Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Baby News

We’re having a baby!!!

We are thrilled to announce that all is going well with our new baby. This is a lot earlier than we thought we’d be able to say anything, but after our first appointment, the docs said things are going as well as can be expected and we should feel free to tell everyone. Tyla is just starting week 10 so that gives us an estimated due date in early June.

Obviously everything is about to change for us, and while I knew that intellectually, it felt more real after that first appointment when they did an ultrasound. We not only got to see the baby but also hear the heartbeat! Our little baby is about an inch long right now, but he/she already has a strong heart beat, vital organs, fingernails, and arms and legs with joints. We won’t have an opportunity to find out the sex for a couple more months.

Tyla has been doing pretty well with the pregnancy. She usually feels a little bit sick, has some food aversions, and needs extra sleep, but it hasn’t affected her regular routine too much. All the workouts and eating well over the past couple years is paying off!

Telling people big news like this turns out to be a tricky situation in today’s super-connected social networking world. We would have preferred to tell you all in a personal phone call, but we wanted you to at least hear it from us first. Plus, it’s so exciting that I couldn’t wait another minute!

Big things in my life seem to happen every four years. In 1990 I moved from the lower grade room to the upper grade room in our two room schoolhouse. In 1994 I started high school, in 1998 I moved on to college, in 2002 I took my first job out in Jersey, in 2006 I took a job out in Seattle, and in 2010 I got married. The due date is currently in early June of 2013, so I guess that will break the trend… unless maybe 2014 is the year I change a diaper for the first time? I don’t know if Tyla will go for that.

benmartens November 2, 2012 Family

Indiana Trip

Tyla and I aren’t going back to Indiana for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year so we picked a cheap weekend in October instead. Luke, Rachel and David came over from Toledo and we all had a great weekend! It was a nice lazy, relaxing weekend with some Catan, pumpkin carving, and visiting a petting zoo and corn maze! Being back home always brings back a lot of great memories and it was fun to add a few more to that list.

Photos are available in the photo gallery.

benmartens October 30, 2012 Travel

CascadeSkier for Windows 8

Ever since we started getting word about Windows 8, I’ve been getting asked if I’m going to write a new version of the CascadeSkier application. Up until now, only Windows Phone users have been able to enjoy it, but I expect the Windows 8 market reach will be a lot greater. Today I’m happy to announce that CascadeSkier for Windows 8 is available in the store!

Jeremy, the graphic designer who gave the phone app a huge facelift, is back on board for the Windows 8 version. He’s done a great job making this app look amazing!

If you’ve used the phone app before, you’ll notice that this new version is very basic. For example, there aren’t any live tiles yet or the ability to filter and sort the resorts. That’s all coming, but we wanted to nail the basics and get it into the store. There was a lot to learn with this first foray into Windows 8 development.

You can buy it in the store right now for $1.49 (the lowest price they let you choose, other than free) and there is a free 1 day trial. We’re planning to bump up the price once we get more of the features implemented so if you think you’re interested, grab it now! I’d also really appreciate if you could leave feedback for the app. As with most online stores, the average rating and number of reviews is a huge factor in the success of a product. Be honest, but if you have really negative stuff, it would obviously be better for me if you approached me directly!

We hope you have as much fun using it as we did creating it. Bring on the snow!

For more information on the CascadeSkier family of apps, head over to cascadeskier.com.

benmartens October 22, 2012 Projects

CascadeSkier for Windows 8

I’ve been hard at work getting a new version of the CascadeSkier app put together which will run in the new Windows 8 environment. Jeremy, the designer who is responsible for the beautiful Windows Phone apps, is on board for this new app too. We’re following the same look at feel of the phone app but adapting it to fit with the Windows 8 environment. I’m eager to show you some screenshots and give you a demo, but I’m holding off until we actually get this thing submitted to the store. That should hopefully happen in the next few days and then I’m expecting the store testing to take quite a while. There are a ton of developers trying to get their apps into the store before it publically launches at the end of October!

benmartens October 12, 2012 Skiing

Bay View State Park

Usually by now the weather is cool and rainy and it would stay that way through next spring. We’re still completely dry (dryest Aug-Sept on record and second dryest July-Sept!) so Tyla’s parents decided to take advantage of the bonus sunshine and go camping. They headed up to Bay View State Park for the weekend, and Tyla and I visited them for the day on Saturday.

We let Oskar play in the water and went for a walk along the bay. It was a nice lazy day in the sunshine. Photos are in the photo gallery. Apparently it was an Oskar photo shoot.

benmartens October 11, 2012 Outdoors

Seattle to Dry Falls and Back

As soon as FrankL, DougW and I got back from our British Columbia motorcycle ride, we started talking about the next one. We settled on a trip out to Dry Falls in central Washington. This past Saturday was the day that had been circled on the calendars but we woke up to rain. After the driest two month stretch in Seattle history where we only got 0.02 inches of rain, we got rain on the day we picked for the ride! We met at Doug’s house anyway, and, after checking the radar, decided to give it a shot.

The rain ended somewhere around North Bend and from there it was clear sailing. Our route took us up US 97 right through the Wenatchee forest fire. The fire has burned 143 square miles and there are firefighters from all over the country trying to put it out. It started as a series of smaller fires caused by lightning and quickly got out of control. A little bit of the smoke has been drifting west into Seattle, but it was nothing like we experienced over there. The sun turned to a dull red ball, visibility was greatly reduced and you could feel the sting of smoke in your eyes. At one point where the fire was the closest, they had closed down the road and were leading single lines of cars back and forth with pilot cars. The website says that “fire is approaching the highway from the east and crews are conducting burn out operations from the road. Firefighters and their equipment will be along the roadway and visibility likely will be reduced by heavy smoke.“ The fire’s page on inciweb.org shows just how close the fire is to the highway right now!

Once we were through that area, we headed east out to Dry Falls. It’s a big dry canyon/riverbed and the sign said it was once the largest waterfall in the world. After taking in the sights it was back on the bikes heading west through Wenatchee again, then Leavenworth, Stevens Pass, and finally back home.

All told it was just over 400 miles in one day. We were pretty sore during those last stretches, but what a day it was!

This was my first major test of the Go Pro camera. Instead of mounting it on my helmet, I mounted it on one of the wind deflectors over my right side mirror. I got just under 2 hours of video recorded before the battery ran out. I posted it all on YouTube if you really want to see the raw footage. I also edited it down to about 5 minutes, added a soundtrack (Eddie Vedder from Into the Wild), and recorded a little commentary to explain what you’re seeing. The version embedded below has the commentary but if you don’t like me talking, you can watch the edited version with no commentary. Confused yet? Just watch the video below!

benmartens September 24, 2012 Uncategorized

100w Bulb Phase Out

Sometimes not paying attention to the news catches me by surprise. For example, a trip to Home Depot to buy a replacement 100w incandescent bulb left me confused. They didn’t have any 100w bulbs!

I mentioned it at dinner to Don and he said we had President Bush to thank for that one. Sure enough, in 2007, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act. 100W bulbs are gone this year, 75W disappear next year, and 60W and 40W bulbs are gone in 2014.

I’ve mostly converted to CCFL bulbs (good LED bulbs are still too expensive) but there are a couple places where I really want incandescent bulbs even though they are inefficient. Specifically,I want instant bright light in the garage and the motion sensor switch installed out there causes CCFL bulbs to flicker.

Luckily you can still find the 100W bulbs on Amazon so I bought a 24 pack. That seemed like a good idea until they arrived at my house in a poorly packaged box containing a million light bulb pieces. Amazon has a good return policy though so I sent it back and found 100w bulbs at Fred Meyer.

The bottom line is don’t miss out on buying these if you need them in your house!

benmartens September 21, 2012 Home Improvement

Church Picnic

For the second year in a row, we’ve had our annual church picnic at the Trenkamp home instead of in the back yard of church. They have a wonderful setting for the picnic and it’s so nice of them to host us all! This year was the first cloudy day in almost two months, but the rain held off and we had a wonderful time. There was plenty of food, cornhole, horseshoes, Kan Jam, and socializing. We hope you can make it next year! Instead of doing photos, I tried to put together a little video.

benmartens September 18, 2012 Commentary

Cornhole Upgrades

After putting the acrylic cover over Tim’s incredible paint job, I decided to give them a few more upgrades. First I drilled two rows of 22 holes (0 – 21) in the back of the board to use as a scoring system. You just move the golf tees along as you score points. It’s quick and easy and there’s nothing extra to carry along with the boards. I put some black paint in and around the holes, but it doesn’t match the rest of what Tim had there already so I might sand it down and redo it the same way he did. The paint makes it look like my holes are way more uneven than they really are. I need to get some white paint and draw a couple numbers or markers on there for easier counting.

My boards have foldable legs on them so they don’t take up as much room in the car. They’re a great feature, but they can be a little difficult to slide in and out of the car as the legs are dropping down. Dad suggested some magnets. We picked up some cabinet magnetics latches and those are working quite well.

I don’t have any more immediate plans for them, but I have lots more ideas of things I could do. I’ve seen people add lighting around the bottom of the hole for when it gets dark, and I also think I could whip up a nice digital scoreboard that would attach to the back of a board for even easier scorekeeping. That can probably all wait though.

benmartens September 14, 2012 Commentary

Cornhole Boards Update

I posted a couple weeks back about the amazing paint job that Tim did on my cornhole boards. Yes, that’s really paint, not a decal!

The paint didn’t adhere real well to the MDF and we were concerned that it would scrape off as soon as we started playing. So when Dad was here over the weekend, we bought some sheets of acrylic and applied them to the top of the boards. That involved securing the sheet to the boards with screws (countersunk so the bags wouldn’t catch), trimming the sheets to match the size of the boards and then cutting out new holes to match the existing holes. We weren’t sure how we’d do the trimming and cutting but after experimenting with a Dremel, we switched to the router and it worked remarkably well! I had a bit with a bearing on the bottom the same diameter as the cutting blade. That rode along the edge of the wood while the blade cut the acrylic. We were able to quickly cut an exact match for the boards!

The other concern with this plan was that the boards would end up being way too slippery, but surprisingly they were LESS slippery than before due to the static from the protective plastic that was on the acrylic. I think that will wear off over time and once the boards got a little dusty, they played very close to the original, unpainted boards.

The only downside to this approach was that as the boards heated up in the direct sunlight, the acrylic started to warp a bit. It doesn’t expand at the same rate as the wood underneath. That wasn’t a huge deal though so hopefully this will be the final solution.

Eventually the acrylic will get scuffed up but it should be a pretty quick job to replace them and keep the boards looking like new!

benmartens September 11, 2012 Commentary