Studio711.com – Ben Martens

I Conquered Gravity

On Saturday, Tim and I hiked up to the top of Tiger Mountain along the West Tiger #3 trail. I’ve read about it online and it’s often mentioned as one of the most popular hikes in the area. Tiger is the mountain (large hill) that stares you in the face as you get off of I-90 on exits 17 or 18 and when you leave my house and head down Trossachs Blvd. There are over 80 miles of trails on Tiger Mountain, but the trail we hiked was 2.5 miles and 2000 vertical feet one way.

As we started the hike, my macho goal was to not suggest any breaks and wait for Tim to get tired first. That lasted for about 5 minutes. I’m really out of shape after being on the doctor-ordered rest for 3+ months. It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the top and forty five minutes to get down. We’ll see how much that time improves by the end of the summer.

Oh and this magnificent hiking is less than 15 minutes from my house. It’s just one of the many reasons I’m happy I live “way out there.”

benmartens July 9, 2007 Outdoors, Travel

Happy Fourth!

Happy Fourth of July! I hope you're remembering the significance of this day by eating lots of meat, drinking lots of beverages, and exploding gunpowder in the sky.

I just got back from a nice 100 mile motorcycle ride with Matt, Jim, and Simeon. In a couple hours I'll be headed over to the Gaulke estate for some grilling and fireworks. From what I've heard, his fireworks show rivals the one at Gas Works Park.

Enjoy the holiday!

benmartens July 4, 2007 Commentary, Motorcycle

Penrose Point Recap

Tim, Chelsea and I headed for Penrose Point State Park on Friday. It rained most of the day but stopped before we arrived at the site. We had just enough light to set up the tents before spending the rest of the night around the campfire. Saturday was full of cornhole, hiking, and sleeping. We packed up on Sunday morning and headed home. The weather was 75-80 and sunny all weekend.

It was a quick trip, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Expect to see more camping reports throughout the summer.

Pictures are posted in the gallery. I'll add more from Tim and Chelsea in a day or two.

benmartens July 2, 2007 Outdoors, Travel

Camping

I must say that I've been jubilant since receiving the good news from my doctor. This must be how Paris felt when she was released from jail… minus the withdrawal effects.

The first weekend of my summer begins with a camping trip. Tim, Chelsea and I are headed for Penrose Point State Park. The park itself doesn't seem all that remarkable, but there were only a few choices left since this was a last minute decision. Our goal for this trip is simplicity – no pots, no pans, no dishes, no stove. It's just going to be cooking over the fire, relaxing, reading, and playing lots of cornhole. I'll post some pictures when I get back. Have a great weekend!

benmartens June 29, 2007 Commentary, Outdoors

Cornhole!

A few weeks ago, I ordered some official cornhole bags, and Saturday I finally got around to building the boards. Since I helped Jay build his back in Jersey, I knew what I was getting into and was able to modify the design a bit. This time I used MDF for the surface boards and put hinges on the legs for easier transporting. Unfortunately it was pretty rainy so we didn't get to try them out, but I'm sure we'll get to play some night this week.

benmartens June 25, 2007 Commentary

Cornhole

What a weekend. I always forget how far away the east coast is until I'm sitting on a plane for 4815162342 hours. But I would turn right around and do it all over again. I had a great time.

Friday morning was the start of party preparations. We made trips to pick up a keg, CO2 for the kegerator, and supplies to make cornhole. We've talked about making cornhole ever since we saw it played up in Eagan. The game is kind of like horseshoes but with beanbags instead of chunks of metal, and you're trying to throw through a hole in a piece of wood. I might feature the game in an upcoming podcast, but suffice it to say, everyone loves cornhole. The game was in use for pretty much the entire weekend. Friday night, Talbot, Adam, Jay and I put a dent in the keg and stayed up until Lauren and Andy got in around 2:30.

Saturday was party day and there was plenty of meat on the grill, friends mingling, drinks flowing, and cornhole bags flying through the air. A huge thanks goes out to Jay and Juliet for opening up their house to us ruffians. You two have an amazing place and lots of great people to fill it. It was fantastic seeing everyone again (well, almost everyone.) I hope we can do it again soon!

Pictures are posted in the photo gallery.

benmartens May 21, 2007 Travel

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple Stupid. Thanks to RickB for pointing out that my photo frame submission scheme is way too complicated. I had grand plans for how it would work, but A) nobody really uses it and B) it's a crazy process. Maybe those two things are related.

So let's simplify things to one step:

  1. Email me any pictures you want to add to my photo frame.

I don't expect everyone to do this, but at least it will be simpler for those of you that do.

benmartens May 20, 2007 Projects

Open Source

I've opened up the source for the photo frame project. I mentioned it on the home theater discussion list at work and got a flood of replies. Hopefully people will actually contribute to the project and it won't become one of those half finished open source projects that I always see. The project is posted on CodePlex if you're interested.

benmartens May 17, 2007 Projects

Gas Crunch

Gas is expensive. The image on the right is one of my new Vista sidebar gadgets that shows gas prices in our area. You can mouse over it to find the cheapest stations. You can see that the average price out here right now is $3.47 making us the second most expensive state in the union. It hasn't changed my driving habits at all, but I'm really happy that I got the Subaru (27-30mpg) instead of the Envoy (12-15mpg.) Soon I'll be back on my motorcycle which gets 50+ mpg and then it will be even better.

There are lots of emails and MySpace messages going around about not buying gas on a certain day. It drives me bonkers. Do you really think this works? If you don't buy gas on Wednesday, you're going to have to buy it sooner or later. There's even a Snopes entry about this:

Gasoline is a fungible, global commodity, its price subject to the ordinary forces of supply and demand. No amount of consumer gimmickry and showmanship will lower its price in the long run; only a significant, ongoing reduction in demand will accomplish that goal.

benmartens May 16, 2007 Commentary, Motorcycle

Star Trek Photo Frame

This is a good example of what happens when I have too much time on my hands. It started when Tim and I were watching a Star Trek movie and thought about how it would be interesting if we could talk to the digital photo frame.

I downloaded the Microsoft Speech SDK and started coding. In just a few hours, we were able to talk to the frame and get information like the current weather and the current deals on Woot, SlickDeals, and Steep and Cheap.

It's still a little rough around the edges. I want to make it scroll the text vertically when there is too much to fit on a single screen. I'm also trying to figure out how I can get it to stream TV from my computer in the bedroom by simply saying "Computer, ESPN!"

So check out the video below for a demo of the voice commands in action. It was my first attempt at a two camera shoot (a digital camera and a camcorder.) It was a lot of extra editing work, but I think it was a nice touch. Unfortunately I forgot to align the color balances before shooting so I just went with black and white instead.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

[UPDATE] Forgot to mention that this is also availble for download in the Videos section.

[UPDATE] If you would like to see the code or even contribute to it, head over to http://www.codeplex.com/photoframe/

var FO = { movie:"/web/projects/flash_flv_player/flvplayer.swf",width:"320",height:"240",majorversion:"7",build:"0",bgcolor:"#FFFFFF",
flashvars:"file=/web/video/startrek.flv&showdigits=true&autostart=false&showfsbutton=true" };
UFO.create( FO, "playerstartrek");

benmartens April 30, 2007 Projects