Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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

Vitamin String Quartet

vitaminstringquartetThe DJ at our wedding introduced us to a group called “Vitamin String Quartet”. As the name implies, they are a string quartet. They play covers of popular music. That was the music he used during the dinner. If you aren’t paying attention, it just sounds like classical music, but every once in a while it catches your ear and you realize what song they are playing.

Check out their music on your favorite streaming service, but one of my favorites is their Jason Mraz album. I also noticed that they have a “Geek Wedding” album which is a bunch of love songs from geeky movies like Lord of the Rings. Tyla is lucky we got married before that album was released.

benmartens December 17, 2015 Music

Fantasy Football – Week 14

Seattle Seahawks v Baltimore RavensThe Seahawks look like a completely different team after their bye week. Granted, they haven’t faced the toughest opponents, but still, their offense is miles ahead of where it was before. Thomas Rawls made us forget about Marshawn Lynch, but now he’s hurt too. Hopefully Lynch will be back for the postseason, but we’ll see if they can still make it there with Fred Jackson and a couple mediocre rookies.

Not too much happened in our league except that Logan and I swapped the #1 and #2 seeds for the playoffs. That just means that the first playoff games are me vs. Austin and Logan vs. Dad. Logan and I are the only two people in the playoffs that were part of the money pool so we’ll have our own little sub-battle going on. At the other end of the spectrum, Andy never could get it going this year and this week he broke the all-time record for the lowest score. I could almost hear Luke rejoicing in Toledo. Luke also gets credit for an optimal lineup this week!

The Power Rankings perfectly match the seeding of the playoffs.
1. Ben
2. Logan (+1)
3. Dad (-1)
4. Austin

Now on to the weekly awards.

This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Ben had 143.53 Tim 200.51 (Week 3) Tim 200.51 (2013)
Lowest Team Score Andy had 41.29  Was Andy had 62.50 (Week 10) Was Luke 47.01 (2011)
Biggest Blowout Ben beat Andy by102.24 Ben beat Dad by 111.43 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Austin beat Logan by 3.55 Ben beat Andy by 2.46 (Week 7) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Russell Wilson had 42.98 for Tim 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 Ben and Austin have 2 game winning streaks Ben had an 8 game winning streak (Week 8) Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Andy has an 8 game losing streak. Was Andy had a 7 game losing streak (Week 13) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens December 16, 2015 Fantasy Sports

What is Advent?

AdventReligions have a lot of seasons and celebrations. I readily admit that I don’t know most of the non-Christian ones and even some of the lesser known Christian ones are hard to remember. I won’t do this for every single Church season or special day, but I thought that for some of them I would do a little write up about what it means for Christians and why I celebrate it. It just so happens that the Christian “liturgical year” starts in December.

The church year starts with the season of Advent. Advent starts four Sundays before Christmas and runs up to Christmas. So for most years it starts the Sunday after Thanksgiving. These four Sundays are sometimes represented by four candles. One more candle gets lit each week. Some Advent wreaths have a fifth candle in the middle and that one gets lit on Christmas Day.

Advent is a season of waiting. We’re not just staring at our watches, waiting for Christmas to come. We are joyfully anticipating Christmas and reflecting on why we need Him and what His birth meant for us. Believers in the Old Testament waited thousands of years of Jesus to come. We only wait a few weeks and we get to celebrate it each year. But in addition to preparing and focusing on the birth of Jesus at Christmas, we also expectantly wait for his return at the end of the world when those who believe that Jesus died for their sins will be taken to heaven.

Want to know more? Check out this article about Advent from our church body.

I’ve already written a post about why I celebrate Christmas so it will be a little while before there’s another post in this series.

benmartens December 15, 2015 Commentary

Tool Cart

I’ve been dreaming about a workshop rebuild that will probably happen next summer. My original plan was to build a bench down the side of the garage to hold my tools. Then I realized that it could be more convenient if I had a few rolling carts to hold the tools. They can be rolled into place when needed and then pushed off to the side when they aren’t important.

I designed this one out in Sketchup and that worked extremely well for me. After designing it out, I also laid out the cut list and cut ALL of the pieces before starting to build. It was a leap of faith but it worked out great! I didn’t have to recut anything. I was almost completely done before I realized that I had made a big mistake. When I put the tools on top of the cart, they didn’t fit!

In a bonehead maneuver, I had never actually put the tools in the position that I would have them on the top of the cart to measure the total space. I just measured the individual tools and when I did that, I forgot to include the part that sticks out of the back of the jointer. ARG!

Thankfully, the jointer and the planer only overhung the edge by about an inch. I resolved this by running a 3/4″x3/4″ piece of leftover cedar all around the top edge. I also trimmed out the rest of the cart so it looked more intentional. It looks fine and everything fits without hanging over the edge.

The drawers came out pretty nice. This was my first time using drawer slides and they work wonderfully! They were really easy to install and I got the full-extension drawer slides so I don’t have to fuss with stuff hiding in the back of the drawer.

The final touch was to build a simple attachment to hold a power strip on the back of the cart. This means I only have one plug to power the cart and I also have some extra power ports if I need them.

I want to build one more of these to hold the drill press, spindle sander and belt sander. I’ll probably use a very similar design but this time I’ll make sure that I lay the tools out and measure the total space!

sketchuplanerjointer

planercart1

planercart2

planercart3

benmartens December 14, 2015 Maker, Woodworking

Christmas Lights

Do you remember voting for what color lights I should use around the garage doors this year? I took your advice and went all-white. You can see the end result below. I think it looks pretty nice. I might toy around with making the center door be all-red or something like that but for now, I’m happy. Next year I think I’ll focus on adding some smaller lights to the bushes and/or the little tree next to the driveway.

christmaslights2015

benmartens December 11, 2015 Commentary