Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Don’s Fence

Last summer at this time I was in the middle of our huge yard remodel and that included building a fence. Don and Logan put in a lot of hours on the fence at my house. This summer, we’re all working together again but this time it’s at Don’s house.

So far we’ve gotten most of the old fence removed, most of the new posts in concrete, and some of the fence up. This past weekend we made a ton of progress because Don rented an auger and a cement mixer. We knocked out 10 posts before 3pm. Not too shabby for our ragtag group.

Somehow Don seems to end most of the work days with a bleeding cut on his arm, I hurt my back on Saturday running the auger and Logan broke his thumb by shooting a nail through it. You might not want to come help with this project. Our safety record isn’t very good!

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benmartens June 18, 2015 Home Improvement

Cutting Plywood

circularsawtrackI usually work alone in the garage so cutting big sheets of plywood or MDF can be a hassle. Running it across the table saw just isn’t an option until I’m dealing with smaller pieces. In the past, I’ve picked out a straight 2×4, clamped it to the plywood, and then used that as a guide for the circular saw. That works pretty well but it can take a long time to get the guide set up in just the right spot.

I finally got around to making a jig to help with this. It’s not complicated and I definitely didn’t invent the idea, but here’s how you make it:
1) Cut off a 3″ by 8 foot slice of your sheet of plywood. Make sure that you’re keeping a factory edge and you mark it. That’s your straight edge.
2) Measure the distance between your circular saw edge and the blade. Add 3″ for your cutoff and then another ~3″ for clamp room. Cut off another slice that wide. That will be the base of your jig.
3) Glue the 3″ strip on top of your base strip. Make sure the factory edge is pointing at the wider side of the base strip. It should be about 2″ from one edge. Add nails to hold it in place while the glue dries.
4) Now make a cut with your circular saw to trim off the extra wood.

You now have a zero-clearance jig to help you rip plywood. If you’re making a cut on the plywood, add a pencial mark on each end of the sheet where you want to cut. Then clamp your jig down so that it is right up against your pencil marks. Run your circular saw, holding it tightly up against the top fence and you’ll get nice straight cut in the right spot.

My typed-out description isn’t great, but there are lots of videos showing how it all works. I recommend Jay Bates’s blog post and video. He gets to it about halfway through the post/video.

The 8 foot length is a bit long when you’re doing 4′ cuts but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll end up making a second shorter one.

benmartens June 17, 2015 Woodworking

Greenwater Lakes

After the success of our Barclay Lake hike, we decided to try it again. We met Mandy and Ike at their house, got both car seats into one car and piled in for a 1 hour 45 minute drive down to the trailhead for Greenwater Lakes. It’s off of Hwy 410 on Forest Road 70. The drive was a little long for the boys both coming and going, but it’s nice to get a little farther away from the popular, crowded trails.

The hike had a little more vertical than the Barclay Lake hike but it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately the lakes at the end weren’t as great as we were expecting. They both looked really low which is unusual for this time of year but probably expected given the low snowpack. We had a normal amount of precipitation during the winter, but it wasn’t in the form of snow so it wasn’t released slowly down the mountain during the spring melt.

We ended up going all the way past the bigger, second lake and found a nice spot along the river that feeds into the lakes. The boys had fun throwing rocks into the water while we enjoyed a picnic and rested up for the trip back.

I don’t think we’ll do this one again, or at least if we do, we’ll wait until we know the lakes are fuller. There were some reasonably good camping sites available in that area too.

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benmartens June 16, 2015 Outdoors

Happy Birthday Elijah!

Our little man turns two today! He changes week to week, so looking back over an entire year is quite a trip. The biggest change we’ve seen lately is his ability to combine more and more words together into fragments or even full sentences. It’s so fun to understand a little more about what is going on in his thoughts. We love you Elijah!

benmartens June 15, 2015 Family

Barclay Lake

We’ve had an incredible spring in terms of weather. Normally we are in the midst of “June gloom” where it might not be super wet, but it’s 100% cloudy for weeks on end. Instead, we’re in a stretch of warm weather and clear blue skies. We don’t usually get this until July. I’ll take it!

When you get nice weather in the Pacific Northwest, you better take advantage of it, and that’s just what we did. We loaded up the car and headed to Barclay Lake for a hike with Nancy, Megan, Mandy and Ike. Our previous attempts at hiking haven’t been super successful because Elijah ends up getting tired of riding in the backpack and wants to walk. Walking turns into a game of endless distractions that doesn’t result in us moving down the trail.

This hike went a lot better, and it might be because Ike and Elijah could both see the other one riding in a backpack. The hike was not too difficult, but it ended at a very nice lake. Elijah and Ike spent their time throwing rocks and mud into the lake while the rest of us had a picnic.

Ike and Elijah both fell asleep in the backpacks on the way back to the car and the hike was a success! The only downfall was that I had underestimated the traffic that would be coming back through the pass on Memorial Day. It added about 90 minutes to our 90 minute drive. Ouch.

Two thumbs up for Barclay Lake though. There were a lot of very nice potential camping spots around the lake and I could see it being a good spot for a first overnight trip with Elijah when he’s older and able to carry his own pack.

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benmartens June 12, 2015 Outdoors

The Martian

Last summer, I wrote up my thoughts on The Martian by Andy Weir. It’s an awesome science fiction book based almost completely in the realm of actual science. (The author admits to one intentional deviation in the first few pages to make a better story.) You could quickly summarize the book as “MacGyver on Mars.”

The buzz around this book is ramping up again because trailers for the movie are starting to come out. It’s directed by Ridley Scott and stars Matt Damon. I really enjoyed the book and have high hopes for the movie.

If you’re at all interested in engineering, space, or science fiction, this is one to keep on your radar. I don’t know whether it’s better to read the book or watch the movie first, but personally I’d say you should read the book first because it’s your only option right now! Here are a couple links to get a taste of what you’re in for. Don’t worry about spoiling the book by watching these. He gets stranded on Mars. Surprise! That’s the whole point of the book and you learn that in the first couple pages.

XKCD has a comic this week about the movie too.

benmartens June 11, 2015 Commentary

Berlin Wall

The Microsoft campus has lots of art in all of the buildings. There’s so much of it, that it’s easy to walk right by without paying much attention. But if you walk into the main conference center, take a minute to stop and look at that huge, graffiti-covered cement wall. It’s an original piece of the Berlin Wall! The piece was a gift to Bill Gates and he has it on display in the conference center.

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benmartens June 10, 2015 Commentary

Forecast Accuracy

forecastadvisorlogoDo you get your weather forecasts from The Weather Channel, Weather Underground or Accuweather? There are so many options out there, and often they can differ by quite a bit in their forecasts. There’s a website called Forecast Advisor that compares the accuracy of a variety of sources for your specific location.

I always thought The Weather Channel was kind of watered down basic stuff for general audiences, but it turns out they are the most accurate forecast for my location. Weather Underground is a very close second and they’re my personal favorite so I’ll probably keep using them.

Check it out for yourself, and also check out the Cliff Mass blog post that alerted me to this site.

benmartens June 9, 2015 Links

Motorcycle Sale

concourshawkAlmost exactly ten years ago, I bought my first motorcycle. Six years ago, I sold it and upgraded to the Kawasaki Concours. I loved both bikes and have a flood of good memories with them. I took Tyla for a motorcycle ride on our second date, I took a three day trip through Canada with Doug and Frank, and I saw countless beautiful sights.

As of Friday, those memories are all I have left of my motorcycle*. I sold it. The bike had been on consignment in Seattle for eight weeks but didn’t sell. After I got it back, I talked to a local Kawasaki dealer and found out they do consignment too. I should have just gone there first. After talking numbers, I decided to just sell it to them.

I told myself I couldn’t get a truck until a few things happened and one of them was selling the bike. Check.

Why sell it? I averaged about 3000 miles per year until Elijah was born but in the last two years, I’ve only managed 1000 miles total. Most of those were spent in traffic commuting to work. I just have other things to do with my free time these days.

I’d love to get another bike later in life once Elijah has other things to do with his free time, but for now, I’m going to enjoy this as one more simplification of my life.

*Not actually true. I still have to get rid of all my gear and a spare rear tire. Let me know if you’re interested.

benmartens June 8, 2015 Motorcycle

Limited Time

backtoworkcoverOn a recent episode of the Making It podcast, Bob Claggett recommended episode 220 of the Back To Work podcast. In that episode, Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discuss how you manage requests from other people. Their talk covers ways to manage notifications from your phone (turn them off!) to managing the flood of email that you get each day. If you listen to the episode, it takes a few minutes for them to get into the topic and then they wrap it up around the one hour mark.

It’s well-worth a listen if you spend most of your day in front of the computer because there are seemingly infinite distractions. I feel my phone vibrate and need to look to see what it is. I see emails popping up in various email folders and feel the need to get that count back down to zero. People start email or IM conversations and impose their own expectations on my time. If I don’t respond right away, I’m being rude. All of these things mean that it’s easy to spend my entire day context switching between 30 second tasks when in reality, they are not all of equal priority.

There’s no easy answer but the podcast covers a lot of ideas in the area. In the past I’ve had great success with keeping my email closed and only looking at it during defined periods of time. This podcast encouraged me to start that process again and I also disabled a whole bunch of notifications on my phone. We’ll see how it goes.

 

benmartens June 5, 2015 Commentary