Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Fantasy Football – Week 9

2015_week9_mariotaI was up by less than a point against Luke at the end of the Cowboys Eagles game on Sunday night. If the Cowboys missed their field goal, the game would have been over and I would have had 9 games in a row. As they snapped the ball for Dan Bailey to kick it, the announcer said that he was one of the best in the game. Perfect. A jinx! The kick went up and started curving left. He was going to miss! CLANG! It hit the upright… and fell through. The game went into overtime and my streak ends at eight wins. It was fun while it lasted. Kudos to Luke for starting an optimal roster.

Elsewhere in the league, Tim defeated Logan and Dad beat Andy so Logan and Dad are once again tied for second. Austin has sole ownership of 4th and everyone else is tied for 5th with five games left until the playoffs start. Week 10 features me against Logan, Dad against the streak killer (Luke), Austin against Tim and Jim against Andy.

In the last two weeks, Austin has moved up 5 spots in the power rankings. Could he be making another run like he did at the end of last season? And after two weeks out of the top four, Tim has re-entered the list.

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

Now on to the weekly awards.

This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Austin had 143.59 Tim 200.51 (Week 3) Tim 200.51 (2013)
Lowest Team Score Andy had 92.73 Austin had 64.70 (Week 5) Luke 47.01 (2011)
Biggest Blowout Luke beat Ben by 16.07 Ben beat Dad by 111.43 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Tim beat Logan by 9.52 Ben beat Andy by 2.46 (Week 7) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Marcus Mariota had 41.34 as a free agent. 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 and Luke 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 a 3 game losing streak. Luke, Austin and Tim had 5 game losing streaks. (Weeks 5, 7 and 8) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens November 11, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Hulu Plus Review

huluplusI was happily enjoying all the Parks and Recreation episodes (great show!) on Amazon Prime Instant Video when suddenly that stopped being available as part of Prime. I was about halfway through the fifth of seven seasons. What to do?

I didn’t really love it enough to pay ~$25/season to watch the rest of it, but it was available as part of Hulu Plus for only ~$10/month. I found a coupon for a two week trial instead of the normal one week and fired it up.

It was my first experience with Hulu Plus, and, while it was nice that it worked on all my devices (Amazon Fire TV, Xbox360, Xbox One, and Windows Phone), I wasn’t impressed. First of all, the ads are annoying. Yes, it’s less than normal TV, but I don’t watch ads in normal TV because I DVR it. Here I’m forced to sit through a small selection of commercials over and over again. They do have a new price tier that lets you get rid of commercials for a few extra bucks. That would definitely be worth it.

The commercials were annoying but I knew I could pay money to get rid of them when the trial was up so it wasn’t horrible. What really annoyed me was the failure to remember not only where I was in an episode when I stopped watching but even what episode I was watching. I switched from device to device regularly and it seemed like it worked properly only about half the time. The other half of the time I’d have to flip through all of the episodes, figure out which one I was on, and then fast forward through the episode until I got to the point where I stopped before.

In a world where we are talking about 4K high dynamic range content coming soon, Hulu still streams their content in stereo like it’s 1950. Where’s the 5.1 that every other streaming service offers?

And finally, when I watched from a desktop PC, the video would stutter every few seconds. This PC is a beast and it easily handles YouTube, Netflix or Amazon Instant Video. Why does Hulu have to stink?

Hulu was around before Netflix or Amazon Instant Video and what do they have to show for themselves? It’s the same story they’ve always had: it’s almost something awesome, but it’s still not there yet.

I cancelled my subscription before the trial ran out. Thanks for letting me watch Parks and Rec.

benmartens November 10, 2015 Commentary

DIY Home Security

homesecuritySome of you know that I installed a security system at our house instead of contracting it out to ADT or one of the other popular companies. I never blogged about the project, but it was a major project for me. The physical installation wasn’t very hard, but it took a ton of time to research what I needed to buy. I’m not going to go into specifics on this public site, but here is some of the basic info in case you’re interested in this for your own home.

The main reason you would probably want to consider this is that you can save a lot of money on your monthly bill. I think ADT is currently charging $37/month for their basic package. By doing it yourself, you can get the same monitoring coverage for $10/month. You don’t have to be a math whiz to know that saving $27/month adds up quickly.

Our house was previously serviced by ADT but there was no active service when we moved in. The panels that ADT uses are locked down. While they are standard models, they are tweaked so that you can only use them with ADT. The sensors that are already on your doors and windows are probably reusable. In our case, all of the sensors were hardwired and those are extremely simple to reuse. The “only” thing I had to do was replace the main control panel and the keypad.

In retrospect, I could have saved myself some time if I had just bought the exact same panel that was there before. It would have been obvious how to wire it up! But I went with a new panel mostly because I didn’t think of that option, and also because I wanted to be able to support wireless sensors. I’m glad the wired sensors were there, but I wanted to quickly and easily expand the coverage of the system.

Once I had the panel in hand, I carefully labelled all the wires on the old panel, disconnected the wires, and then reconnected everything. Programming is all done via the keypad and you’re interacting with 90s technology. Everything is done via long strings of numbers and you better have a firm grasp on the manual so you don’t get loss. It’s ridiculous, but it works.

I was able to confirm that the alarm worked locally so then it was just a matter of hooking it up to the phone line. You cannot use a VOIP telephone line (like the one you get from Comcast.) It must be an actual old-fashioned telephone line (POTS) or you can use a cellular monitoring system for a little extra money per month.

So is this a good DIY project? Ehhh… if you’re a geek and you’re willing to spend a lot of time reading manuals, you can figure it out. You’d also have the advantage of being able to call me up and learn from my mistakes. I’m thankful we have it but I spent a TON of time getting it going. I think a lot of that delay was because I was so nervous about dropping a few hundred bucks and then screwing it all up.

Our system has been rock solid and we use it regularly. We’ve only had one false alarm and that was attributed to a helium balloon slowly floating in front of a sensor. I love our custom solution because when I decide to add some more sensors, I can do it for $20-40/sensor. There’s no service call from a tech, crazy prices for installation, or additional monthly fees. And if I want to control it from my phone or hook it into a home automation system, it’s just some more research and purchases on my end. We’ve already added fire and carbon monoxide monitoring for a grand total of $0/month.

Is the system safe? Sure. I’m already using the layout that the “professionals” recommended for the house and then I’ve added more sensors on top of that. I can tell you that the fire sensors we got are exactly the same as the system that we put in at church for tens of thousands of dollars. A smart burgler could get through our system, but they could get through your ADT system at least as easily. I could spend more money to tighten up some of those holes, but at some point you just have to let it go. Having the sign out front is probably more important than the layout of our system.

I enjoy this kind of thing so it’s worth my time to save the money. Obviously the math is different for most people because companies like ADT are very successful!

benmartens November 9, 2015 Gadgets, Home Improvement

Getting Started With Woodworking

jigsawObviously I’m loving woodworking right now. It’s a very relaxing and satisfying hobby, and it’s a great one for me right now because I can easily do it in the garage when I have a few spare minutes. Any new hobby can seem intimidating at first, but woodworking doesn’t require a huge investment or training course to get started.

Theoretically you could do a lot with just a handsaw, but you’ll probably want some sore of power tools to get started. One of the best initial purchases is a jig saw. It’s small, easy to control, relatively safe, and best of all: cheap! There are plenty of options, but I have a $40 Black and Decker that still serves me well. Toss in some wood glue and sandpaper and you’re pretty much off to the races. From there just check to see what your specific project requires. You might need to add in a hammer and nails or a screwdriver and screws. You may end up wishing for a drill and drill bits too. Even if you bought all that stuff, you would have spent less than $150 to pick up a brand new hobby.

Now, what should you build? The best projects are ones that fill a need. Maybe you want something to organize clutter on your desk, a toy for your kid, or a place to hang your coats. If you want some more guidance, there are tons of great YouTube channels. I’ve covered many of them before, but specifically, check out Steve Ramsey’s list of videos for projects that require limited tools.

Making things with your hands is a wonderful experience whether you’re doing woodworking or some other kind of craft. Just try it out! The worst that will probably happen is that you waste some wood and you learn something.

[UPDATE] Great timing! Steve recently posted a video showing how to build a bed with just a couple basic tools. No fancy workshop required!

benmartens November 6, 2015 Woodworking

My First Car

cars_mustangLast week’s post about the cars we had when I was growing up got me thinking about the experience of picking up the first car that I ever purchased: a 2002 Ford Mustang GT. It was a beautiful car, and I bought it right after college. The dealer had to transfer it in from another dealership so I couldn’t drive it off the lot after making the deal. Mom took me to pick it up a few days later when it arrived at the dealer. After getting the keys, I sat down in the car to drive it away for the first time. I looked up and noticed about four sales guys watching me from the window. With my foot on the brake, I disengaged the parking brake, put it in reverse, slowly released the clutch and… stalled it. My face turned bright red as I restarted the engine and gave it plenty of gas to make sure I didn’t stall it twice.

It doesn’t sound so bad now that I write it out, but this event sticks out in my head as one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I’ve stalled cars plenty of times, but never with all those guys laughing at me and my fancy new car that they probably thought my parents purchased for me.

benmartens November 5, 2015 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 8

2015_week8_drewbreesThe Seahawks squeaked out a win. It wasn’t the prettiest game with an offense that still can’t score in the redzone, but they did figure out a gameplan that helped to avoid any sacks for Wilson. This win brings them back to 0.500 on the season and keeps them limping along with a hope for the playoffs. They get a bye week in Week 9 to rest up and maybe make a trade to improve their offensive line.

This was a big week for our league as Drew Brees set the all time record for most points in our league (sitting on Tim’s bench, oops), I tied Micah’s all time consecutive win record, and I almost broke the all time biggest blowout record. With six games left until the playoffs, Logan and I are looking like pretty good bets to participate. Dad currently has a solid hold on third and the rest of the league is fighting for the fourth spot. Even if you’re one of the teams with a 2-6 record, you’re only one spot out of the playoffs right now!

The Power Rankings stayed mostly stable except that Austin jumped up to take Dad’s third place spot.

1. Ben
2. Logan
3. Austin (+4)
4. Andy

Now on to the weekly awards.

This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Ben had 184.04 Tim 200.51 (Week 3) Tim 200.51 (2013)
Lowest Team Score Dad had 72.61 Austin had 64.70 (Week 5) Luke 47.01 (2011)
Biggest Blowout Ben beat Dad by 111.43 Ben beat Austin by 68.23 (Week 4) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Logan beat Jim by 21.41 Ben beat Andy by 2.46 (Week 7) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench Aaron Rodgers had 44.92 for Tim (Week 3) Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy (2013)
Longest Active Winning Streak Ben has an 8 game winning streak Was Ben had a 7 game winning streak (Week 7) Was Micah had an 8 game winning streak (2011)
Longest Active Losing Streak Tim has a 5 game losing streak Luke and Austin had 5 game losing streaks. (Weeks 5 and 7) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens November 4, 2015 Fantasy Sports

Storing Gasoline

I lived much of my life not realizing that gas has a relatively short shelf life. I figured it out by sending one of church’s mowers to the mechanic because it was running terribly. The result? He replaced the gas and it ran beautifully. The gas had gone bad sitting in the shed over the winter.

Common estimates say that after about 3 months, your ethanol blended gas (which is almost everything you buy these days) should be thrown away and replaced. If you put Sta-Bil or some other fuel stabilizer in it, you might get 6-12 months. The longer you store the gas, the more water that the ethanol attracts. Watered down gas is a mess for your engine to deal with. At best you’ll get decreased fuel mileage and power, but in extreme cases you can really mess up your vehicle.

It’s not a big deal in cars because we generally run through the tanks of gas pretty quickly. It’s a more common problem in lawn equipment. During the winter months, that gas is effectively rotting in your shed and gums up your carburetor.

To help avoid these problems, I do a few things:

  1. Whenever I fill up our gas can, I set a reminder to replace it in two months. The can is pretty small so I usually just pour it into my car’s gas tank when the car is already mostly full. I figure it can deal with a gallon or two of older gas mixed in with 10 gallons of good gas.
  2. The last time I fill up the lawnmower for the season, I use ethanol free gasoline. You can buy it from special gas stations, or you can pick up a can from the home center. It’s not cheap but spending a couple extra bucks to save yourself the headache of cleaning a carburetor is probably worth it.
  3. My weedwacker accepts multiple attachments so I can also use it as a leaf blower and an edger. It gets used pretty often during the spring, summer and fall, but even then, I hardly go through any gas. Rather than keep a small gas can with oil-mixed gas that will go bad before I use it all, I just buy the premixed ethanol free gas. It lasts “forever” and I don’t have to remember where I put the oil to mix in.

It costs a little extra but these simple steps can save you time, headaches and money.

trufuel

P.S. It feels like I just wrote an eHow article. Ew.

benmartens November 3, 2015 Commentary

Ted’s Woodworking Scam

tedswoodworkingThe internet is missing something like Amazon for woodworking plans. There should be a site that hosts plans from various authors and has reviews from people who have purchased the product. There are plenty of tiny sites, but no master collection.

That allows scammers like Ted’s Woodworking to step in. They have collected some freely available plans, stolen a bunch of plans that they don’t own, and then packaged it all up into one bundle that you pay for. It’s sad and frustrating that these guys can somehow get away with this. Many of the major wood magazines have done articles about this being a scam, but I’ll do my part by announcing it here too. Here’s a great article showing all the companies that Ted has stolen from and Steve Ramsey has an older video about it. This has been going on for a very long time.

If you’re looking for great plans, check out these sites which have a mix of free and paid plans:

There is so much awesome content out there, and much of it is free anyway. Don’t perpetuate the scams.

benmartens November 2, 2015 Woodworking

Childhood Cars

I’ve been spending a lot of time dreaming and learning about my potential next vehicle purchase (TRUCK!) and it got me to thinking about all the vehicles I’ve owned over the years and the cars that Mom and Dad have owned. I asked Mom to dig up photos of all the cars they owned together (until I left the house) and here’s the list:

1973 Ford Gran Torino Sport
Dad loved this car. He actually kept it until probably the late 80s though it didn’t run at that point. He gave it to a neighbor who restored it.
momdad_torino1978 Ford Mustang II
I don’t remember this car. The only thing I remember about this car is a story Mom and Dad tell about driving through Nevada (?) and it was so hot that it felt like being in an oven.
momdad_mustang1979 Ford LTD
This is the first car that I remember. Dad used to hold me on his lap and let me drive down our quarter-mile long driveway in this car. I didn’t know it until Mom sent over the info for this post, but this is the only car that they purchased from a used car lot. A couple others were used cars as well, but those were purchased from friends and relatives.
momdad_ltd1981 Mercury Grand Marquis
This car belonged to Great Grandpa Hinkle. Mom and Dad bought it from Great Grandma after Great Grandpa passed away. The only thing that I remember about this car was that a bottle of acid for the pool accidentally spilled on the floor behind the drivers seat and ate through the floor mat. Oops.
momdad_marquis
1989 Ford Taurus
I have a ton of memories about this car. For one thing, it’s the first car that I remember them purchasing. I was so excited about how “small” it was. I remember doodling the dashboard layout while sitting in Miss Loescher’s class. And this was the car that I drove to high school. By the time I got it, some of the paint was starting to flake off the gray part on the bottom and there was a little rust on the maroon parts. I tried to grind off the rust and repaint both parts. It wasn’t a great idea.
momdad_taurus1991 Ford Probe
Dad and Mom bought this from Uncle Mark who works for Ford (which explains all the Fords…) and what a cool car it was! It came with a stain on the floor in the backseat from where cousin Ryan had accidentally spilled an orange pop. I spent a ton of time in this car as well. In the photo you can see me driving it to prom. I took this to college for about three of my years at Purdue and drove it during my internships at John Deere. I got over 40mpg from it! It was also the start of my love for manual transmissions. I started driving this around 1999 and drove a manual from the until now.
momdad_probe1995 Ford Taurus
Dad and Mom liked the first maroon Taurus so well that they bought another one six years later.
momdad_taurus951999 Mercury Sable
And last but not least (while I was living there) is the Mercury Sable. This one was extra fancy. It had leather seats and a six disc CD changer in the trunk.
momdad_sableMom, thank you for finding all this information!

benmartens October 30, 2015 Commentary

Forza 6 Review

forza6My gaming time has dwindled to almost zero, but the Forza series is still going strong in my house. Forza 6 launched in September and I jumped in. I was unimpressed with the changes in Forza 5, but 6 really is a great step forward. Here are my bulleted impressions:

  • The visuals are incredible, but you need to hit pause to notice all the details. You should be focusing on your driving, not watching blades of grass whiz by.
  • The addition of nighttime and rain modes adds a lot of challenge. My only complaint is that rain mode is REALLY wet. There are huge puddles of standing water around the track and they realistically change from lap to lap so it can be a bit of a crap shoot.
  • The game has always been very light on story/guidance but I felt like 5 was pretty bad and 6 regains some ground.
  • The AI is fantastically good. One of the frustrations of racing up through the pack has always been that AI cars will be super aggressive (or just dumb.) Unless you’re being ridiculous, the AI does an excellent job of staying out of your way in this version of the game. (DrJeffS, is that your code? If so, thank you!)

And of course, if you had anybody a piece of software, they’ll enjoy it for 5 seconds before spouting off a list of feature requests.

  • I can’t find any way to get updates on how many seconds ahead or behind my nearest competitors are. All I get is a display about how many feet ahead or behind they are. Really? Who cares about feet. I need time. The only situation where distance is useful is when I’m very close to another car. It helps me know if someone is right beside me without looking over.
  • Forza 6 makes it easier to see the leaderboards after a race, but it’s still not as good as it used to be. As soon as I finish a race, I want to see the top time for the track, my time for the track, what rank that is and what percentile I’m in. I love the thrill of posting a top 50 or top 100 time!
  • You start every race mid-pack. Why not use my Drivatar data to pre-qualify me and give me a better starting spot? I’d probably crank the difficulty up to max if I didn’t have to pass a dozen cars just to get to the front. It’s fine if you don’t want to put me in the #1 spot, but at least let me get in the top 2 or 3.
  • When I was doing go kart racing around the turn of the century (how’s that for making me feel old?), we had a system on the kart that would map out the track based on gyros and overlay a bunch of stats like when you were on the gas or brake, etc. You could compare your lap times and look at characteristics that might have led to those lap times. Forza has all that data and more! Give me a screen where I can see something like that and maybe even have an AI coach that will point out where you could gain time.

And then there are some ridiculous/futuristic dreams:

  • Imagine this game in virtual reality. I don’t care too much about VR, but I would buy a VR setup just to play Forza. I already play on a 110″ screen, but it would be incredible to be able to look around by turning your head while having a full field of view. Couple that with a full driving rig (seat, steering wheel, pedals, etc) and you’re closer than ever to the real thing.
  • The tracks in the game are great, but we have all this real-world map data available. What if you could pick a car and tear off on streets that you drive every day?! Obviously the scenery would be difficult to match exactly, but if you just got the curves and elevation changes right, I’d have a blast. Yes, I know that Forza Horizon is an open world game, but I want to drive on streets that I know. There are some roads that where I’ve always dreamed about setting up a road course. This would be the way to make it happen legally and safely with unlimited budget. Maybe one of the PC racing games has some sort of feature/hack to make this work. I should look into it…

If you love racing simulators, you probably already own this so I don’t have to tell you that it’s worth your money. In Forza 6, I finally feel like the graphics, physics and audio are so perfectly tuned, that any improvements will probably not be noticeable. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I’ll also be happy to see how the series can branch out into other areas (like the driving coach or VR?) to keep us buying the next versions.

Thank you Forza team!

benmartens October 29, 2015 Gaming