Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Custom Storage And Desk: Part 1

The only want I’m able to distract people from the pile of boxes and junk along the wall in the man cave is with a 110” screen. On that same wall, I also had a tiny little cheap desk and chair setup that have been progressively getting worse and worse over the years. I had grand visions for what that area of the room could be, and after completing a bunch of other home projects, it was time to tackle this one.

My first decision was whether to do this myself or contract it out. To get a rough idea of material costs, I did a drawing in Google Sketchup using the dimensions of Ikea cabinets. I then got a bid from a contractor for one of these online cabinet places. The contractor’s design was definitely nicer than what I drew, but it was about 2.5 times the cost. While getting that bid might feel like a waste of time, it helped me a lot throughout the project because I knew how much money I was saving.

The cabinets were the first big steps in the project after the planning was done. They were quick to assemble and very easy to hang even with only one person. The design of the cabinets is really intelligent and allows me to easily swap shelves for drawers or vice versa if I ever want to later. I could also upgrade the cabinet facing without too much cost. I still need to pick out door pulls and cabinet handles but I’ll probably do that at the end.

Next up: shelving along the left side of the cabinets and a desk surface.

benmartens October 21, 2013 Home Improvement, Projects, Woodworking

Body Proportions

Do babies have big heads or short arms? Elijah can barely touch his hands together over his head. So does that mean that his arms are too short and will grow longer as he ages or that his head will shrink relative to his body?

The answer is that babies have proportionally bigger heads than adults. A child’s head makes up 20% of their overall height while an adult’s head is only 11% of their height. That means that if our proportions didn’t change as we moved through our lives, my head would be roughly twice as big as it is now!

benmartens October 18, 2013 Commentary

In Depth Orchestra Viewing

The London Symphony Orchestra published a great website that lets you have four concurrent HD views of their music and you can choose which view you want in each quadrant. There’s some extra stuff thrown in that lets you drill in for information about each instrument in each chair too. This type of thing has been promised since DVDs were first introduced but it has yet to see the mainstream.

benmartens October 17, 2013 Links, Music

Fantasy Football – Week 6

We’re back to having a little diversity in the standings. Andy is currently sitting in the top spot at 4-2. The game of the week for me was Jim vs. Tim. Not only did it rhyme, but they were battling it out to see who could win with the least amount of points. Tim eventually won with a score that, if not for Jim, would have qualified for the lowest score of the season. On a side note, Tim is the only player in our league who hasn’t made a roster move yet. Wonder how long he can keep that up? On a side side note, the two top scorers in our league were free agents!

Austin and I have been doing the league pick ‘em each week and he turns out to be pretty good at it, or at least he’s slightly better than guessing with a 9-7 record. Somehow I’m doing worse than blind guessing.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Ben had 144.05 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Jim had had 72.17 (Previous Record, Week 5: Jim had 85.01)
  • Biggest Blowout: Ben beat Austin by 40.76 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Tim beat Jim by 11.1 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Cam Newtown had 36.68 as a free agent.  (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  I’m on a three game winning streak.
  • Deadbeats: Dad and Luke both started injured players, but since they were playing each other I guess it cancels out? We haven’t had many deadbeats this year which is good but we’re getting into injury and bye times.

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Houston has given up a pick-six in five consecutive games.
  • In the Kansas City-Oakland game, there were 32 completed passes versus 13 sacks and three interceptions.
  • At one point, Oakland faced fourth-and-48.
  • The Giants are 0-6, have committed 23 turnovers, and are three games out of first place.
  • At 2:49 Eastern on Oct. 13, the Steelers’ defense recorded its first interception of the 2013 season.
  • Tom Brady had gone eight quarters versus New Orleans without a touchdown pass — until five seconds remained.
benmartens October 16, 2013 Fantasy Sports

Low Power Living Room

Tyla laughs whenever I start talking about light bulbs, but here we go again. Our living room, eating area and kitchen are now completely incandescent free. When we bought the house, that area contained 11 60-watt bulbs, 2 100-watt bulbs, and 5 40-watt bulbs. When all the lights were on, that was using over a killowatt every single hour! We spend most of our time in that area and if we left all those lights on for 5 hours a day, that’s $193/year in electricity bills. With the new combination of CFL and LED bulbs, that same usage would cost $32. Not too shabby. By my calculations, it will take us about 2-3 years to recoup the cost of the bulbs and then we’ll be saving money.

The tricky part of this was finding good 40 watt equivalent LED candelabra base bulbs. There aren’t a lot of them out there yet. I tried three different types:

  • Costco sells a 3 pack made by Feit. These were the cheapest at about $10 for three bulbs, but they were also the lowest quality. The light wasn’t the standard 2700K color that you get from incandescent. It was significantly whiter and it also has a delay when you turn it on.
  • Torchstar sells a bulb for $7 that turns on instantly but is a bit too white. It’s better than the Costco bulbs, but still not acceptable for a lamp that we use all the time in close proximity to other lights.
  • The winner was a bulb from Sexy LEDs. It has the right color and comes on instantly. If I had to knock it, I’d say that it’s not quite as bright as a 40w incandescent bulb. It was close enough for our purposes.

Unfortunately those Sexy LED bulbs are also the most expensive. I chose to use them in that main light fixture above our eating area and then use the cheaper Costco bulbs in the other areas of the house like the stairwell and the upstairs hallway. Color and delay don’t make as big of a difference there.

This will all pay off as long as the bulbs are reliable since part of the savings is that you basically never have to replace them. We’ll have to wait a while to figure out if that holds true.

benmartens October 15, 2013 Home Improvement

Government Shutdown Still Doesn’t Balance The Budget

This is as close as I’m going to get to being political, but I got to wondering if our 18th government shutdown meant that we were spending less money than we brought in (assuming the IRS would still operate to collect our taxes.)

So the first question is how much is the government spending during the shutdown? The estimated answer is that we have stopped about 17% of our spending. 83% of it is still trucking along unaffected. And secondly, how much of a deficit did we write into the 2013 budget? For that budget, we planned to bring in enough money to cover 76.3% of our spending.

Put those two facts together and you can see that even during this government shutdown, we are STILL spending more money than we collect.

And one final, somewhat-related thing before I return you to normal blog posts, KenC pointed me to a video that does a good job of putting all of these enormous numbers into perspective.

I’m sure people can take these numbers and use them to argue on either side of the aisle. That’s the beauty (and confusion) of our political system. But it’s helpful if we all start with the facts and go from there instead of starting with other people’s opinions that are screamed at us from the televisions.

benmartens October 14, 2013 Commentary

Grilled Steak Burritos

Tim and Chelsea have an amazing Mexican meal. They sent me the recipe, but they do it so well, I didn’t want to just copy them exactly. So instead I took pieces of their meal and changed it up a bit. The end result is something that makes my mouth water just typing this out. It’s a lot of work, but I think you’ll find that it’s worth it. And if you’re really pressed for time, there are plenty of places where you could take shortcuts.

Mexican Rice
You could make your own but I cheat and make this from a box/packet. Alternatively you could make some sticky rice with cilantro and lime juice.

Refried Beans

Ingredients

  • 1 can pinto beans
  • 1 can refried beans
  • 2 pieces of cooked bacon

Directions

  • Combine refried beans and drained pinto beans. Add two pieces cooked bacon and allow to simmer over low heat.

Pico de Gallo

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp diced, seeded jalapeno
  • 1 tbsp diced onion
  • 1 tbsp chopped cilantro
  • 1/4 cup diced, seeded tomato
  • 2 tsp fresh lime juice
  • Salt & pepper

Directions

  • Combine!

Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 2 ripe avocados
  • 2 tbsp diced, seeded jalapeno
  • 2 tbsp diced onion
  • 2 tbsp chopped cilantro
  • 1/2 cup diced, seeded tomato
  • 1 tbsp fresh lime juice
  • Salt & pepper

Directions

  • Put it all in a bowl and mix it up. I use a fork to smash the avocado.

Marinade

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup cumin seeds
  • 5 jalapeno peppers, seeds and ribs removed, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 1 tablespoon cracked black pepper
  • 1/3 cup fresh lime juice
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 1/2 cups olive oil
  • 2 bunches cilantro (leaves and stems)

Directions

  • Toast the cumin seeds in a medium saute pan over medium-low heat for 5 minutes, or until fragrant.
  • In a blender, combine the cumin seeds, jalapenos, garlic, pepper, lime juice, and salt. Pulse the blender to finely chop ingredients. Add the oil and cilantro and puree until smooth.

Grilled Steak Burritos

Ingredients

  • 4 burrito size flour tortillas
  • 1 pound top sirloin
  • 1 cup shredded cheese
  • Sour cream

Directions

  • Make the marinade. Lightly score both sides of the meat with a knife so that the marinade will penetrate. Place the meat in a large plastic bag or bowl, pour in the marinade, and coat well. Marinate in the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours.
  • Grill the steak.
  • When it’s done, pull it off the grill and cut it into thin slices. You may want to cut the steak perpendicular to the slices too so they are smaller and easier to eat.
  • Have each person prepare their burrito (no guac yet though!). Place the rolled burritos back on the grill. Grill until golden brown on both sides.
  • Top with guacamole and sour cream. Serve with rice and beans on the side or inside the burrito.
benmartens October 11, 2013 Food

Grant Imahara

Grant Imahara is currently one of the hosts of Discovery’s Mythbusters. He’s fun to watch on the show, but that’s all I knew about him. He was recently interviewed on a Triangulation podcast, and wow, this is one interesting guy! I don’t want to spoil all the surprises for you but for example he worked on all 13 R2D2 units, he built the Energizer bunny, and he built Craig Ferguson’s robot on the Late Late Show. If you are at all intrigued by Grant, do yourself a favor and watch/listen to that episode of the podcast.

benmartens October 10, 2013 Links

Fantasy Football – Week 5

The massive 8-way tie for first place is over, but I think it’s going to be a long time before this season is decided. Andy, Austin, Logan and I were all winners. Logan could have topped 200 this week with a perfect roster. A big chunk of that was due to Tony Romo who had over 50 points… on his bench. He didn’t need the points to pull out a win though.

Now on to the weekly awards. I’m adding a new one that goes to our longest active streak, either winning or losing.

  • Highest Team Score: Logan had 154.59 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Jim had 85.01 (Record, Week 3: Tim had 85.40)
  • Biggest Blowout: Logan beat Dad by 58.82 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: I beat Luke by 27.08 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Tony Romo had 50.94 points for Logan. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Crystal Ball: Jim started a perfect roster.
  • Mr. Consistency: Austin with 3 wins in a row.

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Peyton Manning is on a pace to throw 64 touchdown passes. The NFL season record is 50, by Tom Brady in 2007.
  • Drew Brees won at Chicago for the first time.
  • The Saints are 5-0 for the first time since 2009, when they went on to victory in the Super Bowl.
  • The Giants are 0-5, have committed 20 turnovers, and are two games out of first place.
  • Denver is on a 5-0 streak versus Dallas, and 16-1 overall.
  • Detroit has lost 23 consecutive games in the state of Wisconsin.
  • The past two Baylor-West Virginia games have resulted in 248 points and 2,765 yards of offense — an average of 62 points and 691 yards of offense per game per team.
benmartens October 9, 2013 Fantasy Sports

Lunchbox Laboratory

I love a good burger. Up until now if you asked me for the absolute best burger I’ve ever had in an area restaurant, I would have to say it was the burger at Tavern Law in Seattle. That is no loner the case. Enter Lunchbox Laboratory!

Their first site was in Seattle, but even the draw of a delicious burger couldn’t convince me to venture across the lake to the city. Now they have a new location in Bellevue which is just a few exits down 405. Perfect! On the last Friday of my paternity leave, Logan, Tyla, Elijah and I headed there to see what the buzz was all about.

It’s a casual restaurant with a very fun menu. Pretty much every burger looked incredible. It was hard to pick one but I was sure that no matter what I picked, it would be delicious. More experimentation is needed to prove that hypothesis, but so far so good because I picked an AMAZING BURGER. It was the Sante Fe Slammer: "Super-beef, colby jack cheese, bacon, lunchbox onions, diced green chilies, and papa’s house-made bbq sauce. I got that with tots smothered in cheese and bacon. Tyla ordered the “Tribute to Dick’s Deluxe” (Dick’s is a famous burger place in the area) and Logan got a dork burger which is duck + pork.

The food was fantastic and I think we’re all eager to eat there again. The downside is that the location is kind of in the newer snooty area of Bellevue so parking is a pain. It’s also not cheap. Tyla drank water and I had a pop. Our total with tip was $48! This won’t be an every day spot for us, but if you’re in the mood for a wonderfully delicious burger, give us a call because we want to go back!

benmartens October 8, 2013 Commentary