Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Amazon Fire TV Review

topgearworkbenchAfter Ken gave me a 32″ TV for the garage, I decided to pick up an Amazon Fire TV to go with it. Yes, I have a Chromecast sitting on a shelf already, but the Fire TV has a remote which is a big win. I don’t really like the idea of leaving my phone sitting out on my workbench to control the TV.

I started with the Amazon Fire TV Stick since it’s cheaper and takes up less space. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi signal isn’t strong enough in my garage. I even added a second access point right across the wall in the living room, but it still wasn’t enough to hold a steady stream. I suspect there is some sort of barrier between the house and the garage.

By that point, my long-lived hatred of Wi-Fi for stationary devices had boiled over so I took back the stick and ordered an Amazon Fire TV box.

That arrived and … it was a brick. I had ordered a refurbished model to save $20, but it still should have worked. A quick call to a very nice tech support lady got me a new one shipped out.

The replacement unit worked fine. I ran a cable from my network closet to the workbench and voila, I have TV out in the garage.

The Fire TV is a slick little device. It’s a lot like a Roku device if the Roku device first booted into the Amazon app. The other bonus feature is that the remote lets you do voice search. That’s a lot faster than typing character by character with a D-pad on the remote.

You can load other apps onto it. The main excuse for doing this was so that I could have YouTube up showing an instructional video for whatever I’m working on. While there isn’t a dedicated YouTube app for the Fire TV, they do have a simple app that opens up YouTube in it’s big screen experience mode. You can pair the website with your phone and then control it from your phone (similar to a Chromecast but more generic.) Then you can use the remote to pause, rewind, etc.

If you’re looking for a box to add smarts to your TV, this is a solid choice if you’re an Amazon Prime member. If you’re not, then I’d probably go with the Roku.

benmartens February 11, 2015 Gadgets

Epson GT-S50 Long Term Update

epsongts50In October 2012, Tyla and I bought an Epson GT-S50 document scanner. We debated for quite a while about it since it was pricey, but more than two years later, I’m still loving this device. Sure, there are plenty of other ways to scan in your documents, but if you’re going to do it a lot, this is the way to go. It scans the pages ridiculously quickly, handles multiple pages with ease, scans both sides in a single pass, and in the end it creates a searchable PDF file.

The best part of all this is that when I’m done scanning the papers, they go in the shredder. And because it’s so easy, there’s no debate about whether something is worth keeping or not. Everything gets scanned and shredded. We’ve scanned over 3600 documents! That means 3600 pieces of paper* that didn’t end up in a filing cabinet somewhere in our house. And that is my favorite feature.

* This number includes scanning in a bunch of older documents that were previously in a filing cabinet as well as some stacks of photos.

benmartens February 10, 2015 Gadgets

WordPress Review

wordpresscirclelogoA little over a month after moving to WordPress, I’m giving it a resounding two thumbs up. This is a huge upgrade over my ancient fork of the Community Server codebase. Here are a few things that I really enjoy:

  • Themes are easy to search, install and tryout. There are a huge number of people actively designing themes so it was easy to find one that provided the features I wanted, including a good experience on mobile devices.
  • Updates show up as notifications in the admin page. Click the button an voila, you just upgraded WordPress.
  • The database backend runs MySQL which was new for me, but it’s been a good experience to learn. My favorite part of it is that the database schema is so simple. There are only a dozen or so tables and you can understand most of it by just looking at the table and field names.
  • There are an enormous number of plugins available, and like the themes, they are easy to search and install. I have plugins for things like Google Analytics, Microsoft Application Insights, Instagram, Twitter, Akismet comment spam blocking, and a sitemap generator for the Google and Bing indexer robots. Updating these plugins is just a simple click.
  • One of the best plugins I’m using gives me a calendar view of my posts. You know by now that I write posts out in advance and schedule them to come out one per day around the middle of the night. Seeing the calendar view is an easy way to make sure that I haven’t missed a day, and it’s easy to swap posts around if I want to reorder them.

The list goes on an on but I’m very happy with this. My recommendation of WordPress for your website is pretty pointless. They’ve been around for 11 years. 60 million websites use them including more than 20% of the top 10 million websites. I’m really late to the game, but I’m glad I’m joining the game.

benmartens February 9, 2015 Site News

Fitbit Aria Review

fitbit-ariaTyla and I both weigh ourselves every morning and write down our weight. While the day to day change isn’t always something to get worked up about, it’s important to understand your trend as it stretches out to weeks and months.

We decided to step the geek up a notch and buy the Fitbit Aria scale. It connects via Wi-Fi to your home network and automatically uploads your weight to your Fitbit account. You can then view the charts and history online or in a phone app. This is definitely a luxury purchase, but it’s a nice convenience.

Once you get it up and running, it works like almost any other scale. But getting it up and running was the big issue for us. I spent a very long time wrestling with it, talking to tech support (no help) and surfing the web. I tried it with my phone and two different laptops. I tried setting up a Wi-Fi network just for the scale that had no security on it. Nothing worked. Finally, I pulled out an old Android phone that KenC gave me and it worked the first time.

Fitbit ships an application that runs on Windows and is supposed to do the setup, so surely this can’t be everyone’s experience. But this still seems like a pretty big hole in their testing. I’m using a very common router (WNDR3700) and fully patched phone and laptop OS’s. This should be a mainstream case.

Oh well, we are up and running now so there’s no need to do any more setup. And if I do change the network or something, I’ll know to grab an Android device!

P.S. I feel obligated to mention that the money for this purchase came through my health plan at work which can only be used for a specific set of items. If we were using our general funds for this, I think we’d still be doing manual logging.

benmartens February 6, 2015 Gadgets

Time Management

TimemanagementOn a recent episode of the Making It podcast, the topic was “how do I quit my job and build stuff for a living?” Bob Clagett chimed in with some very thought provoking comments. (Note that he says these come from the book “Quitter” by Jon Acuff.) Bob doesn’t make stuff full time. He still has a day job. So how does he divide up his time? Here are the three work categories he uses along with my thoughts on them.

  1. Day job. I like my job but if I could do anything in the world, I wouldn’t be doing my current job. If you’re in the same boat, it doesn’t mean that your job needs to be a complete waste of your time. What can you learn from your job that benefits your passion? Also remember, that depending on your situation, your day job is probably what you do to make your passion possible. It generates the income and provides you with health insurance.
  2. Spend time with family. Having a good family life isn’t something that happens by accident. It takes work and you should be accounting for it when you’re planning out how to spend your time.
  3. Do what you love. This can be the easiest bucket to fill, but it’s also one that we can misuse easily. This isn’t a bucket for surfing Facebook, reading random internet sites (ahem, like this one), or staring at the TV. Pick one or two things that you love and really want to focus on and devote your time to them.

Few things in my life had made me more conscious of how I spend my time than having a child. These three buckets are a great place to start. I’m still trying to work out how things like paying bills, making dinner and cleaning up fit into this but I suppose that could fit into building a good family environment. And of course, as a Christian, my faith is the most important thing to me. That should weave it’s way through all aspects of my life but also deserves it’s own bucket of dedicated time.

It has already been useful to think of my time in terms of these buckets. Instead of thinking “is this a worthwhile activity”, it’s better to think “is this the most rewarding/important thing I can do right now?” I do try to set aside one evening a week to just veg out and watch a movie or something, but most nights, I need to take advantage of my limited non-work time to fill up the other buckets!

benmartens February 5, 2015 Commentary

Ford Ousts Microsoft

fordsync3previewThe next version of Ford Sync won’t come from Microsoft. They’re tossing out the old system and starting with a newer one that, frankly, makes more sense to me. Here’s the problem: your car lasts 10 years and your phone is out of date in two years. The existing Ford Sync systems are basically a point in time piece of technology that needs to live the lifetime of your car. Why bother baking all that into the car? All you need is a big touch screen with some microphones and buttons placed around the car that all work in concert with your phone. Your phone already has the Internet connection and is being regularly upgraded, so let the phone be the brains of the operation. The car should just be a dumb terminal that gets smarter and more useful when a phone is within range. That seems to be more the direction that Ford is taking with the new system and it’s the way that the systems from a lot of other companies work too.

I have my eye on one of the new F150s but I struggle with the decision about Sync. I like having the big screen with navigation in my car, but the Waze app on my phone is so much more useful. Is it worth spending the extra money to get the current full Sync system like we did in the Escape? Probably not. The basic functions that let you connect your phone via Bluetooth are useful, but the rest of it just gets out of date pretty quickly.

Hopefully we are heading in a direction where the carmakers don’t try to compete too much in the fast paced consumer technology world, or if they do, they give us a way to upgrade the hardware. Even if you velcro’d a tablet to my dash, I’d be pretty happy. At least I’d know I could replace it in two years with something cooler/better and it would probably interact with my phone a lot better than the system you developed years ago based on even older hardware.

benmartens February 4, 2015 Gadgets

Rough Ski Season

Last year was a huge change for me as I dropped from 15-25 ski days per year to just one. This year I had hoped to get out at least two or three times, but I’m wondering if that will happen. This year has been a horrible snow season and the resorts are still barely open. If you go, be prepared to dodge a lot of rocks and bare spots. This is what skiing is normally like in November if they open early, not in late January in what is normally the height of the ski season. How bad is it? Here are a photos from Baker, Alpental and Crystal, respectively. Lots and lots of rocks and trees poking through.

nosnow_baker_2015

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nosnow_alpental_2015

If you stay on the groomed runs, you might have some luck, but even then, it’s usually either icy or soupy. There’s just no new snow to make things nice. Stevens seems to be doing the best but even that is pretty tough. Anything off the groomers is not really an option. Here’s a shot from the back side and that doesn’t look like nearly as much fun as usual.

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This doesn’t meant that every single day has been worthless. If you go with the right attitude, choose your day somewhat carefully, and have a good group of friends with you, there is fun to be had. Personally I know I only get a couple days a season now so I’m waiting for a day that will really be worth it. So far there hasn’t been anything close.

benmartens February 3, 2015 Skiing

UMX F4U Corsair Review

For my birthday, Tyla bought me a Bixler 2 which was a nice step up from the foam board airplanes I had been building before. I’ve had a ton of fun with that and only one bad crash (but it was flight ready again in less than 15 minutes.)

For Christmas, she bought me another step up in difficulty: the UMX F4U Corsair BNF with AS3X from E-flit. That’s a mouthful, but as you might have guessed, it’s an F4. And it’s TINY. The wingspan is less than 16″! The “AS3X” part of the name is a little on-board computer that helps keep the tiny plane from feeling too touchy. The net effect is that it flies like a much bigger plane as the computer seamlessly counteracts the effects of wind.

This plane is small but it’s still a bit too fast to fly in our cul-de-sac. It’s a great one for a soccer field though and the schools down the street provide lots of flying opportunities for it.

The tiny plane doesn’t skimp on the details. I took my own pictures but these photos from the marketing site are much better. Want to fly it sometime? I’d be happy to buddy box with you!

eflitef4u

benmartens February 2, 2015 Radio Controlled Flight

Dust Collection

dustdeputyWith recent woodworking projects, I have been putting more effort into keeping the dust under control. That has been going well, but it means I’m going through filters on the shop vac very quickly. You can only knock the dust out of them so many times before they aren’t usable anymore and they fill up with dust very quickly. I’m also nervous about burning out the motor on the shop vac because it can’t pull air through the clogged filter.

Full shop dust collection systems are expensive, but I purchased a simpler solution. The Dust Deputy is a plastic contraption that spins the air before it enters the shop vac. Heavier particles fall into a 5 gallon bucket and clean air enters into the shop vac to get the final cleaning from the filter. There’s nothing too fancy or complicated about it. It’s just science. And boy does it work well!

After more than a month of use, my 5 gallon bucket is about half full and the inside of the shop vac is almost perfectly clean. You could run a white glove across the filter and barely get it dirty. That shiny new filter is going to last a VERY long time. Another bonus is that the 5 gallon bucket is much easier to empty than the shop vac container.

If you think about how many filters you’re going to buy to keep your shop vac working smoothly, the cost of the Dust Deputy isn’t too bad. This is definitely one worth considering if you use your shop vac for dust control.

benmartens January 30, 2015 Woodworking

Fixing Christmas Lights

When I finally decided on Christmas lights last fall, I decided to go with the professional grade wires, sockets and bulbs so that I could have the bulbs be interchangeable. That worked well and allowed me to do alternating red and soft-white C9 bulbs. It looked great except for one bulb that didn’t work. Testing it with the multimeter showed that the socket itself was bad. With a normal set of lights, I’d either have to live with it or pay another ~$40 for another 100ft strand of wire with sockets. But what I bought was repairable! (Pro tip: put some tape on your strand to mark both ends and any of the dead sockets. It’s a lot easier to find them when you have it all balled up on your workbench.)repairinglights2I ordered replacement sockets from Amazon. They come in pretty big quantities, but oh well, this will last me forever and I could use them to create my own custom strands if I wanted to. Make sure that you look to see if your light strand is SPT1 or SPT2. That notation specifies how thick the insulation is on the wire.

Doing the replacement is pretty straightforward except that getting the old socket off was tricky. I ended up just cutting and prying away on the old socket until it broke apart. Then I lined up the new socket and clamped it on. As usual, YouTube has a video to explain it.repairinglights1While I was doing all this, I figured I might as well make my strand be exactly the correct length. You can just clip the strand wherever you want and have it keep working, but be sure to clip the two wires at different lengths and then wrap them individually to make sure they don’t short out. Or you can add a new female plug to one end and a male plug to the other and bam, you now have two strings. I chose to add the new plugs. You can buy the male and female plugs on Amazon and learn how to properly install them via YouTube.

Sure this is a lot of trouble to go through for Christmas lights, but you know by now that I like things to work properly. This also makes me feel a LOT better about spending extra money on the professional grade lights. Every individual piece of this setup is replaceable. Whether sockets, plugs, bulbs, or even the wires go bad, I can replace just what’s needed. The worst (most expensive) thing that could happen would be if all of the LED bulbs broke but I’m storing them in a hard plastic container to help protect against that. Next year? MORE LIGHTS!

benmartens January 29, 2015 Home Improvement