loved riding it but I didn’t love commuting to work on it. On the weekends, I’d rather spend the time with Tyla and Elijah than go for the long rides that I used to enjoy. So instead, the motorcycle sat in the garage giving me that little twinge of stress/pressure every time I saw it because I was paying insurance bills, the bike was depreciating, and I wasn’t using it. Plus, I had to move it every time I wanted to work in my shop. This was one of the single best moves I made in the past 12 months. I felt so much more relaxed after I sold it.
  • I cleaned up our TV scheduled recordings. If a show gets recorded on our DVR, I feel like I have to watch it. I was watching a bunch of shows “just because.” So I went through the list and trimmed it down basically to the handful of shows that Tyla and I watch together. If I really want to watch those other shows, I can always grab them on Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix. And you know what? I couldn’t even tell you what those shows were. No loss.
  • I disabled most of the notifications on my phone. If my phone buzzes, it’s out of my pocket and in front of my face before I even consciously think about it. I don’t need to be interrupted to find out that somebody commented on my Facebook post or liked my Instagram photo. Now I only have notifications for things like phone calls and messages. I also turned off as many of the live tiles as I could so that I don’t see all these icons with numbers telling me I have unresolved work to do. I’ll get to it when I get to it.
  • I consciously decided/realized that it was OK to give up hobbies. So instead of trying to hobble along with a half dozen different hobbies, I cut it down to ONE: woodworking. It’s a great hobby because I can do it right in my garage whenever I have a few spare minutes. It doesn’t depend on the weather and I don’t have to wait until a facility is open. Sure, I’ll still go skiing, fly planes, go hiking, and go shooting every once in a while, but those are just bonus activities. I no longer feel like I’m required to do them a certain number of times to claim them as hobbies.
  • I take on one project at a time. This is a core principle that we follow in our process at work, and even though I’m the appointed “agile coach” at work, at home I was still going crazy trying to do too many things at once. It’s ridiculously inefficient. So while I don’t have a full Kanban board at home like we do at work, I follow the principles of that process. I do one thing at a time and I FINISH it before starting the next thing. When I finish a project, I look at the list and decide what the next most valuable thing is to work on.
  • There were some simple technical changes too such as switching from Groove (formerly Xbox Music) to Spotify. Groove was one of those nagging things in the back of my mind. It was going to be a non-trivial amount of work to switch services, but I knew that we were missing out on a lot of nice features from Spotify. I finally buckled down and made the change. It wasn’t as hard as I thought and now instead of fighting the limitations of Groove, we have all kinds of great features with Spotify.
  • I have made a concerted effort to keep my shop clean. When I see a nice clean shop, I’m super motivated to start a new project. The reverse is true too. If I can barely walk to my workbench, I have very little desire to do any work. So at the end of each project, I put EVERYTHING away. The nice side effect is that I don’t ever have to waste an entire weekend doing a huge cleanup in the garage. I’m always cleaning bit by bit. This has also been encouragement to build some storage solutions for the shop. Those are good practice for nicer projects that I have in mind that will end up inside the house.
  • I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on this blog yet, but I no longer own the CascadeSkier family of apps. It’s been something that I’ve built and worked on for the last eight years and it just wasn’t that much fun for me anymore. I had been making some money from it but that was pretty low last winter given the terrible snow season. As I was having all those feelings, a fan contacted me and asked if he could develop an iOS app using the same backend service. I said yes and then later, “sold” him everything. It was a $0 transaction because the app basically pays for itself at this point. I probably could have gotten a little money out of it if I fought for it, but honestly I’m just happy to have it go to someone who is excited about it and who will carry it forward. The whole thing was a great learning experience for me.
  • I even took this simplification as far as changing jobs. It was just a change within the company, but so far, it has been a good one. My stress level is much lower and even though I’m still working very hard and learning lots of new things, I feel like this is a healthier spot for me to be in.

Some of those bullet points are obviously bigger than other ones, but sometimes it’s the little changes that can help the most because those little ones can nag you every single day. All of these have added up to a life that I feel is a lot simpler and more manageable. I’m sure it will fill up again, but at least I’ve got a good baseline set so I can work my way back to something like this in the future.

Enough about me! What did we do as a family?

  • The ski season was horrible with very little snow falling in the mountains. I was happy that I had other things to do anyway so it didn’t have a huge impact on me. I got up once just to sample the experience and enjoyed myself.
  • We finally had “Meat Day” at our house while Mom and Dad were visiting. Dad and I visited six meat stores, bought the same cut of meat at each place and then we had a party with a blind taste test.
  • Uncle Dean and Aunt Sandy came to visit us. I spent two summers living with them when I worked at John Deere but I haven’t seen them very often since moving away. It was fun to have them visit and introduce them to Elijah.
  • In May, Tyla, Elijah and I took our first big family vacation together that wasn’t to a family member’s house. We flew down to San Diego and spent time on the beach, on an aircraft carrier, and at the zoo. The weather wasn’t the greatest but we had a wonderful time.
  • I stepped up my woodworking and made a bunch of projects including a jewelry box, front end loader toy, planer cart, wooden snowflakes, noel sign, toy planes, front step bench, Washington sign, marker box, guest bed with storage, drill press table, miter saw cart, door stops, table saw stand, two Adirondack chairs, stove cover, and pantry storage bins. Whew, that’s a lot of stuff! My idea list is about 5 times that long though. It grows faster than I can build.
  • We did a couple hikes on our own and with Mandy and Ike. These included Barclay Lake and Greenwater Lakes. I love getting Elijah out into nature. I really hope that he enjoys this and grows into a good hiking partner.
  • We took a trip back to Indiana in August so I could give Dad a hand with the shop/garage that he is building. Luke came over too and we got a lot done.
  • We rented a house on Lake Cavanaugh with Tyla’s family. The weather was surprisingly fantastic given the time of year and we had an amazing time. Elijah still talks about that trip. We are eager to go back again.
  • Elijah went to his first concert (at least one that required a pre-purchased ticket.) We went as a family to see Caspar Babypants in concert and even got his autograph.
  • We flew back to Indiana for Christmas. The trip wasn’t exactly what we had planned, but it was good to hang out with family. It was also fun to see Mom and Dad’s new shop/garage and all the progress that had been made since I was there in August. There will be more about this trip in a future post.

As I mentioned above, my goal for the year was to simplify my life and get more enjoyment from fewer things. I call that a success but it’s not something that will ever be finished. Fatherhood continues to take lots of twists and turns as I try to stay one step ahead of my little man and in sync with Tyla.

We never know what the next year will bring but I feel like I’m heading into it feeling pretty organized. We’ll see if that’s still true in 366 days when the next year in review post goes up. Have a happy leap year!

Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

benmartens December 31, 2015 Commentary

Laser Cutter

Tyla has been looking at customized family signs on Etsy. She had a hard time finding one that was the right size and design and I had a hard time paying that much for a piece of painted plywood. We joined forces and designed our own custom sign. Instead of painting it, I wanted to cut each letter out so it would look a little more interesting.

I designed it on the computer, printed off the large tiled pages and then spray glued the first letter onto a thin piece of wood. I don’t have a scroll saw so I put the 1/4″ blade on my bandsaw and got to work. Between the sawing and sanding I realized it was going to take a LONG time to get through the entire sign. Time for plan B.

At work they have a “Maker Garage” for employees to use for free. It’s full of a bunch of tools that you need to get projects done like a drill press, soldering irons, etc. There’s a big community around it that shares ideas and teaches new skills. They also have an “advanced” part of the room that contains more expensive tools. You have to go through training to use them but there are some incredible machines in there including a milling machine, CNC, a couple different 3D printers, an computer controlled embroidery machine and two laser cutters. I’m excited by all of those things but the laser cutter had one of the easier onboarding processes and it was exactly what I needed for this project.

It took a few hours of online and in-person classes but I’m now certified to use their laser whenever I want! I just have to provide my own materials or scrounge through the scrap bin. It can either cut all the way through material or etch it. Obviously it will only etch some materials like stone, but you can either cut and/or etch lots of materials like acrylic, wood, leather or even food. Basically you can do anything you want as long as it’s not reflective to the laser, it’s not going to immediately catch fire, and it doesn’t release poisonous gas when it’s cut.

To pass the training class, we had to modify their sample and successfully make a safe cut with some simulated problems along the way. So what you see below isn’t anything fancy, but it’s my first output from the laser cutter! Thank you Tyla for spending extra time with Elijah alone at home while I finished this training.

firstlasercutter

benmartens December 30, 2015 Gadgets, Maker

Canon Speedlite 430EX III-RT

Tyla and I usually go for some bigger family gift at Christmas instead of exchanging gifts with each other. Our first gifts like this was the camera and that has gotten a lot of good use. This year we decided to add a nice flash to the camera.

I chose the Speedlite 430 EX III-RT. As the name implies, this is the third version of this model. It has way more features than we’ll ever need but it also means that I probably won’t ever feel the need to buy a different one.

It’s a fully automatic flash so it gets all the info it needs from the settings on the camera. The RT means it supports radio triggering. My camera doesn’t have a built in radio trigger but I could add one on and have the flash fire even if it’s not attached to the camera.

I really enjoy the ability to rotate the flash in two directions to bounce the flash off a nearby wall, etc. It gives a much more natural looking photo instead of the traditional on-camera flash look. I have a LOT to learn about how to use a flash but here’s one of my first tests.

Here’s the baseline. This is the built-in flash on the camera.
flashtest_old

This is the new flash with the diffuser attached (it comes in the box with the flash.) It’s a little better but it’s still obviously a picture with a flash.
flashtest_new

And finally here’s what it looks like with the new flash bouncing off the side wall. This one looks a lot more natural.
flashtest_bounce

I’m excited to do some reading and really learn how to make good use of this gadget!

benmartens December 29, 2015 Commentary

Flash Fill

If you spend much time in Excel, you have probably found yourself doing some repetitive tasks to clean up a column of data. Or maybe instead of doing it manually, you might craft some formulas to do it for you. If you’re just doing a one-off cleanup, make sure you consider the Flash Fill feature in Excel. I recently used this in a demo to my team at work and many people in the room were surprised by it so I figured there were probably a few of you reading this who could benefit from it as well.

The basic idea is that you have one or more input columns and an output column. You provide an example or two of what the output should be and then you click the Flash Fill button. A magical wizard in your computer figures out the pattern and repeats it for the rest of the column. It really does feel like magic the first couple times you use it. Sometimes the algorithm gets it wrong for a few cells so you can just make a correction and it will update it’s algorithm and redo any cells that need it.

This video has a bunch of great examples:

If that’s not enough for you, check out prose-playground.cloudapp.net. The tech behind Flash Fill is open sourced out of Microsoft Research and this is one of the sample sites they have created. If you want to use the SDK, you can get it from GitHub.

benmartens December 28, 2015 Geek

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.

christmas2015card

benmartens December 25, 2015 Commentary

Wise Men Timing

threewisemenFor as l can remember, I’ve thought that it was silly to have the three wise men in the nativity scenes. They didn’t show up until Jesus was at least a few months (maybe a year or two) old. So I sat down to do a blog post explaining how we know this and… NOPE. I was wrong.

Ok, well we can’t technically say for sure exactly when they arrived, but most of the evidence does indicate that they probably arrived the day (or a couple days) after Jesus was born. This site has a great explanation of how we know this and what a possible timeline looks like. I ran it by Pastor Herrmann and he gave it the thumbs up.

So where did I get this notion in my head that Jesus was quite a bit older? The Bible says that King Herod ordered all of the babies under two years old killed to try and wipe out what he perceived as a threat to his throne. Why would he do this if he knew that Jesus’s birth was very recent? We don’t know. Herod was an angry, mean guy so maybe he could have just been covering all his bases. Or maybe he expanded the time range to make sure that his guards got the message and didn’t have to try and figure out how many days old a Baby looked. Or maybe he wanted to send a message to the population that he was the man in charge. We don’t know and it doesn’t really matter.

I guess the nativities still are incorrect. The shepherds and the wise men probably weren’t there at the same time, but I’ll let that slide.

In fact, none of this really matters or changes the story. The important part is that on that night in Bethlehem, the Almighty God came to earth in the form of a baby and started on the journey to the cross. Because of our faith in his life, death and resurrection, we’ll get to meet him in heaven and ask him all these questions!

benmartens December 24, 2015 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 15

NFL: Carolina Panthers at New York GiantsJohnny Money actually played pretty well against the Seahawks. The defense was underwhelming for the first part of the game but they figured it out eventually. Kudos to the coaching staff for making changes throughout the game just like they have been throughout the season. The Seahawks have now clinched a playoff spot which I was betting against at the beginning of the season. If the season ended now, the Seahawks would play the Redskins in their first game. Any hope at a Super Bowl has to run through the Panthers, Cardinals and Packers. All of those would be a challenge at best. It sounds like Lynch has a chance to be back for the playoffs which would be important. I suspect those would be his final games as a Seahawk but we’ll see… I’m in favor of getting rid of his big salary (and his attitude) and betting on Rawls.

Our league broke my little heart. I fretted over my roster all week making some small adjustments. Everything went pretty well and I was only a couple points from a perfect roster but it wasn’t enough to topple the 91.16 points that Austin got from Cam Newton and Antonio Brown. Very impressive. Logan won his game so next week will feature Austin vs Logan for the championship. Austin wasn’t part of the money pool so Logan wins that already (for the second year in a row!)

I have to also point out that last week Logan and I swapped the spot for the top seed. That happened because of about a four point difference in his game. If that had gone the other way, Logan would have played Austin … and lost by 1 point. Ha! Ok ok, I’ll quit my moaning.

In other league news, this was tied the highest total points (sum of all teams) for the year. We had the same output in week 3. Andy broke his losing streak with a win over Tim and had his highest point total of the year.

The Power Rankings a little extra silly this time but here they are anyway:
1. Ben
2. Logan
3. Austin (+1)
4. Dad (-1)

If I had to put down money, I’d put it on Austin. He would have beat Logan 7 of the last 8 weeks and Logan has a lot of injury trouble. That being said, I think it’s going to be really close.

Now on to the weekly awards.

This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Austin had 162.66 Tim 200.51 (Week 3) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Jim had 111.50 Andy had 41.29 (Week 14) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Luke beat Jim by 25.4 Ben beat Dad by 111.43 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Andy beat Tim by 8.13 Ben beat Andy by 2.46 (Week 7) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Cam Newton had 51.60 for Austin  Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (Week 8) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Austin has a 3 game winning streak. Ben had an 8 game winning streak (Week 8) Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Jim has a 3 game losing streak. Andy had a 8 game losing streak (Week 14) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens December 23, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Printing Tiled Images

tiledimageI’m working on a new decorative sign for our house. After I had drawn it at full size in Photoshop Elements, I needed to print it full-size, tiled across multiple sheets of paper. It seems like there are a lot of ways to do this, but it took me long enough to figure out that I figured I should write it down.

My approach was to save it as a PDF from Photoshop Elements and then open that PDF in Fox It Reader. (I think Adobe Reader has a similar feature.) There’s an option when printing to print it as a tiled image. You should get some extra marks on the paper to help you line up the multiple sheets and tape them together. One easy way to accomplish that is to hold it up to a window when it’s light outside and then you can easily align the sheets.

If you do this regularly, you might want to check out Big Print. It costs $22 but check out the videos and you’ll quickly see why it’s probably worth the investment. On a side note, if you have an engineering mind and you enjoy woodworking, check out the rest of that guy’s site and his YouTube video. He makes incredibly complex tools and projects out of wood.

benmartens December 22, 2015 Links, Woodworking

Name Check

namechkIf you’re thinking about starting a business or any kind of website, one of the hardest parts is coming up with a name. It’s not just coming up with an idea, it’s coming up with an idea that has an available domain name, Instagram name, Facebook name, etc.

There are a bunch of websites out there to help with this, but one of my favorites is https://namechk.com/. You just type in the name you are interested in using and it checks across a whole bunch of services at the same time to tell you where it’s available.

benmartens December 18, 2015 Links