Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Windows Mobile Podcast Player

I have bad news. My 120GB Zune died. The original 30GB is still alive and well but Tyla uses that. My Zune got daily use in my car. I had all my music on there and I mostly used it to play the many podcasts that I listen to (TWiT, Car Talk, Home Theater Geeks, Windows Weekly, and Preston and Steve.)

I decided to use my phone (HTC Touch Pro 2) until I can get a new Windows 7 Phone which will double as my new Zune. The only problem with using Windows Mobile 6.5 as a podcast player is that the media player app doesn’t save your position when you stop listening. This is critical for podcasts which span multiple drives to work.

I fired up Visual Studio and started coding an app to do this. It’s a bit tricky to keep the phone from locking, but I got it all working. The UI is nothing fancy but I’ve been using it for a few weeks and it works quite well!

If you’re interested in running the app on your phone or getting the source code, it’s all available at http://podcastplayer.codeplex.com/ for free.

benmartens October 19, 2010 Geek, Projects

Mexican Chicken Soup

Mom sent me this recipe from Taste of Home. It’s a slow cooker soup recipe and it’s delicious!

Ingredients

  • 1-1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed
  • 2 teaspoons canola oil
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 envelope reduced-sodium taco seasoning
  • 1 can (32 ounces) V8 juice
  • 1 jar (16 ounces) salsa
  • 1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained
  • 1 package (10 ounces) frozen corn, thawed
  • 6 tablespoons reduced-fat cheddar cheese
  • 6 tablespoons reduced-fat sour cream
  • 2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro

In a large nonstick skillet, sauté chicken in oil until no longer pink. Add water and taco seasoning; simmer, uncovered, until chicken is well coated. Transfer to a 5-qt. slow cooker. Stir in the V8 juice, salsa, beans and corn. Cover and cook on low for 3-4 hours or until heated through. Serve with cheese, sour cream and cilantro. Yield: 6 servings.

We left the beans out and increased the corn and chicken. I was a bit leery about the V8 but it all turned out delicious!

benmartens October 18, 2010 Food

Taco Seasoning

What is in those magic packets of taco seasoning that you get in the store? It’s probably stuff that you already have in your spice cabinet. I’ve started making my own and I love it because I can tweak the balance to be just what I want. I make up enough for three or four times and keep it in the cabinet. Here’s the basic recipe but you should adjust it to your liking.

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper

via AllRecipes.com

benmartens October 13, 2010 Food

Crystal Lakes Hike

When spring rolls around, I start flipping through various hikes trying to figure out which ones I want to tackle that summer. The first one I identified this past spring was Crystal Lakes. It’s not a very strenuous hike but it’s one of my favorite areas and ends up at an alpine lake. For those of you following along in your textbook, this is hike #66 in Beyond Mt. Si.

Free weekend days with no rain are getting harder and harder to come by, so on Sunday Tyla and I decided to go for it. It as rainy/misty/cloudy for most of the drive but it didn’t bother us on the hike. The hike itself is consistently steep as it climbs 3000 feet in about 3 miles. The trail is very smooth and well maintained though so you don’t spend a lot of energy stepping over roots and rocks.

We arrived at the lake and found a couple people there, but even though this is a popular trail, we saw less than a dozen people all day. We were able to see all around the lake (and even spotted some leftover snow from last season on the far bank.) It quickly got very cloudy/foggy and we didn’t have much of a view.

It was a very enjoyable hike though and we did get some good glimpses of fall color and at one point the clouds parted and we could see Rainier. The shore was very accessible all the way around. I’m tempted to go back in the summer and do some (chilly) swimming there.

benmartens October 7, 2010 Outdoors

Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff

The slow cooker hasn’t been out of the cupboard for a while, but for some reason, cooler weather makes me want to fire it up. I found a recipe for beef stroganoff and decided to give it a shot. One of the reasons I love the slow cooker is because you simply dump everything in and wait for it to finish. This recipe turned out to be a bit more work than that but it was pretty good. This one is from the Taste of Home magazine.

 

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs beef top sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
  • 3 Tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 envelope (1.5 oz) beef stroganoff seasoning for the slow cooker
  • 1 lb sliced baby Portobello mushrooms (that seemed like a lot so I only used have and it seemed about right to us)
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 3 Tbsp. butter
  • 1/4 cup port wine or beef broth
  • 2 tsp. ground mustard
  • 1 tsp. sugar
  • 1.5 cups (12oz) sour cream
  • Hot cooked egg noodles
  • Minced fresh parsley, optional

In a large skillet, brown meet in oil. Add water and seasoning mix, stirring to loosen browned bits from pan. Transfer meat and drippings to a 3-qt slow cooker.

In the same skillet, sauté mushrooms and onion in butter until tender. Combine the wine, mustard and sugar; stir into the mushroom mixture. Add to slow cooker; stir to combine.

Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or until meat is tender. Stir in sour cream. Serve with noodles. Sprinkle with parsley if desired.

benmartens September 30, 2010 Food

Mexican Lasagna

I whipped up some Mexican Lasagna a few nights ago and it was fantastic! I’ve made similar dishes before, but this time, the flour tortillas were really moist and almost had the texture of normal lasagna noodles. This recipe comes from the Taste of Home magazine.

Ingredients

  • 1-1/2 lbs ground beef
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 can (14-1/2 oz) stewed tomatoes, undrained (I ran them through the food processor)
  • 1 can (10 oz) enchilada sauce
  • 1 to 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 egg beaten
  • 1-1/2 cups (12 oz)  4% cottage cheese
  • 3 cups shredded Mexican cheese blend
  • 8 flour tortillas (8 in) cut in half
  • 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

In a large skillet, cook the beef, onion and garlic over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Stir in the tomatoes, enchilada sauce and cumin. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered for 20 minutes.

In a small bowl, combine egg and cottage cheese; set aside. Spread a third of the meat sauce into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking dish. Layer with half of the cheese blend, tortillas, cottage cheese mixture and remaining meat sauce. Repeat layers. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese.

Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Uncover; bake 10 minutes longer or until bubbly. Let stand for 15 minutes before cutting.

benmartens September 24, 2010 Food

Stebel Nautilus Horn Installation

I received a Stebel Nautilus Compact Horn (ST-100) as a birthday gift from Mom and Dad. It’s a nice upgrade to the stock horn on my 2009 Kawasaki Concours 14 ABS. If you ride a motorcycle, you probably the feeling when somebody merges into you with their windows up and the radio blasting. You’re lucky if they can hear their horn. Now I won’t have that problem.

If I add up the entire project time, it is about 12 hours spread over two days. If I did it again I think I could pull it off in less than two hours. Much of the time was sucked up with 3 trips each to Home Depot and Radio Shack. This whole project was a bit over my head, but I’m very happy with how it turned out.

The step that took the longest was figuring out how to activate the horn. I wanted to replace the stock horn, but I couldn’t find a way to tie into the stock horn button without cutting the wiring harness. I finally gave in and did it, but it took a lot of time to convince myself it was the right move. I’m glad I did.

I’ve posted a series of photos showing the main steps to document the effort, but I’m not responsible if you use these to try it yourself. It’s important to note that I also had the wiring harness from Murphs’ Kits, but it’s not necessary, and if I was doing it again, I’d probably build my own. I would have used a bit thicker wire (is that “lower” gauge?) and shorter wires. But then again, if I didn’t have that harness I would have had a harder time knowing what I needed to do.

If my instructions don’t do it for you, check out the installation instructions for a different the Stebel HF-80/2 on the same bike. It’s smaller though so it gets mounted where the stock horn is. I couldn’t mount this one there because it would have hit the front fender if I compressed the front forks over a bump.

This first picture is the bike before any modifications. I installed the horn right below the flat lighter black plastic piece in this photo.

I’m not going to cover how to remove all the plastic bits. I relied heavily on a set of nine DVDs tailored for my bike. I can’t recommend these AngelRideVideos.com discs enough! This next shot shows all the plastics removed. Note that I also took the battery out since I’m messing with the electronics.

Follow the wire up from the stock horn and find where it goes into the main wiring harness. Take the plunge and snip the two wires. I made sure I had snipped the right wires by reconnecting the battery, firing it up and pressing the horn button. No noise. perfect.

The next two shots show the horn mounted in position. I’ve placed spade connectors onto the bare ends of the wiring harness and plugged into the harness from Murphs’ Kits. I got a strip of aluminum from Home Depot, drilled bigger holes, bent it, and cut it to hold the horn. I later added some zip ties to secure it even more.

The horn requires a relay since it draws so much power. I mounted that on the other side of the foam onto an existing bolt. Very convenient.

This shows the install location with the right fairing replaced. Once the top piece is in place, you can’t see the horn at all. I suppose there are other places that you could mount this for a slightly louder sound, but this is plenty good and it is easy to access.

The end result is impressive! I had no idea what to expect, and honestly, it’s not quite as ear bustingly loud as I thought it might be, but that’s probably good considering that my wife works at a hearing clinic. With a helmet on, it’s no problem to honk the horn, but working the garage right next the horn I put in ear plugs during testing. The real shock is hearing an air horn coming from a motorcycle. I took before and after video to show the difference, but you really have to hear it in person to appreciate it.

benmartens September 23, 2010 Motorcycle, Projects, Video

Muir Snowfield Glissading

One of the great parts about the hike up to Camp Muir was glissading (sliding on your rear end) back down the snowfield. We carried trash bags up with us to help give us some extra slide and a little water protection. We all got pretty wet but it was a blast after all that hard work. I took some video of Andy and Andy sliding down. AndyM came up with the idea of poking his legs through the bottom of the bag to make some stylish shorts.

benmartens September 13, 2010 Outdoors

Panavise Motorcycle Test

I recently picked up a Panavise 809 Camera Window Suction Cup camera mount. It’s for my little car timelapse video hobby, but it dawned on me that it might also work for the motorcycle. I was able to stick it onto the gas tank and get a pretty good view with my Kodak Playsport Zx3. There is a significant amount of vibration, but by bringing the footage into Adobe Premiere I was able to use some filters to remove some of the vibration effect.

I posted the video on YouTube and it’s also embedded below. This video was taken on NF-56. It’s the forestry road that runs between exits 47 and 52 on I-90 up in Snoqualmie Pass. At that point the highway splits and this road runs down the valley in the middle. It’s a great ride! After I reached the end I took a quick zip up to Alpental and then got back on I-90.

Look right around the 5:00 mark and you’ll see a guy come streaking down the hill dressed in full leathers riding a longboard (also shown in the image above.) At 5:15 I passed the second guy followed by one of their friends in a car. It’s completely illegal but it looked like a lot of fun. I’m nowhere near crazy enough to try that though.

benmartens September 6, 2010 Motorcycle, Timelapse, Video

Potholes Timelapse Video

Yesterday I posted a timelapse video where the main feature was the GPS points on the topo map. When we drove back from Potholes a few weeks ago, I focused more on the images. I taped a USB webcam to the rear view mirror and had it connected to the laptop which was running an app to capture an image every two seconds. That worked great except that there was a problem with the inverter and the laptop battery died before we even made it back over the pass.

I took the images that we were able to snag, combined them with the GPS data and created another timelapse video. It’s all done with a custom C# program so if you geeks out there have any questions, let me know. Basically it’s a WinForms app with a web browser that loads the Bing maps and then I use Win32API calls to capture an image of the app. I have another app that combines all the image files into a WMV file.

The next thing I want to try is using the little HD video camera to record the images/video and see how that works. I have a suction cup camera mount that should make it easier to mount in the car and using the video camera means that I won’t need to have the laptop running. I plan to give it another try when we drive out to the coast in a couple weeks.

The video is embedded below, but again, it works best when you view in full screen HD quality. The GPS wasn’t able to get a lock on the signal for a while so it starts out with just images and then the location data kicks in. I wasn’t intentionally trying to keep our camping spot a secret since you could just watch the images and figure out where we were.

benmartens September 3, 2010 Geek, Timelapse, Travel, Video