Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Death Of Expertise

MattB posted an article on Facebook that I felt deserved it’s own post here. It’s from thefederalist.com and is called “The Death Of Expertise”. The article discusses how our society is full of people who search the internet for 5 minutes and then denounce legitimate experts as idiots. Here are a couple quotes from the article but I encourage you to read the whole thing:

Yes, it’s true that experts can make mistakes, as disasters from thalidomide to the Challenger explosion tragically remind us. But mostly, experts have a pretty good batting average compared to laymen: doctors, whatever their errors, seem to do better with most illnesses than faith healers or your Aunt Ginny and her special chicken gut poultice. To reject the notion of expertise, and to replace it with a sanctimonious insistence that every person has a right to his or her own opinion, is silly…

People in political debates no longer distinguish the phrase “you’re wrong” from the phrase “you’re stupid.” To disagree is to insult. To correct another is to be a hater. And to refuse to acknowledge alternative views, no matter how fantastic or inane, is to be closed-minded…

Thus, at least some of the people who reject expertise are not really, as they often claim, showing their independence of thought. They are instead rejecting anything that might stir a gnawing insecurity that their own opinion might not be worth all that much.

benmartens January 23, 2014 Links

Custom Closet Storage

We have a closet underneath our stairs that opens out into the kitchen and family room area. That’s where a lot of our cleaning supplies get stored along with extra trash bags, paper towels, etc. We’ve always wanted to have that be a little more organized so I embarked on a small project to build some shelves and cabinets.

I started by designing the project with Google Sketchup. I’m really liking that tool and hope to use it more. It’s a great way to visualize the design decisions and then also to take measurements of the various pieces that need to be cut. The entire project was built out of 1/2” MDF with a little bit of 1/4” MDF for some facing. I cut everything to size first and painted it before I assembled it. I’ve never painted/stained a project BEFORE putting all the pieces together but it sure made painting a lot easier. I’ll probably try that again, but I won’t do it for a project like this where everything needs to fit precisely into a pre-defined space. As I started installing it, I realized that the closet wasn’t square so I ended up with some goofy looking gaps and pieces that didn’t fit quite right. The pictures below show it loaded up with our supplies and honestly you can’t see most of the issues. I do need to cover up the screw holes around the door (this would have been a good use for a finish nailer) but that should be pretty quick.

I got to use some new tools in this project. The table saw was a huge help as I was able to make big, repeatable cuts very quickly. I don’t miss crawling around on the floor, clamping a straight edge onto the big sheet and then using the circular saw to make each cut. I also made good use of a self-leveling laser that I got for Christmas. It made it super easy to attach the closet support pieces to the wall and get everything at the same height.

All in all I’m happy with how quickly this project came together (7 days from first cut to final install). If I can’t learn to live with the gaps then I’ll either rebuild part of it or add some trim, but something tells me that probably won’t happen. I learned a lot from this project and will probably put the skills to use again in one of our upstairs storage closets.

benmartens January 22, 2014 Home Improvement, Projects, Woodworking

Seahawks In The Super Bowl

I’ve lived in a lot of different cities which means that cheering for the Bears, Colts, Vikings, and Eagles could have all made sense in the past. With all that traveling, I didn’t really cheer for one team (except for a stint where I cheered for the Cowboys? I think it was because of the Aikman, Emmitt, Irvin trio.)

After a year or two in Seattle, I knew that I wanted to stick around this city for a long time. It was also really hard to follow my old sports teams so I decided to cheer the Mariners and the Seahawks. Last year I finally started watching every Seahawks game.

So I think that makes me a bit of a bandwagon fan. Oh well.

This has been such a fun year to cheer for the Seahawks! I lived in Philly in 2005 when the Eagles lost to the Patriots but I wasn’t really an Eagles fan. This time around it’s exciting to ride the wave of Seahawks fever that is coursing through the city. Aside from a few guys with, um, strong personalities (ie. Richard Sherman), this roster seems like a great group of guys. Russell Wilson seems like a genuinely fantastic individual, and it’s fun cheering for this rag-tag group of low draft picks with low salaries. There’s no way the Seahawks can afford to keep this roster together once contracts run out so we’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

TimS, AndyD and I bought those jerseys from China a few weeks back but Tim and I have pretty much ditched ours. Andy got a mostly gray one which looks quite a bit better than our navy ones. I just ordered a Seahawks t-shirt from nflshop.com so this one will be official with all the right colors, etc and I won’t be embarrassed to wear it.

P.S. Sherman posted an article on Monday explaining his actions.

benmartens January 21, 2014 Sports

Tracking Food

I’m no psychologist, but I’ve found that if I really want to change something in my life, writing it down is a big motivator. I’ve been eating pretty poorly for the past couple months, so I decided to write down everything that I eat for one week.

Wow. It worked even better than I thought. Even though I’m not planning to show the list to anyone else, it’s embarrassing to write down a handful of chips, a candybar or two, or a morning piece of pie.

Writing it down on a piece of paper would probably have been good enough, but I took it one step further and tracked it in the Fitbit website. They have a huge food database so I just enter in what I ate and it adds up the carbs, etc.

I probably won’t keep this up for a long time, but it has been a good exercise and it’s one that I’ll revisit if I find myself snacking a lot again. Let me know how it works for you if you try it too!

benmartens January 20, 2014 Commentary

Fitbit One Review

Last year I picked up new skis with the money from our health plan. This year I don’t have a big purchase like that in mind, but there are a couple smaller things that I’d like to buy. I made the first purchase the day after New Years: a Fitbit One.

Fitbits have been around for a few years and they come in a variety of form factors, but basically they are fancy pedometers. The Fitbit One tracks steps, stairs, and your restlessness while sleeping. It syncs wireless whenever I’m near my computer and uploads all the data to a website. There is also an app for the phone that I use to access the data and enter my weight. (Some day I might pick up the scale that works with Fitbit and automatically records my weight.)

The device is great. It runs for over a week on a single charge. The software is well done too. You can add friends and see how many steps they’ve taken. It builds up a sense of competition and encourages you to get out and walk some more.

The downside is that I feel like I’m going to lose it before too long because it’s super tiny. You know that tiny little pocket inside the right pocket of your jeans? I don’t know what it’s for, but now it’s a Fitbit holder. That seems to work fairly well.

I like the idea of logging data about myself in a variety of ways and this adds to the mix. For now it’s a novelty, but the OCD streak in me will probably want to carry this every day for a long time. It would be kind of interesting to know how many steps I take in a year.

benmartens January 17, 2014 Gadgets

NASCAR Signs With NBC

For the past few years, the NASCAR season has been split across three networks: FOX, TNT and ESPN/ABC. FOX does the best job and TNT coverage is a joke. When we adjusted our cable package, it meant that I wouldn’t be able to watch the races that were on TNT or ESPN. However it looks like that will be changing. In 2015, FOX will get the first 12 races and NBC will get the last 24 races. That means no more TNT or ESPN. I think that’s a win for the sport both because it means fewer changes of network and it drops the two worst coverage teams. Hopefully NBC can put together a good team. It will also give them something big to show at the end of the season when CBS and FOX are running NFL games and will be a big lead-in to their Sunday Night Football games.

benmartens January 16, 2014 Sports

Blue Iris and Foscam

We’ve had a Foscam FI8910W around the house for a while and I’ve enjoyed being able to look in on Tyla and Elijah while I’m at work. It has worked so well that we decided to expand our collection a bit. We now have a camera watching our front door and another in the garage. It’s a really easy way to watch for packages, make sure we shut the garage doors, and keep track of people who come up to the front door.

To manage all three cameras, I picked up a copy of Blue Iris. It has an incredible array of options including the ability to tweak the motion detection to your heart’s content and then set up alerts that will send you emails, text messages, and much more. Any motion gets recorded to our main file server and backed up into the cloud. There’s an app for all the phone platforms that lets me view live feeds from all the cameras and see recent alerts.

I’m really impressed with the system. These cameras are only $60 each now. It makes me want to pick up a few more.

benmartens January 15, 2014 Gadgets

Default To Most Recent Facebook Stories

I’m sure Facebook has some business reason for forcing me to view my news feed in the “Top Stories” order, but it’s really frustrating to me. I don’t care about what they think are the top stories. I just want to see things in the order they happened. Thankfully they change the URL when you change your sort order, so if you want to always view your news feed in “Most Recent” order, change your bookmark to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr.

benmartens January 14, 2014 Geek

Chromecast Review

When we ditched a bunch of our cable stations, I picked up a Chromecast to help simplify streaming. For those of you that haven’t heard of it, it’s a little device a little bigger than a USB stick. It plugs directly into an HDMI port on your TV. You then install a plugin for the Chrome browser (or on your Android phone) and you can use your laptop or phone as a remote control to choose videos on YouTube, Netflix, and some other streaming sites. The reason it made such a splash is that after you pick your video, you don’t have to stay on that page with your laptop. You can keep browsing around while the Chromecast streams the video. And oh, yeah, it’s only $30.

We don’t have Android phones so that immediately decreases some of its value for us, but I did install the plugin for Chrome. I think I can easily say that if you want to watch YouTube on your TV, there is no better way to do it than with a Chromecast. The other apps work equally well.

The only place where it falls down is if you want to display an entire Chrome browser tab on your TV. That is acceptable for text browsing, but if you’re streaming a flash video, it’s unwatchable on the TV.

After I played with it for a while, the device went back in the box for future use. Our TV doesn’t have any spare HDMI ports in the back so it would have to stick out the side. I don’t need it often enough to have it sticking out like that.

benmartens January 13, 2014 Gadgets