Studio711.com – Ben Martens

DataVac Duster

datavacdusterI used to keep a couple cans of compressed air around the house. They’re handy for cleaning out computers and keyboards. When I discovered that they were handy in the shop too, I started going through them pretty quickly and that gets pricey at $4+ per can.

That’s when I found out about the DataVac Duster. At $60, it’s pricey, but I still recommend it. After 15 cans of compressed air, you’d break even, but in reality, since I know it’s basically free to use, I use it a lot more. I keep it on my work bench, and with the extra long cord, I can easily blow off tools, projects, etc. Don’t let the “vac” part of the name fool you. This thing only blows air and it does it very well. There are a couple extra nozzles you can attach to get even narrower streams of air.

When I bought it, it was a few dollars cheaper for whatever reason, but this is still a good tool to have around the house.

benmartens April 24, 2015 Gadgets

Drought

reservoirlowEven though the Pacific Northwest had a terrible ski season, we’re not doing too badly on our water supply to get us through the summer because there was just more rain than snow. But whenever drought rears it’s ugly head (like it has been in California for the past few years), you hear lots of talk about taking shorter showers, not filling your swimming pool, not watering your lawn, etc. But does that really make a difference?

This blog post has a lot of interesting charts and data showing how water is used in each of the fifty states. (Also, the charts are really fun to play with, but make sure you use Chrome because they don’t render well in IE.) There’s a ton of great information in there. For example, did you know that Idaho and Utah use way more water per person than any other state? But less than 2% of that water is used for domestic purposes. If you look at total water used, California uses WAY more than any state but most of it goes to irrigating arid land so it can be farmed.

So yes, taking a 3 minute shower will help, but it’s not even a drop in the proverbial bucket.

benmartens April 23, 2015 Geek, Links

Ken’s Gun Day

A while back, Ken heard about a nice/safe/legal place to shoot out on some federal land. He was nice enough to take Logan and I there and reveal its secret location. We got there around 10am on a Saturday and there was another group setting up. Thankfully, they were friendly and very safety conscious. We had a safety meeting with them before any shots were fired and agreed on some protocols to make sure the day stayed fun for everyone. Aside from making the shooting area a little more cramped, they didn’t bother us at all.

Logan and Ken provided all of the guns and ammo. I can’t even tell you the names of everything they had, but I had fun shooting them. I brought along my shotgun but with the other group there, we decided not to throw any clays.

I snapped a few photos with my camera and also brought my quadcopter along. I figure if we’re going to participate in an activity that needlessly frightens big portions of the population, I might as well throw a DRONE into the mix too. The quadcopter was a little unbalanced producing some jello-y footage. I forgot to set it on 720p60 instead of 1080p30 which would have produced a little smoother video. But it’s still fun to see the site from the air and I popped it up a couple hundred feet high to take a peek around.

Thanks Ken for showing us your secret spot and thanks to both Ken and Logan for letting me play with all their toys!

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benmartens April 22, 2015 Radio Controlled Flight, Sports

Bluetooth Actually Works

bluetooth_logoFew technologies have caused me as much pain as wireless. That’s why we paid an electrician to hardwire Ethernet to every room in our house. If a device doesn’t move, it gets hardwired. No exceptions. So you can understand why I have avoided Bluetooth over the years.

When I asked for some new headphones at work, I was given a set of Bluetooth wireless headphones. They have a flip down microphone so I can take calls though I don’t use that feature too much. The revelation to me was that they actually work and they are pretty convenient. I can either connect to my computer or my phone and stream audio from them. It’s nice to not have any wires and it’s super nice to be able to tap the buttons on the headphones to adjust the volume, pause the music, or skip to the next track.

I wear headphones a lot when I’m doing yard work or working in the garage. Up to this point, I’ve worn regular earbuds and I run the cord down inside my shirt so that it doesn’t get snagged. I’m thinking that I might switch to using Bluetooth headphones instead because they have the added advantage of letting me adjust the playback without pulling my phone out of my pocket. Do you use small Bluetooth headphones? Any recommendations for me?

benmartens April 20, 2015 Gadgets

Apple Watch

applewatchThe new Apple Watch launched recently with the usual media frenzy. They sold out almost immediately though it’s anyone’s guess what that actually means in terms of the number of units sold. Personally, I’m a bit uninterested in the whole smart watch thing. Some day we might get there, but the tech is pretty infantile at this point. I haven’t worn a watch since college which was about the time I started carrying a cell phone. At this point, wearing anything on my wrist drives me bonkers and would take quite a while to get used to.

The Apple Watch will be the first time a lot of people have seen a smart watch, but rest assured that there are lots of them on the market that do pretty much exactly the same thing as the Apple product. Apple isn’t really inventing anything here, but they don’t have to invent to make money.

If you really want to dip your toe into the smart watch world, I’d point you to the Pebble. It has been around for a long time, does the core things that you really care about (seeing notifications at a glance), and because of the screen technology, the battery lasts for a week instead of lasting for a day… or less.

benmartens April 17, 2015 Gadgets

I-405 Construction Update

i405We live right off of I-405 so we have been living with the enormous construction project for years. However, it’s slated to finish this fall and some of the details about the new traffic flow are starting to come out:

  • An extra lane is being added between NE 6th and NE 160th St
  • That extra lane along with the existing HOV lane will be “express toll lanes.” Cars with enough occupants will travel in them for free, but others can pay to travel in them.
  • During peak hours, three people are required to use the express lanes. In off peak hours, two people will qualify.
  • The rate for non-HOV users will vary based on the traffic. More traffic? Higher rate. They try to keep traffic flowing on those lanes by pricing people out of them.
  • Motorcycles are always exempt as with other HOV lanes.
  • You need a new “Flex Pass” to use those lanes. If you already had a switchable pass, you can call for a free upgrade.
  • There are defined entry and exit points for the express toll lanes.

I’m interested to see how much the extra lane helps traffic. Having the defined entry and exit points should help keep the traffic segregated a bit. For example, there’s no entry point right at 520 which will hopefully reduce some of the congestion as 520 drivers merge onto 405.

I do wonder about the sensibility of adding an extra HOV lane instead of regular lane. I really hope that it’s being done because this actually reduces commute times for everyone and not as some environmental action to try and force people to carpool.

Thankfully I have multiple routes that I can take to and from work. 405 is just one of the options. With almost 200,000 people traveling this stretch of road every day, I’m sure I’m not the only one who is eager to see how this is going to turn out.

benmartens April 16, 2015 Commentary

No More Custard

peakscustardlogoAfter Tyla and I bought our new kitchen table last month, we decided to celebrate with some Peaks Frozen Custard. We love their custard but don’t get to go very often because it’s on the Seattle side of the lake. Since we were already over there, it seemed like a good fit.

I did some quick searching around to find the quickest route there and discovered that they were closed. Not just closed for the day, but closed permanently. And what’s more, they had been closed for 1.5 YEARS! Wow! I, umm, guess it had been a while since we were there.

The couple articles available online don’t offer a strong reason why they quit. This article provides most of the information that I found and they quote the now-defunct Peaks website as saying:

We could not be more grateful to all of you amazing custardmers. It has been 5 years of wonderful. So why would we close? Peaks is a small family business that takes 100% of our families attention. We had fun, but now we’re on to a new lifestyle! At the same time, our lease comes to an end- so it was renew, relocate or stop!

Goodbye Peaks! I’m sorry we didn’t visit you more often!

benmartens April 15, 2015 Commentary

Saw Blades

diablosawbladeNow that I finally have a shiny new saw, I decided that I started wondering how my old table saw would work if it had a nice new blade on it. Maybe I could get the old blade sharpened, but I kind of just want to start with a new blade and then take care of it properly from the beginning.

I started reading about saw blades and WOW, there are a lot of things to know about the blades. There are different diameters, different blade shapes, different angles for the teeth, different numbers of teeth, different thicknesses for the blade and the list goes on. This article from Rockler is one of the best ones I found for summarizing all the info but here is a quick summary of what I learned:

  • My table saw and my circular saw use the same diameter blade so I can buy one blade and use it either place.
  • Miter saws should generally have a higher tooth count since you are mostly doing cross cuts (~60-80 teeth) while table saw blades should have a lower tooth count since you are mostly doing rip cuts (~24-40 teeth.)
  • If you have less than a three horsepower motor, consider using a thin kerf (thickness) blade. The tradeoff is that the blade might deflect more, but since you are removing less wood, your motor can power through the cuts easier. You’re also generating less dust!
  • Most saw blades have a positive angle to the teeth meaning that they lean forward. Miter saws benefit from a slightly negative tooth angle. This gives you a more controllable cut and also helps to prevent the saw blade from pulling the back side of your wood up into the air.

The saw blade that came on my miter saw is probably better suited for my table saw so I’m hoping to move that over and then buy a higher tooth count blade for my miter saw.

benmartens April 14, 2015 Woodworking

Easter vs. Christmas

emptytombAs we drove to church on Easter morning, I thought about how different it was than Christmas morning. Many of the stores were still open and traffic was about average for a Sunday morning. Almost nobody had been taking vacation at work the previous week and only parents with kids on spring break were taking the following week off. I bet a large part of the population didn’t even know it was Easter.

As a Christian, it’s hard to decide whether Easter or Christmas is a bigger holiday. Both are critical to my future. I suspect that a lot more people understand the importance of Christmas than Easter. A couple years ago, I wrote an explanation of what Christmas means for the Christian. Today I’ll do the same thing for Easter. If you’ve ever been a little curious why we get excited about this holiday, here’s your chance to find out.

At Christmas we celebrate the almighty God coming to earth as a human. That in itself is pretty impressive, but if that’s all it was, we’d all still be in a bad spot. That’s because every one of us is sinful. We’ve all broken God’s law at least once (more like millions of times) and God demands perfection to enter heaven. So on our own, the only fate for us at death is eternal damnation in hell. But that’s where Easter comes into play.

Jesus didn’t just hang around on the earth for a while to sight see. He was here to live a perfect life and take the punishment for ALL of us. His death, which we remember on Good Friday, wasn’t just one man dying. It was God punishing His only Son for our sin. But it doesn’t end there. On Easter morning, Jesus rose from the dead proclaiming his power over death and the devil.

Without the death and resurrection of Jesus and without our faith that it happened, when we die, we would be judged by our own track record. We’re all sinful so we’d all be condemned to hell. But because Jesus did die and rise. Those who believe will not be judged on their own record. Instead, Jesus steps in and points out that he paid the price for our sins so God the Father counts us as blameless and we enter heaven for eternity.

So THAT is why Christians are so excited about Easter. We should be this excited every day of the year, but Easter is an extra special reminder of the incredible gift that we have been given.

P.S. I’m turning off comments on this post because I’m not looking to start a public discussion, but if you want to know more about what I believe, you can of course ask me or check out this website from our church group. I also left out specific Bible references to keep this short and approachable, but I’m happy to provide passages to back up everything written here.

P.P.S. If you want to hear Pastor talk about this more in his sermon from this past Easter service, you can view it on YouTube.

benmartens April 13, 2015 Commentary