Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Reframing

When I bought the condo in 2006 as a bachelor, I decided I needed something for the walls that didn’t look like it was a college dorm. But I didn’t want to pay tons of money for actual artwork. Instead, I bought a couple posters from the internet and then took them in to get them custom framed. It seemed like a good compromise.

My mistake was going to a place that does SUPER nice frames instead of a craft store that does frames for normal people. I had no idea there was a difference and ended up paying probably three times more than I needed to. Oops.

One of them has a sunset skyline shot of Seattle and it looks pretty nice, but the other is just a generic abstract art piece. I thought it looked fine until I saw the same thing hanging in a cafeteria at work. Hmm…

This past weekend, I decided that I was going to take the frame apart and see if I could put one of my own pictures in there. Overpaying for a frame with a cheapo poster in it seemed silly, but having a beautiful frame for a photo I took myself? That feels more logical/
It turns out that a fancy professional framing job is still the same basic idea as other frames. I peeled off the construction paper covering the back of the frame. Then I opened up the insides and saw that the poster was attached to a piece of foam board and fit into an opening in the matte.

I needed a 24×24″ print to fit in there and that was a little more tricky than I though. Most places only go up to 20×30″. FedEx does bigger prints but they wanted ~$60. Walgreens also does bigger prints and they had a half price sale going on that brought the price of my 24×36″ print down to $15!

I used a straight edge and an exacto knife to trim the photo. I didn’t do anything too fancy to mount it in the frame. I just used a combination of scotch tape and packing tape to fix the print to the foam board. Then I put the frame back together and voila!

The hardest part was probably trying to find a picture that matched the matte well and also looked good with a square crop. The picture would have matched the room slightly better if it had a little red in it, but this still looks pretty good. The photo was taken on a camping trip in 2012 near Bay View State Park.
newpictureframe2

 

benmartens July 3, 2015 Projects

New Horizons

newhorizonsOn January 19, 2006, the New Horizons probe left earth on it’s long journey to Pluto. In less than two weeks, it will make it’s closest pass to Pluto. Let’s take a minute to ponder some of the incredible math/physics associated with this journey:

  • It took just over one year to reach Jupiter for a slingshot boost to Pluto, but even with the increased speed, it has taken another 8 years to get to Pluto.
  • It’s the fastest spacecraft ever launched: 36,373 mph.
  • Pluto is 10.5 times farther from the sun than Earth is
  • From 2007-2014, the probe woke up only once per week to send a message saying that everything was ok and then it also woke up 50 days per year to do some science and course monitoring.
  • When it passes by Pluto, it will have traveled 2.96 billion miles.
  • After traveling all those years and all those miles, it has to hit an area of space that is only 186 miles in diameter to achieve it’s objective.
  • There were three scheduled course corrections although the second was canceled because the first one was so accurate. There was another course correction after passing by Jupiter and one more at about the halfway point in 2010. In total, the spacecraft only burned about 20-30 minutes of fuel to make course corrections!
  • After passing by Pluto, the probe will continue on to examine objects in the Kuiper Belt. The mission could last another 10 years.
benmartens July 2, 2015 Geek

Riding To Work

When we moved to Woodinville in 2011, I noted that our house was positioned very well for me to ride to work. It’s only about a mile down to the Sammamish river trail and then I take that all the way into Redmond with about a mile or so from the end of the trail to campus. Here it is, 2015, and I hadn’t done it yet. So finally I circled a date on the calendar and made it happen.

That date ended up being the hottest day of the year to that point, but I didn’t let it deter me. The ride into work was pretty nice for the first 8.5 miles. I even had a bald eagle flying overhead right above the trail for a little while. But there was a problem lurking. Google Maps has a nice bike route feature that includes an elevation view. As you can see, there’s a 400 ft hill on each end of the route.

hillsbikeride

That last 1.5 miles up to campus is brutal. I started off thinking that I would slog it out and make it all the way without stopping. I failed that, but I only walked for about 100 yards of the hill. And I’m not going to lie… when I made it to the top of the hill, I felt like I was going to pass out and I had to sit and rest for a while. I’m an old man. But the trip was a success. I made it in 1 hour and 2 minutes, just like Google predicted.

Work provides us with a badge-locked storage area for bikes and a locker room with towel service so that I didn’t stink all day. It was the first time I’ve ever used those perks of the job and they’re pretty nice to have!

The flaw in my plan was that I underestimated how tired I would be after riding to work and then working all day. So I swallowed my pride and asked Tyla if she wanted to meet me at a park along the trail right before where I would need to break off and head up the big hill to our house. The ride there wasn’t too bad although there was about a 10 mph wind blowing in my face and I was pretty tired by the time I got to the park. It’s a good thing we set up that rendezvous. I was happy to throw my bike in the car and drive up the hill.

Will I do this again? Maybe someday. It would be fun to get in shape and be able to handle this a little better. I do think that I’d want more of a street bike instead of a mountain bike. And it’s hard to justify the extra time out of my day when time is so precious right now.

ridetowork

benmartens July 1, 2015 Sports

Leap Second

What would you do with an extra second?! The possibilities are… limited. But that will be your opportunity tonight. The moon and redistribution of mass on Earth (earthquakes, moving glaciers, etc) effect the speed of rotation of the earth. Atomic clocks obviously aren’t affected by these things so for the same reason that we need leap days, we also need some smaller adjustments.

Wikipedia says this has happened 25 times since 1972 and tonight will be the 26th time. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service schedules these events six months in advance on an as needed basis.

I’ll spend my extra second sleeping… or more likely I’ll spend it trying to get my son to go back to sleep.

benmartens June 30, 2015 Commentary

Church Website Updates

When I stepped out of the property manager role at church at the end of last year, I stepped into the IT role. After a network and PC update, it has been going pretty smooth so I decided to look for something else to break fix.

We had been using a service for our web and email hosting that catered to churches. It’s a great way for non-technical people to get a church website going. Unfortunately it’s pretty limited. I got control of our domain name from them, switched to a new email provider and then moved our web hosting to SquareSpace. I literally spent 15 minutes copying and pasting the old content into a new design template and it already looks so much better. BethH is going to take it from here and actually spend some time with the design, layout and content to make it even nicer.

You can see it at http://www.calvarylutheranbellevue.org/ or check out the before and after below. I don’t love the long domain name but we’re kind of stuck with it now. I might purchase a shorter one and forward everything to the longer one but we’ll see.

It’s really nice to have control of all the various pieces and to be using a top-notch web host like SquareSpace. If you need to create a website, you need to check them out. While they will hold your hand for a very simple setup, you can also get really geeky and dive deep into lots of different options.

Before:
calvaryoldsite
After:
calvarynewsite

benmartens June 29, 2015 Geek

Door Stops

We have central air conditioning in our house, but we prefer to leave the windows open instead when possible. That means we end up with various shoes, books, and hampers sitting in front of each door upstairs to keep it propped open. On Sunday evening, I was looking for a quick and easy project to build without any planning so I decided to build some door stops.

I glued together a bunch of scrap wood, used the table saw to trim it up and then the miter saw to cut the wedges. A couple coats of spray lacquer finished off the job.

This was a super simple project, but it makes me happy when I see them sitting under the doors upstairs. They look nicer than the random objects we used before, and each piece of wood that I used in the doorstops brings back memories of other fun projects. It was rewarding to walk into the shop for an hour or two with no plans and walk out with a finished project.

doorstop

benmartens June 26, 2015 Woodworking

Table Saw Stand

My table saw came from Tim who got it from Doug. I think Doug put together the rolling base for the metal stand. It worked ok, but the wheels were a bit small when I’d try to roll it out into the driveway and my first attempt at dust collection for the table saw never worked that well. I decided to build a new stand from scratch and I took the opportunity to learn some new things along the way.

The first task was to really learn SketchUp. It’s a free 3D modeling tool that is especially popular among woodworkers. As with any tool like this, there is a steep learning curve, but I’ve seen how much it can help people once they get the hang of it. I’m far from an expert but it was handy to visualize the build before getting into it, and it also helped me figure out how much wood I needed to buy. (The colors are just to help differentiate the pieces.) I stopped tweaking the drawing once I got it close and then I modified all the measurements slightly in my head so that I could make better use of the plywood and not have so much waste. Next time, I’ll spend the extra time to make those tweaks in the model because it would be really helpful to take measurements right from the model to figure out where all the dadoes go.

tablesawsketchupThe next thing I learned was using a dado stack on the table saw. I cut lots of dadoes for Tyla’s jewelry box, but I used the router table for all of those. Tim loaned me his dado blades and I used my new custom insert. That setup combined with the track for cutting plywood made quick work of the main pieces

The dadoes made it easy to hold everything in place while I glued and nailed it together. Unfortunately, once I was part way into the assembly, I realized that I had cut one dado 1/2″ off of where it was supposed to be. Also the whole unit wasn’t quite square. The result was that it looked a little goofy and the box that was going to hold the two shelves wasn’t square. Yuck.

I ended up working around the mess. You can easily tell that it was built by a novice, but it functions quite well. There’s a hole cut out under the table saw so the dust falls into the top drawer. Plus, I have lots of storage for push sticks, blades, and jigs.

I put tall sides on the left and the back thinking that I might add some flip up tables on those sides to help support bigger pieces of wood. I’m not sure if/when I’ll get to that, but it was an easy addition to the project in case I decide to do that later.

The whole unit is solid and rolls around very nicely. The wheels are salvaged from my old Park ‘N Move which I don’t need after selling the motorcycle.

I’d be happy to toss this whole thing out for a nicer table saw, but in reality, this saw has been good to me and I think I’m going to have it for quite a while. There are lots of other tools I’d rather have before a new table saw.

tablesawstand

PS. I also should have done a better job planning my cuts so that I could have matched the grain on the drawer fronts. I ended up with a huge green blotch in the poplar plywood on that bottom drawer and it very obviously doesn’t match the top drawer.

benmartens June 25, 2015 Woodworking

Table Saw Insert

I never paid much attention to the insert that fits around the blade in my table saw until I tried to install a thick dado set of blades and they didn’t fit into the insert. You can pay $30-50 and buy new ones but yikes, that’s pricey for just the few cuts I wanted to make.

Instead, I pulled out a scrap piece of wood, cut out the exact shape of the opening, cut out a finger hole, drill some screw holes, routed the bottom to make it the right thickness and then mounted it into the table. I clamped a piece of wood over the insert to hold it down and then turned on the blade. I slowly raised the spinning blade up and it cut a perfectly sized hole in the insert. Booyah. Custom table saw insert for free!

You can find lots of great videos on YouTube showing you how to do this but I particularly liked the one from Frank Howarth.

customtablesawinsert

benmartens June 24, 2015 Woodworking

OpenSprinkler With Power BI

I’ve been happily using OpenSprinkler to control my irrigation system this year. One of its many features is logging how long each zone is on, but I haven’t done much with those logs yet. Last weekend, I decided to dig in to the data.

The first thing I did was write a little app that runs every morning, checks the latest logs, and uploads the new data to a SQL database in Azure.

Then I stood out by the water meter and figured out how much water each zone used. That included the startup usage (since water drains out of some heads when the zone is off) and the usage per minute. That let me calculate how much water I’ve been using over the past few months.

I fired up Power Query for Excel and brought in all the data so I could get some nice Power View charts and graphs going. (Note that I could also have used the new Power BI Designer instead of Excel, Power Query and Power View.) I saved that workbook to OneDrive and imported it into PowerBI.com. I set up PowerBI.com to automatically refresh the workbook every morning and show me the charts on a dashboard.

It might sound complicated but it only took me about an hour of work and that included standing out by my water meter for 15 minutes. Now I can fire up the PowerBI.com website every day and analyze my water usage. Since this isn’t based on an actual water flow meter, it won’t help me find leaks, but it does help me get an idea of how much money I’m spending to keep my yard green. I’m also working on some new features that will keep track of the high and low temperatures each day along with the precipitation.

You can get a long way in Power BI before you need to pay for anything so go give it a shot if this sparks some ideas in your head.

pbiopensprinkler

benmartens June 23, 2015 Gadgets, Geek, Home Improvement

Wireless Charging

DT-903_orange-white-greenFor the past 2.5 years, Tyla and I have had cell phones that support wireless charging. Last summer, I bought some cheapo wireless chargers and they just didn’t work reliably. I kind of gave up on the idea until they scattered some official Nokia charging pads around my building at work. I used them for a while and it worked every time. So I tossed the old ones that we didn’t use anymore and bought the nicer ones from Nokia (DT-903) which happened to be in our company store.

They work perfectly! Drop the phone on and boom, you’re charging. Plus, the charger connects to your phone with Bluetooth LE and will flash the light if you have a low battery, text message, email, etc. The flashing is configurable and you can set nighttime hours when the light is off completely. That’s a must-have feature since we have these in the bedroom.

Nokia also makes the DT-900 which is less expensive and I don’t think it has as many features, but we might pick one of those up for down in the main living area.

It’s definitely a luxury purchase, but Qi charging is a standard across lots of Windows Phone and Android devices. (Sorry, no iOS unless you put a special case on your phone.)

benmartens June 22, 2015 Gadgets