Studio711.com – Ben Martens

2025 Recaps

Every app seems to send some kind of stats page for your year. I picked out some of them to share here. If I spent this much time on these things, they probably get my default recommendation. After reading this, let me know what you think I missed out on.

Pocket Casts (podcasts)

  • 18,051 minutes listened
  • Top 5 podcasts by time listened
    • Stuff You Should Know
    • Making It
    • Cordkillers
    • No Dumb Questions
    • Wood Talk

Spotify

  • 47,106 minutes listened
  • Top artists: George Strait, Andrew Peterson, The Piano Guys, Third Day, Johnny Cash
  • Top Albums:
    • George Strait: 50 Number Ones
    • Downhere: Downhere
    • FFH: I Want To Be Like You
    • Caedmon’s Call: 40 Acres
    • The Arcadian Wild: The Arcadian Wild

Duolingo

  • 1995 Spanish lessons
  • 3684 minutes of studying
  • Current streak: 1911 days

Trakt (TV/movie tracking)

  • Most watched:
    • Star Wars (including Clone Wars, Rebels, and all the movies)
    • Bob’s Burgers
    • Superstore
    • Chuck

Untappd

  • 139 unique new beers
  • All time total distinct beers: 1573
  • Top 5 rated beers
    • Fort George – Pizza Pals
    • Icicle Brewing – Enhchantments Hazy IPA Series – Windy
    • Stemma Brewing – It’s Another Double IPA
    • WarPigs USA Brewing – Foggy Geezer
    • Icicle Brewing – Alpenhaze Hazy IPA

Goodreads

  • 8670 pages read
  • 22 books read
  • Most popular book read: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

I didn’t include YouTube because the channels with the most watch time aren’t necessarily the ones I’d recommend for most people. I watch some homesteading and construction channels in the background when I’m doing other things. I’ll save a refreshed edition of my YouTube channel recommendations for another day.

benmartens January 1, 2026 Commentary

2025 Year In Review

Another year has come and gone. There are a lot of good memories shared below, but on a more global scale, I think when I look back at 2025 it will be the year of AI. Sure ChatGPT has been around for three years now, but this year AI was a force multiplier in pretty much every aspect of my life. Every few months feels like another level up and every step we take forward is bigger and bigger. While there are certainly challenges and concerns with using it, it’s impossible to ignore the positive impact it has had not just at work, but at home and at church too.

Zooming in from that global view, we had a lot of trips around the country. There was our annual trip to Leavenworth with Tyla’s family in January, visiting MLC with Elijah, a trip to eastern WA as we crossed off more counties, camping with Tyla’s family at Ike Kinswa State Park, my solo trip to the synod convention in New Ulm, a summer week in Indiana, our family road trip to Yellowstone, another trip to MLC, and a few days in Mazama with my parents. Looking back at that list, maybe this is actually the year of New Ulm, MN! I was there three times this year. It’s a lot of travel to that specific small town, but Tyla and I are both really thankful to be part of those meetings at Martin Luther College.

We had quite a few fun day trips too. There was a Boeing Factory tour, seeing the Piano Guys in concert, riding bike/train things, our Leavenworth chocolate tour, and seeing another professional disc golf tournament.

Church continues to occupy a lot of time on my calendar and space in my head. We spun up a new leadership structure last year that creates teams to handle a lot of the work that we used to handle on council. That has certainly helped and is going well, but somehow it seems like the work for council is still a very long list. Thankfully we are seeing a lot of growth and energy while record numbers of visitors are walking through the doors.

I’m thankful to have spent another year working from home. That will be changing next year when they bring us back to the office in February, but for now it’s nice to have lunch with Tyla while also not spending 1.5 hours in traffic every day. The return-to-work next year will be a big change for all of us, but I’m still thankful to have this job so I’m willing to make that commute even if I don’t know where that time will come from. It’s wonderful to have a supportive family that is willing to roll with the changes.

Woodworking remained near the top of my favorite hobbies even though the list of completed wood working projects feels very short this year. I spent a huge portion of the year playing with different ways to make coasters. I finally landed on a fairly repeatable process and I made a bunch of MLC coasters. I enjoyed being able to refine my approach and get better each time, but eventually I had to stop because it felt like I was just troubleshooting little issues and it wasn’t fun anymore. I also built a new desk top for my standing desk, finished a nightstand for Tyla, and built us our own nativity set. More recently I have been experimenting with machine a plastic called HDPE. It’s like milk jug plastic, but it has white material sandwiched between two layers of color so depending on how far down you cut, you reveal different colors. I started with an American flag in the shape of the United States and then also made an MLC logo and an eagle sign.

If I look at how much time I spend doing various hobbies, piano would probably be at the top by quite a big stretch. I don’t think of it as a hobby because I’m usually practicing for an upcoming church service, but even when I have a break in the church piano schedule, I still like to play every day. I like to record every song that I learn in MIDI and then render out a nice audio version. Sometimes I do video too and, in those cases, I throw them up on YouTube.

2025 was “just another year” without any grand events, but that’s something to be thankful for too.

Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

benmartens December 31, 2025 Commentary, Family

Good Eats Returns!

I loved Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” back in the early 2000s. It was a unique combination of cooking and science. Some of the things I learned on that show are still drilled into my brain like “Avoid single use kitchen gadgets.”

So you can imagine my excitement when I saw that he’s bringing it back on YouTube! The first episode went live on November 22 and he’s releasing weekly episodes.

There were a couple other sequel/spinoff series so while I hope this one will last for a long time, I’m here for whatever we get!

benmartens December 29, 2025 Links

Merry Christmas!

LUKE 2

THE BIRTH OF JESUS

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.

4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

benmartens December 25, 2025 Commentary

Eagle Sign

For my birthday, my parents tried to buy me a kit from CIC Workshop to make an American Flag Eagle sign. The kit was out of stock so that set me on my path of making the American flag in the shape of the United States and then the Martin Luther College sign. As I was ordering a bit more material to make that MLC sign, I realized that the original eagle kit was back in stock so I picked that up.

The kit comes with all of the raw materials cut to size. The HDPE material is pricey so it is helpful to only buy what you need. It also comes with the digital files in a variety of formats and even a legal release allowing you to sell the result.

It was fun to cut it out and assemble it, and since the material is very fast to cut, I was done pretty quickly. Basically when you look at this, each color is its own piece except for the white which is the color underneath the black. Everything fits into its place and is held in with special glue that works with HDPE. I added a keyhole slot in the back so I could hang it on a screw and now it proudly overlooks my workshop.

This exploration into HDPE has been interesting but I’m looking forward to getting back to a more traditional woodworking project. I still have some HDPE material leftover though so this probably won’t be the last project I ever do with it.

benmartens December 24, 2025 Woodworking

Railriding

Looking back through my 2025 posts in preparation for my “year in review” post, I realized that I never wrote about our rail riding trip in August!

For Tyla’s birthday adventure, we checked out Vance Creek Railriders. They have a stretch of tracks and custom built pedal powered train carts. Each cart can hold up to four people and you better be ready to pedal because it’s a workout!

The trip away from the home base goes pretty quickly because there are large stretches that are slightly downhill. We probably got going ~20-25 mph at points, but of course, all that fun downhill was just future work for us.

At the turnaround point, they had a special contraption for flipping the carts around while we had the option of visiting the port-a-potty.

Coming back was significantly harder, and it was made worse by the group towards the front that seemed to take pedaling as an optional part of the trip. It sort of was optional because the cart in the back had a small engine on it, but there was no way it could push the dozen or so carts up the hills so we all still had to pedal.

I don’t think any of us are itching to do this every weekend, but it was definitely a fun experience that we’re all glad we tried.

benmartens December 18, 2025 Family, Travel

Custom MLC Sign

After making the flag shaped like the United States, I wanted to do a couple more projects with that HDPE material. Since I had some red/white/red left over, I bought a sheet of black/white/black and pulled out my vector drawing of the Martin Luther College athletics logo. It was a relatively easy job to set up except that I was trying to maximize my use of a scrap piece, and since the material is so expensive, I didn’t have any extra. Any error would scrap the whole project.

Thankfully it all came out smoothly. Gluing the two pieces together was tricky because almost nothing adheres to this, but I did find an epoxy that works pretty well. It’s not an unbreakable bond, but I think it will be ok for a sign hanging on the wall.

I have one more HDPE project planned, but you’ll have to check back later to see that. You can also follow my woodworking Instagram account @martenswoodworks. Feel free to leave angry comments about how this is not a woodworking project.

benmartens December 17, 2025 Woodworking

Nativity Set

Back in 2022, a teacher at Elijah’s school approached me with a special project opportunity. The old wooden cross on the school property had fallen over. She had saved a chunk of it and wondered if I could make something from it.

The piece she saved was an 8×8 that was maybe 15″ long. I finally landed on the idea of making a nativity set out of it and I based the design on a set that Mom always put up around our house while I was growing up.

I carefully sliced the wood into ~3/4″ pieces. Then I drew the whole thing on the computer first and used the CNC to cut out all the parts. (That turned out to be a good move since I ended up making more of them.) I cut it out of regular pine first to refine the design and then nervously used up the reclaimed wood to make a set. The final step (after endless hand sanding) was applying 5 colors of stain to the various pieces and gluing them together. I made a quick video of the process so the school could use it as marketing for their upcoming fundraiser/auction.

The set made from the school cross sold for over $700 at auction! Since I had another complete set made from regular pine, I finished that one as well and gave it to my parents as a Christmas gift.

Fast forward a couple years and I keep thinking about this project and how it would be nice to have our own set so I pulled out the files and cut another one. Most of the effort is in the hand sanding and the staining. I didn’t sand this one quite as much as the others partly because I’m lazy and partly because I wondered if a slightly more rustic look would look good. I think it came out well and it will be fun to have it up around our house at Christmas.

I might revisit this in the future. I think it would be fun to make a fancier version that uses five different species of wood and no stain. I’m curious if that would look good or if the quality of the wood would detract from the simple design.

benmartens December 15, 2025 Woodworking