Studio711.com – Ben Martens

TSA Known Traveler Number

tsapreLast summer, Tyla and I filled out the paperwork and did the in-person security screening to get TSA Pre approved. The basic idea of the TSA Pre program is that you do some extra up-front security checks, pay a fee, and then on most flights you’ll get to go through faster security screening. You get to leave your laptop in your bag, you don’t have to take off your shoes, etc. While I question the whole security show and this program, I want the benefits of it.

You’re never guaranteed to get TSA Pre marked on your boarding pass even if you have been approved. We’ve flown a couple times since getting approved but we have never gotten to use the TSA Pre line. I looked into it after seeing that we didn’t get it again for our trip to San Diego and … oops… when you get approved, they give you a Known Traveler number and you need to submit that number when you buy your tickets. Boy do I feel dumb! Thankfully a quick call to Southwest got it added to our tickets and we were able to reprint our boarding passes. Voila! TSA Pre approved! It’s amazing what happens when you follow the directions.

benmartens May 18, 2015 Travel

Sport Brella Review

sportbrellaAfter having three hunks of flesh cut out of me because they were suspiciously heading towards skin cancer, it should be no surprise that I don’t mess around with sunburn anymore. Having a kid has amplified that since they can burn so easily. Tyla and I saw a “Sport Brella” at a concert in the park one time and decided to pick one up.

It’s basically a big umbrella that isn’t quite round on the top and it lays down on the ground to provide shade. You can stake it into the ground if it’s windy and the pole of the umbrella drives into the ground too. It sets up in a matter of seconds and does a great job providing shade anywhere you need it.

We don’t use it a ton, but we’re always thankful when we do get it out.

benmartens May 15, 2015 Commentary

Grill Care

webergenesisI’ve seen a lot of people crank up their gas grill after they take the meat off to burn off the remainder of whatever was cooking. I did the same thing for many years too. But after I got my Weber Genesis, I found out straight from Weber that this is a bad idea. Very high temps are fine if you really need to cook something that way, but doing it every single time you cook puts a lot of extra wear and tear on the grill. There shouldn’t be any need to burn anything off if you have good grill grates.

So give your grill a rest. Maybe you want to brush it while it’s hot but otherwise, just let it cool down while you eat and then scrape it off.

benmartens May 14, 2015 Commentary

Tom and Jerry

tomandjerryOne of my favorite cartoons growing up was Tom and Jerry. Listening to the latest Hardcore History episode, I learned that Germans called British solders “Tommy” and British called the Germans “Jerry.”. That really put a new spin on the cartoon series! … Until I learned that it wasn’t actually were the name came from. In fact, in the original episode of Tom and Jerry, Tom’s name was “Jasper.”

Or at least this is what the Internet tells me. If you can find otherwise and prove that Tom and Jerry were really named after those nicknames then I think I’ll like the cartoon even more!

benmartens May 13, 2015 Commentary

The Fridge

refrigeratorrunningI had a random thought while putting away the groceries: why do we call that cold box in the kitchen a “refrigerator” instead of just a “frigerator”? What is frigeration and why does this box redo it?

The answer is pretty boring (so I thought it would fit in perfectly with the other blog posts here). The word “refrigerate” comes from the Latin refrigeratus, past participle of refrigerare “make cool or cold.” So the “re” part of the word isn’t the prefix that means to do again.

benmartens May 12, 2015 Commentary

Vocabulary Builder

vocabularybuilderI love the dictionary feature of Kindles and find that I’m much more likely to look up a word using the Kindle than I was when I read paper books. I’m not sure how much my vocabulary has actually expanded, but I can pretend that I’m learning something.

Newer Kindles keep a list of all the words that you look up in the dictionary while you are reading. Here are some of the words I’ve looked up.

The list goes on, but I’m starting to have flashbacks of the ACTs. Also, I don’t remember the definitions to most of these so apparently it isn’t working very well. The Kindle does have a feature that builds flashcards out of this word list if you really want to get serious about it.

benmartens May 11, 2015 Books

Grilled Vegetables

grilledveggiesIf you follow my Instagram feed, it will come as no surprise that I grill fairly often and usually our dinners involve some grilled vegetables. It’s a pretty simple task, but I’ll share a few tips that I’ve learned about the process.

  • Buy a good grill basket. You can do it other ways but this makes it really simple.
  • Spray the basket with non-stick spray every time before you use it and cleanup will be a lot easier. I didn’t learn this soon enough and my basket has a bunch of stuff burned on that I’ll never get off. Yum, extra flavor.
  • Coat the veggies in olive oil first, but don’t use too much. The vegetables will get quite soft just from grilling so the oil is just for flavoring and to help the salt and other seasonings stick.
  • Denser vegetables like potatoes and carrots take quite a bit longer than soft ones like zucchini and mushrooms. If you’re going to mix and match soft and hard vegetables, start the hard ones first and then throw the soft ones in about halfway through. I generally figure that potatoes take 30-40 minutes and zucchini takes 15-20 minutes. If you have the basket extra full, that time might be longer.
  • Keep your slices a standard thickness so that they will cook similarly.

Your options are boundless. Experiment! Some of our favorites are red and gold potatoes, whole mushrooms, zucchini, bell peppers, onion and carrots.

benmartens May 8, 2015 Food

Car Bluetooth

soundbotNow that I’ve caught up with the times and realized that Bluetooth actually works, I decided to finally add Bluetooth to my car. It’s easy to get jealous riding in our new Escape that Tyla drives most of the time. While I did add a nav system to my Subaru, it was a unit from 2006 so there wasn’t much to it.

For $18, the SoundBot seemed like an easy device to test out, and so far, I’ve been very impressed with it. It gets power from the cigarette jack and then connects to the auxiliary input on my head unit. Now I just get in my car, it pairs automatically. The SoundBot is sticky mounted to my dash and I can use the play/pause, forward, and backward buttons to control basic playback. I’ve spent so many years taking my phone out of my pocket and plugging in an audio cable. This feels luxurious!

If you have an older car, I think you’ll be happy with this device, and hey, if not, you’re only out $20. It’s not a major life commitment.

benmartens May 7, 2015 Gadgets

Exponential Growth

in-the-year-2000A common generalization is that grandparents have a hard time keeping up with technology (though there are exceptions of course.) My grandparents were born before about 1930. Think about what the world looked like back then. That’s horse and buggy territory. Technology has come a LONG way since then.

Humans have a bias toward thinking that progress happens linearly meaning that in the next 80 years, we’ll see roughly the same amount of progress that we did in the previous 80 years. If that’s true, I can’t even begin to imagine what the world will look like when I’m heading for assisted living.

The truth is even more remarkable though. Instead of progressing linearly, technology is advancing exponentially. This means that not only is technology advancing, the rate of advancement is also increasing. We will advance more this year than last year and so on.

It’s hard to think about this or observe it while you’re in it, but if you look back in history, it’s a little more obvious. It took us thousands of years to go from horses to cars, but the cars from just 50 years ago are relics compared to what we have now. Similarly, computers were huge and bulky for the first decades of their existence, but now they are getting small, faster and more powerful every year.

The amount of data that we collect is rapidly increasing too. At a recent Big Data conference, one of the speakers estimated that 90% of all the data that the world has was generated in the last two years. By 2016 the total amount of data will double every two months and by 2020, it could be doubling every SECOND. Even if those numbers are a bit off, it helps to show what exponential growth looks like.

With all that in mind, how will I ever keep up with technology as I grow older? Grandparents have a hard enough time now. With the exponential growth of technology, is it hopeless for us who think we are sort of in touch now? Probably, but maybe we’ll be able to abstract technology away from the user in such a way that the user doesn’t have to understand much about how it works to get value out of it.

I’m not a futurist and I struggle to bring this post to a reasonable conclusion. I don’t have any magic answers but this stuff has been on my mind a lot lately, especially when I see Elijah interacting with any technology. He’s going to look back on these times as the technological stone age, and it’s awesome to think about what the future world will look like.

benmartens May 6, 2015 Commentary