Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Bing Street View

This summer, I spotted the Bing street view vehicle a couple of times in our area. One of the times, I was out on a walk with Elijah.

The car also drove past our house in the middle of our yard project so the side yard looks oh so beautiful.

But Tim wins for the picture they took driving past his house.

benmartens October 16, 2014 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 6

The Seahawks faltered again this week. In five games, they have yet to regain their dominance from last season. Forget about the Super Bowl repeat. Let’s make it through the first round of the playoffs. Here are some of the big changes I see from last season:

  • Opposing teams are getting too many yards of the catch. Last year, guys might catch a short pass but they’d be immediately met by the Legion of Boom to pay for their catch.
  • Where are the turnovers and the sacks? So many opposing red zone drives ended in interceptions last year that it was almost expected. This year the team is almost last in the league in sacks and turnovers.
  • People attending the games say it’s still loud, but have there been ANY false starts by the opposition in Seattle yet?
  • On the flip side, the Seahawks have a flood of pre-snap penalties.
  • The secondary is starting to look like Swiss cheese. They’re pulling up players from the practice squad just to field a complete team.
  • Last year, the Seahawks made a big improvement in their third down defense and it was a major factor in their championship run. This year they are 6th worst in the league.

Ok, enough moaning about a team that still has a 4-2 record. There was big news in our league: Tim lost! Jim finally beat him, but Tim still has sole possession of first place. Jim and Luke are tied for second, I’m in fourth and then everyone else is tied at 2-4 for fifth place. Our longest league winning and losing streaks were broken this week too.

Now on to the weekly awards.

  • Highest Team Score
    • This Week:  Austin had 137.67
    • Season: In Week 5, Jim had 160.52
    • All-Time: In 2013, Tim had 195.50
  • Lowest Team Score
    • This Week:  Andy had 78.04
    • Season: In Week 3, Luke had 55.04
    • All-Time: In 2011, Luke had 47.01
  • Biggest Blowout
    • This Week:  Austin beat Andy by 59.63
    • Season: In week 5, Tim beat Dad by 81.60
    • All-Time: In 2010, Luke beat Andy by 113.02
  • Closest Win
    • This Week:  Luke beat Logan by 18.17
    • Season: In Week 2, Austin beat Ben by 1.7
    • All-Time: In 2012, Jim beat Ben by 0.12
  • Highest Scoring Player
    • This Week:  Joe Flacco had 42.24 as a free agent!
    • Season: Previous record was in Week 3, Andrew Luck had 40.30 for Ben
    • All-Time: In 2013, Peyton Manning scored 60.28 for Andy
  • Longest Winning Streaks:
    • Active:  Jim has a 3 game winning streak
    • Season: Tim had a 5 game winning streak
    • All-Time: In 2011, Micah had an 8 game winning streak
  • Longest Losing Streaks:
    • Active:  Dad and Andy have 2 game losing streaks
    • Season: Austin had a 3 game losing streak
    • All-Time: In 2011, Kyle had a 14 game losing streak

Tony Romo was pretty happy for most of the game as he led his team to the win, but I had to chuckle at this screen grab. He’s got his hand in the air making a pistol motion presumably for an audible, but he already stamped his foot for the ball. What followed was reminiscent of Peyton Manning’s missed snap in the Super Bowl. Without plays like this and the blocked punt, the game would have been a blowout.

benmartens October 15, 2014 Fantasy Sports

Gift Cards

I’ve been getting a few Visa/AmEx/Mastercard gift cards for various things like rebates. They’re nice in that you can use them anywhere, but it’s a struggle for me to remember how much money is left and it’s not always easy to pay use the remainder of the gift card and then put the rest on another card. That’s when I realized that I could just take these gift cards, buy Amazon gift cards for the exact same amount, and then I don’t have to worry about it. At future checkouts, Amazon automatically pulls from my gift card balance first. Since we spend a ton of money there anyway, it works out really well.

benmartens October 14, 2014 Commentary

Jersey Comparison

A while back we checked out some of the knockoff jerseys that are widely available. They were close but disappointing. Thanks to Tyla’s parents, I now have an officially licensed jersey and it’s awesome! So what are the big differences? Well this photo shows the major problem I had:

The real jersey on the left has greens that match throughout the jersey. On the right, the green on the shoulders doesn’t match the green around the lettering. It seems small but it looks a bit silly in person and it’s obvious you’’ have a fake. Looking closer at it, you can also see that the stitching is fraying after a single wash.

Save your money and get the real thing.

benmartens October 13, 2014 Commentary

Netflix for Legos

The fun part of Legos for me was usually putting them together. Grabbing random pieces and building from your imagination is fun, but building an actual kit was always special. There’s a great service that I just learned about called Pley. You set up a queue from about 250 different Lego sets and for $15/month, they will send you one of the kits. When you’re done, box it back up and send it back. Then they send you the next one. And yes germophobes, they are cleaned and sanitized before they go out again.

benmartens October 10, 2014 Links

Choosing Slower Delivery

It’s no secret that I love Amazon Prime. For relatively urgent items, the free 2-day shipping is good enough to save me a trip to the store. But for some items, I’m really not in a rush at all and I can wait a week. Amazon used to offer a $1 credit for Amazon movies, but since I never buy Amazon digital movies, I didn’t care. They have switched and are now offering a $1 credit towards books or ebooks. Now THAT’s a deal I’ll use! The downside is that these credits expire after about three months. Still, I expect to opt for the slower shipping quite a bit more often now.

benmartens October 9, 2014 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 5

The Seahawks came off their Monday Night east coast showdown with a win, but it wasn’t very pretty. They seemed to struggle against the injury-ridden Redskins. The Seahawks were their own worst enemy with 13 penalties for 90 yards, including three Percy Harvin touchdowns that all got called back for unrelated penalties. While I’d love to see the Seahawks win another Super Bowl, I don’t think they’re on that path right now. Last season they were unstoppable with endless interceptions. This year they look a lot more mortal. Only three teams in the league have fewer interceptions, seven have fewer sacks, and six have fewer fumbles forced. That’s a far cry from the dominating defense they had last year. In fairness that does include a bye week that most other teams haven’t had yet, but still…

What Seattle lacks in league dominance, Tim is showing in spades. He’s two games ahead of second place and has yet to lose a game. He has over 100 season points more than the average of the rest of the league. Jim and Luke are now tied for second with Jim having a very strong week (160 points.) The matchup to watch next week is #1 vs #2, Tim vs Jim… the battle of the “ims”.

The automated roster reminders seemed to work ok this week, or at least I didn’t get any complaints. Hopefully this is a handy tool to help us all keep our rosters full and healthy.

Now on to the weekly awards.

  • Highest Team Score
    • This Week:  Jim had 160.52
    • Season: The previous record was in Week 4, Dad had 154.98
    • All-Time: In 2013, Tim had 195.50
  • Lowest Team Score
    • This Week: Dad had 74.40
    • Season: In Week 3, Luke had 55.04
    • All-Time: In 2011, Luke had 47.01
  • Biggest Blowout
    • This Week:  Tim beat Dad by 81.60
    • Season: The previous record was in Week 3, Tim beat Luke by 64.34
    • All-Time: In 2010, Luke beat Andy by 113.02
  • Closest Win
    • This Week: Jim beat Austin by 21.47
    • Season: In Week 2, Austin beat Ben by 1.7
    • All-Time: In 2012, Jim beat Ben by 0.12
  • Highest Scoring Player
    • This Week:  Peyton Manning had 38.96 for Andy.
    • Season: In Week 3, Andrew Luck had 40.30 for Ben
    • All-Time: In 2013, Peyton Manning scored 60.28 for Andy
  • Longest Winning Streaks:
    • Active: Tim has a 5 game winning streak
    • Season: Tim has a 5 game winning streak
    • All-Time: In 2011, Micah had an 8 game winning streak
  • Longest Losing Streaks:
    • Active: Austin has a 3 game losing streak
    • Season: Austin has a 3 game losing streak
    • All-Time: In 2011, Kyle had a 14 game losing streak

No “Manning-face” from the opposing QB for the Seahawks this week. Kirk Cousins did much better than people expected him to and had some incredible plays. I should have done this photo thing last year because there haven’t been many awesome defensive Seahawks games this year.

benmartens October 8, 2014 Fantasy Sports

Somebody’s Gotta Do It

Mike Rowe has a new show coming out and it’s called Somebody’s Gotta Do It. There is an article posted about how this landed on CNN and why it’s different from Dirty Jobs. I’m excited to see this new show because it sounds like it really aligns with Mike’s focus on the hardworking people of America. If you want a primer on his viewpoints, check out his TED talk from 2008.

I have almost everything turned off in my Facebook feed, but I do follow Mike Rowe. He writes some excellent articles that I wish more of our government leaders would read and take to heart.

“Somebody’s Gotta Do it” debuts Wednesday at 9pmET on CNN.

benmartens October 7, 2014 Commentary

Bixler 2 Review

My entry into the RC flying hobby has been quite slow. It started a year ago, but I took most of the summer off while I worked on the yard and other projects. And even when I’m not working on projects, I don’t have much time to actually get out and fly.

I started by building my own planes out of foam board with lots of help from the guys at FliteTest.com. That was a low-cost entry into the hobby. When I crashed (and I crashed A LOT), fixing the plane meant a short trip to the dollar store. But in the evenings I was always looking around to figure out what my first “real” plane would be.

I ended up setting my sights on the Bixler 2 (named after one of the hosts at FliteTest), and I was thrilled when Tyla got it for me for my birthday! I took quite a while to get it put together and along the way, I made some modifications to account for common problems that people have with the plane. The biggest one is adjusting the way that the wings are held together. I added some 3M hooks and a rubber band through the fuselage. That doesn’t look quite as pretty but it’s a lot easier to use and doesn’t affect the flight characteristics.

The other change was adding flaps to it. The plane comes with flaps but does not include the electronics for it. Wiring it up was easy, but because of the way they have the cutouts for the servos, it took a lot of fancy transmitter programming to get them to function right. (Basically you need to set up a mix between your Gear switch and your AUX1 switch so that they both operate together but opposite which moves both flaps down.)

Blah blah blah how does it FLY!? Honestly, part of the reason I took so long to fly it is because I was afraid of crashing it. Pretty much every plane I’ve built up to this point has had a first flight of about 5 seconds. It inevitably crashes into the ground in a spectacular manner. Thankfully, this one flew amazingly. Takeoff is a little bit tough as you have to hand launch, and, because of the way the pusher prop is mounted, the plane wants to dive a little under full power. But I succeeded on my first attempt and after about 30 seconds, the butt clenching disappeared and I was just having FUN.

Thinking back over the best flights I’ve had with my hand built planes over the last year, this one trumped them all. It was all trimmed out perfectly and I could take my hands off the transmitter and not lose control. Here are some of my favorite parts of that first flight:

  • It glides like a dream. In fact, I had a lot of fun just climbing up to altitude and then shutting off the power.
  • I put a 2200mah 3 cell in it and after 16 minutes of throttle time (plus more time gliding around), I still had 37% battery left. My little foam planes were lucky to get 7 minutes per flight. I think I’ll be able to comfortable set the timer at 20 minutes for this plane.
  • The flaps were a great addition. There’s no landing gear on it. A belly landing without flaps would be possible, but the flaps slow it down to a crawl and it only slides for 3-4 feet before stopping. Engaging the flaps gives quite an abrupt elevation increase though so I might end up mixing in some down elevator with the flaps in my transmitter.
  • It’s a little hard to explain but it was the closest thing I’ve felt to flying in the RC flight simulator program. In that program, everything is so smooth and controllable. My previous foam board planes were often a handful and I never got that relaxed feeling with them.

I feel so comfortable flying this plane that I’m already thinking about putting a GoPro on it. This is a very popular plane for aerial footage and people do a lot of FPV (First Person View) flying through video goggles with it too. I don’t have gear for that but it might be an option down the road.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m really happy with this plane. It’s definitely still in the trainer category, but it’s the fanciest and best thing I’ve flown yet. While the little foam board planes were frustrating at times, I think it’s good that I started with them instead of this “real” plane. My first flight with it would certainly not have gone as well.

benmartens October 6, 2014 Radio Controlled Flight

Front Yard Project Recap

It was a wild week, but 9 days was all it took to polish off the front yard. We had taken a break after finishing the back yard to recover and also because Tim was re-siding his house. Here’s a rough breakdown of the front yard project:

  • Dad and I started on Friday the 19th by digging a trench under the sidewalk. We picked up the tractor, truck and trailer. Then we used the tractor to fill up the trailer, make a run to dump it, and then scraped off some more sod.
  • On Saturday, Don, Logan and Tim joined in and we made huge progress. The trailer made non-stop runs all day long getting rid of the sod and the dirt that was being scraped off with the tractor. While that was happening, three dump trucks arrived with the new dirt that was replacing the old dirt.
  • By the end of Sunday, all of the old dirt was gone and the new dirt was pretty much in place. We also rented a trencher and in just two hours, we had trenches for irrigation. It might seem silly to trench through new dirt, but we still had a couple more inches to go under the new dirt and it was almost like digging in concrete.
  • Tim and I spent Monday through Thursday evenings out in the yard plumbing for irrigation. It was a wet, soggy mess as we got over 2 inches of rain. I bought a hand pump to help clear out the trenches but there were big sections of the yard that were just completely saturated.
  • We took Friday off in hopes of letting it dry out just a little more. All I did was pick up a few more yards of dirt and left it sitting in the trailer for later.
  • Saturday we started by spreading the remaining dirt to really level everything out. 2600 square feet of sod was delivered, and, with the help of two guys Tim knows, we had it almost all in by 2pm. We returned the tractor, spread one more truck load of dirt, finished off the sod, and then tested out the irrigation.
  • I spent Sunday by myself cleaning up the yard, washing the truck, returning tools, etc.

It’s incredible how much work got done in such a short amount of time. Here are some stats:

  • The front yard added up to 117 hours of labor (compared to 310 in the back yard.)
  • Each load from our house to the spot where we dumped the sod took about 75 minutes round trip
  • 14 trips with the dump trailer to remove the old sod, and there was 3-4 yards in each load
  • 53 yards of beautiful new “supreme mix” dirt added, including three 15-yard deliveries via dump truck
  • 500 miles on Don’s truck for this project
  • 10.6mpg average for the truck while we were making the runs to dump the old sod
  • 3.4 gallons of diesel used in the tractor over the many many hours that it was running

Because our scheduled was so compressed, I didn’t stop to take as many photos or do fancy timelapse videos. Thankfully Tyla and Mom snapped a bunch of photos and one of my security cameras caught some of the action.

THANK YOU once again to all of the friends and family that helped out! We had exactly the right amount of help to get this done. And a huge special thank you to Tim. Without you, this project would never have been attempted. We couldn’t have afforded to pay a contractor to do this, and I don’t know nearly enough to attempt something like this on my own. I loved learning about all this stuff and it was awesome to spend so much time out in the yard working with you. Thanks for putting up with all of my questions, my stress, and my mistakes!

benmartens October 3, 2014 Home Improvement, Projects, Timelapse