Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Fantasy Football – Week 16

Congrats to Logan! He came from the third seed in the playoffs to win it all. Dad and I posted the two of the lowest scores of the week in the “battle” for third. Dad claimed that spot. Jim lost the last six games of the regular season and then won the two games of the playoffs to land in fifth and Luke won the 7th place game. Here are the final standings:

  1. Logan
  2. Andy
  3. Dad
  4. Ben
  5. Jim
  6. Tim
  7. Luke
  8. Austin

Thanks to everyone for a great season! It was one of the closest ones I can remember, and there were almost no deadbeat weeks! I hope to see you all back next year.

Now on to the weekly awards for one last time:

  • Highest Team Score: Luke had 148.72 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: I had 73.90 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: Luke beat Austin by 33.41 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Logan beat Andy by 14.84 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Peyton Manning had 40.00 for Andy. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Hosting the New Orleans Saints, the Carolina Panthers gained 157 offensive yards in the first 59 minutes and 65 yards in the final minute.
  • The Detroit Lions have lost five of six; in all the losses, the Lions could not hold a fourth-quarter lead.
  • The Miami Dolphins’ possession results at the Buffalo Bills: punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, interception, punt, downs, interception.
  • The Cincinnati Bengals and New England Patriots are a combined 32-5 when BenJarvus Green-Ellis scores a touchdown.
  • Nick Foles, who started the season as a backup, has 25 touchdown passes and two interceptions. Joe Flacco, who started the season as the defending Super Bowl MVP, has 18 touchdown passes and 19 interceptions.
benmartens December 26, 2013 Fantasy Sports

Merry Christmas

It’s somewhat of a tradition around here to post our Christmas card along with the text of Jesus’s birth from Luke chapter 2. This year I decided to do it a bit differently. You saw the Christmas card yesterday, and today I thought I’d ramble for a bit about Christmas.

There are lots of phrases bandied about this time of year like “Jesus is the reason for the season” and “Don’t forget the true meaning of Christmas.” Christians know exactly what those phrases mean, but there are probably quite a few people out there for whom those phrases are nothing more than cryptic codes. So today I’ll explain why I celebrate Christmas.

The short explanation is that Christmas is the day that Jesus, the son of God, was born on earth. While the almighty God coming to earth in human form is quite the event in it’s own right, there’s so much more to it than that.

Let’s start back at the beginning. When God created the world, He created Adam and Eve as perfect human beings. They sinned, rebelling against God’s perfection and forever changed the course of history. God demands perfection. Do you want to get to heaven? Great, all you have to do is be perfect every single day of your life. If you deviate from perfection even a single time, that’s it, you’re going to hell. And I’ll give you a hint, no one has ever done that. Adam and Eve sinned and from then on, every one of us were born sinful. God’s rules are simple. Heaven is for perfection, hell and eternal death is for everything else. That’s a pretty grim judgment for us.

When God confronted Adam and Eve about their sin, he explained those consequences to them but then promised to send his son to earth. His son would live a perfect life, be killed as the payment for all of our sins, and then rise again to declare his victory over death, sin and hell. The entire Old Testament (roughly the first two thirds of the Bible) teaches us about God’s law, showing us the many ways in which we have fallen short of His perfection, and it continues the promise that God’s son would come to save us.

This is where the story of Christmas comes into play. God placed his Son, the baby Jesus, in Mary’s womb and nine months later, in a stable full of animals, the son of God was born as a human being. His name, of course, was Jesus, and in addition to being fully human, he was also God. On the night he was born, the star appeared, the shepherds saw it, and your nativity scene came to life. So that’s pretty impressive. The all-knowing, all-powerful God is now here on earth in human form. But if the story ended there, we would all still be going to hell because we’re still sinful and sin equals death.

Thankfully, Jesus went on to do what none of us could do: he lived a perfect life. He was then crucified, and with his death, he paid the price for all of our sins. Three days later, he rose from the dead and about a month later, he ascended back into heaven.

We’re all still here on earth, sinning our lives away no matter how hard we try. But because of Jesus, we have hope. Because I believe that Jesus died for my sins, I know that when I die, I’ll go to heaven because God the Father accepts Jesus’s death as payment for my sins. If God actually did ask me why he should let me into heaven, my answer would be simple: “I believe that Jesus’s death paid the price for my sins.” There’s nothing that I can do to improve on that. No amount of trying to be good or making up for things I did wrong can get me into heaven. I’ll be there solely because when God looks at me, he sees me through the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s a free gift for anyone who believes.

Knowing all that, is it any wonder why I celebrate Christmas? Yes, I enjoy the Christmas lights, Bing Crosby singing about a White Christmas, and stuffing my face with food on Christmas Day, but it all comes in a distant second place to celebrating the birth of my Savior.

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.

benmartens December 25, 2013 Commentary

Christmas Card

In the past I’ve always hand-designed our Christmas cards. This year, free time is at a premium and Snapfish has so many great designs that we decided to use their service. I was very pleased with the end product.

benmartens December 24, 2013 Commentary

Frozen Hosen

We had a spell of exceptionally cold (for this area) weather. Daytime temps were barely above freezing, and it dipped down into the low teens at night. After a few days of this, I was outside and noticed a big ice formation growing from one of my hose bibs. Oops. There’s a shutoff valve inside the garage, but I forgot to flip that this year and the entire valve froze along with much of the pipe leading up to it.

Thankfully nothing broke but I wanted to get it thawed before anything bad happened. So I wrapped a rag around the valve. Then I hooked a hose up to my tankless water heater and ran it out to the frozen valve. (Thanks to Brent’s guys for adding this valve right by the water heater! It has been incredibly useful!) The hose I connected is the white one on the left side of this photo.

After a minute or two, the ice started to break up and eventually I was able to turn the valve and get water to flow again. Phew! Hopefully I won’t make this same mistake twice. Next time I might not be so lucky.

benmartens December 23, 2013 Home Improvement

The Bally Bomber

Wives, do you think your husband has a hobby that takes up too much time and space? It could be worse. Hack A Day recently posted an article about a guy who is building a 1/3 scale replica of a B-17G Flying Fortress! You might think this is just a big RC plane, but no, it’s actually designed to carry a human. This scale model plane has a wing span of 34 feet and is 25 feet long. He started this back in 1999 and there’s no estimate that I can find on when he’ll be ready to fly but it looks like he’s getting close. You can follow along on his website or on Facebook.

benmartens December 20, 2013 Links

RC YouTube Series

In addition to the simulator, I’ve also been learning a lot from the Flite Test YouTube channel. These guys have apparently been around for quite a while so I have a lot of videos to catch up on. They review various RC planes, have instructions for building your own planes from scratch, and they recently started a fantastic beginner series. If I’m not messing around in the simulator, I’m probably watching one of their videos.

benmartens December 19, 2013 Links, Radio Controlled Flight

Fantasy Football – Week 15

The top four teams faced off this week and only two survived. Logan put the smack down on me and Andy beat Dad. There were a lot of high scores around the league and consolation bracket was no exception. Tim put up the second most points in the league and beat Austin while Jim beat Luke. Next week is the championship! Logan and Andy will battle for supremacy.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Logan had 169.02 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Luke had 117.97 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: Logan beat me by 42.52 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Jim beat Luke by 6.78 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Jamaal Charles had 55.50 points for Logan. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  Andy has a five game winning streak.

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Atlanta, Houston, Minnesota and Washington made the playoffs last season, and since their final game of that season are a combined 13-46-1.
  • Josh Gordon has 841 receiving yards in his past five games; Cleveland lost all five.
  • The Saints are 7-0 at home, where they average 33 points, and 3-4 on the road, where they average 18.5 points.
  • Green Bay possession results in the second half at Dallas: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown.
  • St. Louis has wins by 30, 25 and 21 points and losses by 24, 24,and 20 points.
  • Indianapolis went 37 consecutive first-half possessions without a touchdown.
  • The Seahawks have allowed 565 fewer punt return yards than the R*dsk*ns. Reader Jason Eisner of Danville, Va., notes that Washington’s average punt return allowed is nearly the same as total punt return yards allowed by Seattle.
benmartens December 18, 2013 Fantasy Sports

RC Flight Simulator

I posted a while back about building an autonomous multicopter. As I read more about it, I realized that’s a bit of a big leap to take. First I should probably be able to fly it. And it turns out that multicopters aren’t the easiest thing in the world to fly. It’s probably easier to start with a plane. But if you’re going to start flying an RC plane, you probably want to either have a friend who can help you learn or get a simulator. I chose the simulator route, and boy, is it a good thing that I did!

There are a few to chose from, but I went with Real Flight 7 with an actual transmitter that you could use to fly an RC aircraft later. When it arrived, I wondered if I had blown my money on something I didn’t really need. I’ve played plenty of video games. I’m familiar with dual joysticks and I’m comfortable with controlling something whether it’s going away from me (easy) or coming straight at me (hard.) All those years of practice in video games probably helped somewhat, but I spent the first HOURS crashing my trainer plane repeatedly into the ground. The simulator paid for itself in the first 5 minutes.

After probably about 5 hours with the simulator, I was getting to the point where I could fly somewhat respectable figure 8’s and generally land the plane without destroying it. I was feeling pretty good about myself until I remembered that I had turned the physics all the way down to “beginner.” Bumping it up to intermediate put me almost back to square one. This is clearly a good use of money.

The simulator itself is fairly detailed. My system can easily handle the graphics cranked up to their max level so it looks very nice. It has a lot of planes and airfields. More are downloadable from the community online. In addition to normal solo flying, there are challenges like landing on a specific spot, breaking balloons, bomb drops and more. These are fun ways to increase your skillset. There’s also a multiplayer arena that I haven’t ventured into yet.

By the time the weather outside is nice enough to fly, I’m hoping to be confident enough to send a physical plane up into the air.

benmartens December 17, 2013 Radio Controlled Flight

Bacon Burgers

I dare say that I’ve gotten pretty good in the burger department over the years, but last week I tried a new recipe and it turned out really well. The secret was cooking bacon and then using some of the leftover fat to cook chopped onions which were then incorporated into the meat. YUM! As part of our semi-low carb diet, we ate these without buns.

Ingredients

  • 6 slices bacon, chopped
  • 3 tablespoons reserved bacon grease
  • 2 medium onions, divided, 8 ounces
  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 teaspoons Montreal steak seasoning
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 ounces smoked Gouda or cheddar cheese, shredded or sliced

Directions

In a large nonstick skillet, fry the bacon until crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan and drain on a paper towel-lined plate saving the bacon grease. Keep 1 tablespoon of the grease in the skillet and set aside 2 tablespoons for later. Finely chop 1/2 of one of the onions and sauté it in the 1 tablespoon grease for 3 minutes; add to the bacon and let cool.

Thinly slice the remaining onion. Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons bacon grease in the skillet and sauté the onions over medium heat, covered, about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Stir occasionally. Season with salt. Remove the onions from the skillet and keep warm while cooking the burgers.

Meanwhile mix the ground sirloin, Worcestershire sauce, steak seasoning and salt in a large bowl. Stir in the bacon mixture. Form into 4 patties. Grill burgers.

Top each burger with 1/4 of the cheese; cover the pan until the cheese melts. Serve the burgers topped with the sautéed onions.

Original recipe link

benmartens December 16, 2013 Food

Delicious Meat Loaf

Tyla and I have been trying to mix in some low carb meals. I hate looking for low carb recipes because it seems like people think low carb equals vegetarian. Give me some meat! I ran across “Linda’s Low Carb Menus & Recipes” and so far the food we’ve made from it have been a big hit. The first one we tried was the meat loaf recipe. Sorry Mom, yours is good but I think this one has replaced it in my recipe book! It’s not nearly as complicated as Hippy Loaf, but it’s quite good. I forgot to snap a picture so this picture comes from the recipe’s website.

Ingredients

  • 1.75 pounds ground beef
  • 4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
  • 1/3 cup ketchup
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup chopped onions
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
  • 1 teaspoon dried cilantro, or 2 tablespoons fresh
  • 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper, or to taste

Topping:

  • 1/4 cup ketchup
  • 1/4 teaspoon molasses
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

Directions:

  • In a large bowl mix all but the Topping ingredients thoroughly.
  • Mix the topping ingredients together in a small bowl.
  • Place the meat in a greased loaf pan, or shape in 6 mini loaves and place in a foil lined 9×13" baking pan.
  • Brush or spread on the topping.
  • Bake at 375° 45 to 60 minutes for a single large loaf or about 30-35 minutes for the mini loaves or until the internal temperature reads 140-145°
benmartens December 13, 2013 Food