Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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

Quick Install

It had been a while since I rebuilt my computer so I decided to do it over Thanksgiving break. I was amazed at how quickly it went! Windows 8.1 installed off a USB key in the blink of an eye. I probably could have used the reset functionality built into Windows 8 but I really wanted to do a bare bones completely clean install. Windows 8.1 remembers pretty much every customization I did to the machine and even all of the apps that I had downloaded from the Windows Store. Office and a few other desktop apps required manual install, but Office 2013 is takes literally a couple minutes to install.

I also gave Ninite a try for the first time. It’s free to use and it streamlines the install of some of the most popular apps. Put a check next to whatever you want to install (Chrome, 7-Zip, Skype, Notepad++, ImgBurn, Steam, etc) and it will install them with default settings and tell you when it’s done. It saves so much mindless clicking!

The final thing that made the reinstall so quick and painless is that all of my files are backed up in the cloud. So I didn’t think twice before formatting my hard drive. I knew if I had forgotten some important files, I could quickly restore them from a backup.

I remember when a task like this used to take the whole weekend or more. This time I fired it off before going to bed, clicked a few buttons in the morning, and I was pretty much done!

benmartens December 12, 2013 Geek, Links

Fantasy Football – Week 14

And there you have it, the final week of the regular season is in the books. As predicted last week, Logan secured the final spot in the playoffs. Here are the playoff seeds:

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

Spots 1-4 will play for the championship while 5-8 square off in the consolation bracket. Good luck everyone!

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Ben had 151.20 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Tim had 88.43 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: I beat Tim by 62.77 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Andy beat Luke by 13.9 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Josh McCown had 47.52 for Austin. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  Jim has lost 6 in a row.

Stats mostly via TMQ (but not this week as there doesn’t seem to be an article available):

  • Austin and I are the only ones playing the League Pick’em on Yahoo and we both perfectly predicted last week’s four games in our league.
  • Logan has beaten his projected points three weeks in a row.
  • This was the 5th time this season that Tim had the lowest score.
  • Austin snapped a four game losing streak this week.
  • 7 of Luke’s 8 losses have been to teams who scored higher than their season average.
  • Luke had the 8th highest points of any losing team this season.
  • Jim has been on the receiving end of what Yahoo deems a “blowout” 5 times this season.
  • With two games left to play, Andy is already tied with Logan’s previous record for most points from the originally drafted team. He has also tied the season record for touchdowns.
benmartens December 11, 2013 Fantasy Sports

CryptoLocker Virus Protection

The CryptoLocker virus has been making the rounds in the news lately, and well it should. If you get infected, the virus will encrypt everything on your harddrive and on drives that are attached via the network. You then get a message saying that you have a few days to pay them ~$500 to get the data unencrypted or they will wipe it all. It’s quite clever and now that people see how successful this type of attack is, I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a lot more of them.

How do you protect yourself from this? Well obviously you need to be careful when you’re opening attachments in your email, but in the end, it’s pretty much impossible to guarantee that you’ll never get a virus on your computer.

So if you think about this, it’s a lot like the situation where your hard drive fails. All of a sudden, you no longer have access to all of the data on your computer. The only difference is that now the odds of that happening to you have increased (and they were already huge to begin with since all hard drives fail eventually and many of them fail after just a few years.)

The answer to both problems is the same: BACK UP YOUR DATA. If we somehow get CryptoLocker in my house, and even if it encrypts every hard drive we have, I won’t lose any of my data. It’s all backed up in the cloud and the cloud backup has versions so even if it somehow overwrites my backups with encrypted data, I can just sync back to the point before the virus and get my data back.

What would happen if you got the virus right now? The good news is that if you don’t have a plan, you can be quite safe for just $50/year. I’m not getting paid by Crashplan.com, but I love their service and highly recommend it. Set it up on your computer and then forget about it. Your data gets backed up all the time without any intervention from you. Then you can rest easy and know that your data is safe!

It’s not a matter of if your hard drive will stop working or it gets hit by a virus like CryptoLocker, it’s a matter of when. Be prepared.

benmartens December 10, 2013 Commentary

Lumber Rack

My garage is plenty big, but I’ve never figured out a good place to store leftover wood, especially big sheets of it. The original plan was to build something that hangs from the rafters, but for lots of boring reasons, it just wasn’t the right answer. So instead, I decided to stack the wood up against the wall.

I had to build a platform to keep the wood above the water main, so that’s why it’s not resting directly on the ground. It’s a very simple design. The bottom platform bears the weight and then there is a bar running across at about 5 feet up from the platform to keep the wood in place. That bar is held in place with a U bracket so I can just slide it up and out when I need to access big sheets of wood.

This solution won’t hold a LOT of wood, but I think it will do the job for a while. I actually don’t have a lot of big scraps left. Many of them went to this project!

benmartens December 9, 2013 Home Improvement, Woodworking

Free Apps Retrospective

I have about a dozen Windows Phone and Windows 8 Store apps. They’re all paid apps, mostly because I’m too lazy to mess around with advertising and it’s nice to get a little money, even if it’s just a few bucks, for my hobby. CascadeSkier makes up about 90% of all my downloads, but even that one isn’t huge. I decided to open the kimono a bit and share the results of a recent experiment where I offered both apps for free for three days.

Windows 8 Store
This version has been out since 2012 and as of today I have 1574 downloads. This app offers a free trial for a couple days and then you have to pay $1.99 to continue using it. During the period where the app was free, I got 120 downloads so that’s a pretty good chunk considering I only have 1500 total downloads. The really interesting part is that after the free period ended, I saw another peak of about 20-30 downloads and about a third of those people bought the app. We’re not talking huge money here, but it does appear that some of the people who downloaded the app for free convinced acquaintances to buy it later.

One random stat unrelated to the free trial: over the last 12 months, 1 out of every 7 people who view the app in the store download it. 27% of those people buy the app and 75% of those people buy it without even attempting the trial.

Windows Phone
The Windows Phone app has been out since 2010 and it has 1758 downloads. During the free period I got 200 downloads but there was no follow-on peak of paid downloads.

This was an interesting experiment. In reality I probably should have done this a long time ago and maybe I’ll do it again in the future. The reviews show that pretty much anybody who uses the app loves it. So that implies that the more people that are using the app, the more people will hear about it. The flip side of this argument is that I target a very small customer base. This app only applies to skiers and snowboarders who live in Washington or the Portland area and who use Windows Phone or run apps from the Windows 8 Store. I often wonder how close I am to saturating that market.

benmartens December 6, 2013 Geek

Remote Control Christmas Lights

Every Christmas, we set up a tree and the Christmas village. Turning these on and off as we enter and leave the house can get a bit tedious, so this year I introduced a little technology to the picture. Enter the Belkin remote controlled power strip! Our tree and village are plugged into this power strip and then the remote is left near the door. The ease of use means that we turn it on more and get more enjoyment out of the decorations. I picked this up at Home Depot but it’s also available at Amazon via the link above.

benmartens December 5, 2013 Commentary