Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Fantasy Football – Week 13

2015_week13_camnewtonHow ’bout them Seahawks? Eh? They looked great! Granted, the Vikings were down three key defensive players and they ran out of safeties, but the Seahawks actually had an offense. They get two “easy” games against the Ravens and the Browns before meeting the Rams and the Cardinals again in hopes of revenge. I admit that I’m starting to get my hopes up a bit. Vegas now thinks that the Seahawks are tied for the third most likely team to win the Super Bowl and they have passed up the Packers.

In our league, the top four teams won against the bottom four teams. This obviously did nothing to shake up the standings but it gave Austin a guaranteed playoff berth. This might be the first time when the playoffs were locked before the end of the regular season. If you didn’t make the playoffs, PLEASE make sure you continue to play hard this next week. There is still money riding on some of these games and the playoffs seeds will depend on your performance. Logan is locked for top seed but Dad and I could swap if I lose and he wins.

Logan might be in first place but the computer thinks he’s the third strongest team right now. We’ll see how that plays out.

1. Ben (+1)
2. Dad (+1)
3. Logan (-2)
4. Austin

Now on to the weekly awards.

This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Ben had 146.49 Tim 200.51 (Week 3) Tim 200.51 (2013)
Lowest Team Score Luke had 83.64 Andy had 62.50 (Week 10) Luke 47.01 (2011)
Biggest Blowout Austin beat Luke by 40.81 Ben beat Dad by 111.43 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Ben beat Tim by 14.43 Ben beat Andy by 2.46 (Week 7) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Cam Newton had 46.14 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 Logan has a 4 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 Andy has a 7 game losing streak. Was Andy had a 6 game losing streak (Week 12) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens December 9, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Wooden Snowflakes

A few years ago, Steve Ramsey posted a fun video about how to make wooden snowflakes. I decided to give it a shot and it was harder than it looked! I had a strong suspicion that my first attempt would fail so I did it out of cheap pine. I made a bunch of mistakes and thought I had it figured out so I moved on to maple for my second attempt. Nope. He clearly says in the video to glue the face grains together. I don’t know if he misspoke or if I just understand what he means but when I do that, I don’t get six evenly distributed points. I won’t explain the whole thing here, but if you build this, make sure you hold it all together with rubber bands and make sure it looks right before you apply glue.

The third time was the charm and they came out pretty nice. My only failure was that even after the third attempt, the pieces still didn’t form a perfect 360 degrees so there are gaps between some of the pieces. Oh well, I was tired of the project by the time I got to this point so I called it good enough!

We only put a few on our tree. Some of these will go out as gifts to Elijah’s teachers, but if you want one too, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

woodensnowflakes

benmartens December 8, 2015 Maker, Woodworking

Parks And Recreation Review

luckyboycanoeI finished watching all seven seasons of Parks and Recreation. This show came out a few years after The Office and I skipped it because the promos made it look like a knock off of The Office. After watching the whole show, I suppose there are a lot of similarites in the styile and the content matter, but I have to say that Parks and Rec is superior. While there are loveable characters in both, the cast of Parks and Rec is stronger and the story line held up better. Chris Pratt and Nick Offerman were incredible throughout.

Trivia: The series finale features Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) paddling the “Lucky Boy” canoe across a lake. He actually built that canoe himself. In fact, all of the shots of him in his woodshop were actually his woodshop and he built many of the props for the show. The canoe was one of two big canoe projects. He kept one for himself and the Lucky Boy was recently delivered to his friend Jimmy Diresta. Jimmy is a woodworker as well and now has a successful YouTube channel that I enjoy and he’s also host of the Making It podcast which I recommend if you like to make stuff.

Parks and Rec gets two thumbs up from me. It’s easy to flip on, chuckle, and burn through a few episodes. It was available for free to Prime members but now you need a Hulu subscription to watch it (assuming you don’t want to pay ~$25/season to buy it.)

benmartens December 7, 2015 Commentary

Elijah Update

elijahpedestalElijah is almost two and a half years old now! It’s rare that a day goes by without Tyla and I looking at each other and saying “Where did he learn that?” He’s picking things up so quickly! He recently discovered a love for Legos. We’re starting him out on the regular Legos and skipping right over Duplos, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. He mostly likes to point at things in the book and ask us to build them for him, but he has started trying to construct things on his own. For a couple days he was carrying around something and we couldn’t understand what he said it was. Finally Tyla deciphered that he said it was a “motor home.” So there you go Future Elijah. The first Lego project you thought up and built yourself was a motor home.

His memory is incredible. He quickly picks up lots of songs that we sing to him. You never know what he’ll start singing as you are walking through a store. His favorites right now are the Doxology (Praise God from whom all blessings flow…), the ABCs, Zacchaeus, and Deep and Wide. The other morning I had “Momma’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” stuck in my head and I guess I was singing it a lot because later that morning I heard him singing it while playing with Legos. He also has the common table prayer memorized and when he’s really hungry, you’ll find him in his chair saying the prayer as a hint to us that it’s time to eat.

Elijah is getting to a good age for me to get work done around the house with him. In fact, if he knows I’m going out in the garage to work, I usually shut the door and hear him crying behind me. He loves to follow me around whether it’s woodworking or working in the yard. The other day he told me, “We need to fix this house. It’s basically falling down.”

Having a two year old running around the house is a challenge, but I love this little man! He’s got a great personality and it’s awesome to see his world growing day by day.

benmartens December 4, 2015 Family

Dos Tios Glass Break

brokenglassIt has been almost eight years since Tim and I ordered 144 custom beer glasses. It was a goofy project but still one that I enjoy to this day. They have held up amazingly well. I reuse the same two or three glasses every week and even through countless dishwasher cycles, they look as good as the day we bought them.

Well, most of them look good. Last week I had one break in a crazy way. When I came down to the kitchen one morning, I picked up one of the glasses to rinse it out and put it in the dishwasher. The glass was about half full with water and I had whiskey stones (rum stones?) soaking in it to sort of clean them a bit. When I picked up the glass. the top part came off and the base stayed on the counter. The water and stones poured out.

It was a very clean break. Maybe it had cracked when I set it down on the counter the night before, but it was so perfect that the water didn’t leak out? I couldn’t figure it out, but I guess this means I’m down one glass. At this rate I should have enough glasses for the next half a millennia or so.

benmartens December 3, 2015 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 12

2015_week12_wilsonThe Seahawks Steelers game on Sunday was a doozy! It was uncharacteristic of the Seahawks and not just from a sarcastic sense because they won a close/tough game. The Steelers were able to do pretty much whatever they wanted against the defense and the Seahawk offense looked pretty strong. The Seahawks still made plenty of stupid penalties but it wasn’t as bad as previous games. And a five TD game from Wilson? Who saw THAT coming? While the Seahawks defense gave up a lot of yards and points, they did have a bunch of key takeaways that made the difference in the game. So while the road to the playoffs is still going to be very difficult, I think there is more hope based on what they showed in this game. We’ll see if they can continue it against the Vikings.

Logan is now in sole control of first place. Dad claimed the third playoff spot so now there’s just one spot remaining and two weeks to fight for it. Austin would get it today but I think Jim and Tim have a good shot at it too.

Dad has been coming on strong and jumped up three spots in the Power Rankings:
1. Logan
2. Ben (+1)
3. Dad (+3)
4. Austin (-2)

Now on to the weekly awards.

This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Dad had 150.85 Tim 200.51 (Week 3) Tim 200.51 (2013)
Lowest Team Score Luke had 63.53 Andy had 62.50 (Week 10) Luke 47.01 (2011)
Biggest Blowout Dad beat Austin by 45.73 Ben beat Dad by 111.43 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Jim beat Ben by 24.57 Ben beat Andy by 2.46 (Week 7) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Russell Wilson had 45.20 on Luke’s bench 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 Logan has a 4 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 Andy has a 6 game losing streak  Was Luke, Austin, Tim and Andy had 5 game losing streaks. (Weeks 5, 7, 8 and 11) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens December 2, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Oscillating Spindle Sander

spindlesanderI’m really enjoying my Grizzly band saw. It comes in handy on almost every single project. Now that I have the band saw, I find myself cutting a lot more curves. Curves were tricky to sand with my existing tools so that meant a lot of sanding by hand. With pine or other soft woods, that’s not too bad, but sanding walnut and maple can take a lot of effort.

To speed things up, I purchased an oscillating spindle sander. You install cylinders of various sizes into the machine. Each cylinder is covered in sand paper and it spins around. That’s the basic idea, but if it stopped there, the place where the sandpaper connected with the wood would fill up with dust very quickly and reduce the effectiveness of the sandpaper. In addition to spinning, this machine also moves the cylinder up and down which gives the sandpaper a chance to “breathe” and throw off some of the dust. There’s also a dust collection port which pulls in dust right around the cylinder so it keeps the air pretty clean.

This setup is really handy for sanding curves. Even if you don’t have a cylinder that matches your curve exactly, it will still be better than using a flat sanding surface.

I picked this one up at Harbor Freight for $99 with a coupon. I figure this is a great tool to buy from them because it doesn’t need to be super precise or perfect.

My shop is pretty well-stocked for tools now. This was the last power tool on my list. Obviously there are always more tools you can buy, but I feel like I’m well-equipped to handle most of the projects that I’m interested in. I’d still love some kind of a CNC machine or 3D printer, but I keep reminding myself that I have access to them for free through work and I haven’t even taken advantage of that yet. Those purchases are going to be a ways down the road which is fine because it will give the technology more time to mature.

Now I need to get started on some shop furniture. My jointer, planer, router table, drum sander and this new spindle sander don’t really have a good home and they each alternate between the floor and a folding table. I’m planning a few more rolling carts with storage underneath.

benmartens December 1, 2015 Woodworking

Amazon Handmade

amazonhandmadeWhen you think about buying handmade craft projects online, you probably think of Etsy. They’ve been around for a long time and they’re the uncontested leader in the market. However, Etsy has left a lot of angry makers in their wake. You can read a good write up about that on Wired, but for example, Etsy made a change to allow companies to sell their products. So if you’re thinking about selling a few of your crafts on the site, you’re going to be competing with a company doing a million dollars in sales. Not only does it make it really difficult for the individual maker to survive, it also dupes buyers into thinking they are buying something handmade when really it might be just churned out by a company.

Amazon is capitalizing on that frustration with their Handmade section. They emphasize that items must not come from a factory and they must be genuinely handmade. Products on Amazon Handmade aren’t cheap but that’s viewed by many makers as a good thing because hand making items is not cheap. The prices seem to reflect actual costs for someone trying to make a living doing this type of work.

It’s just getting started but they already have over 80,000 items. That’s a small number compared to Etsy, but it’s worth checking out when you’re looking to purchase, and it might be an interesting option if you’re looking to sell your crafts too.

benmartens November 30, 2015 Links, Woodworking

Working With ISOs

isofileWe don’t get a lot of software on discs anymore, but it does still happen. What do you do when you need to install that software on a computer without a DVD drive? You could buy a USB DVD drive but that’s a pain to hook up. Instead, consider turning that DVD disc into an “ISO” file. It’s a single file that fully represents the disc. With modern versions of Windows, you can “mount” the ISO file and Windows treats that file just like it would if you had put the actual disc into the computer. If your computer doesn’t have this mounting feature, there are plenty of free software solutions. Virtual Clone Drive is a great one.

How do you make an ISO? Grab a free copy of ImgBurn. It has tons of options including making an ISO from a disc and burning an ISO back to a disc.

This might seem slightly geeky but it’s a great way to get rid of all those discs sitting in the closet. Just rip them to ISO files and then toss the discs. You can easily access them from any computer in your house and if you really need a disc again, you can burn it.

benmartens November 27, 2015 Geek

New Poster Frame

After the success I had putting a new picture into an existing frame, I decided to try my luck again with the other big picture in our living room. This one was a little trickier to cut because there is no matte so the picture needs to be cut exactly to the right size. I printed this one at Walgreens again because they had another 50% off sale. That meant that a 24×36″ print was only $15.

The replacement went well and I think it looks great. The photo is an HDR shot from our vacation to Lake Cavanaugh a few months ago.

lakecavanaughprint

benmartens November 26, 2015 Projects