Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Goodbye Comcast TV

I grew up with an antenna on top of our house. We could get some channels from Chicago in addition to the local channels so we had a pretty good selection. But I still remember going to college and having CABLE TV. I was in awe of ESPN. I’ve had cable ever since then, but since Elijah was born our TV watching has gone way down and most of it is via Netflix or Amazon Prime. So last week I took the plunge and totally canceled my TV service.

It wasn’t quite that simple though because we host football parties at our house so I need some way to watch local broadcast stations. I went to antennaweb.org and picked up one of the antennas that they recommended for my location. I mounted it up in the rafters of my garage pointing the direction recommended on the site. The picture looks beautiful! Unfortunately, some of the channels have small glitches every few minutes. But I’m still going for it.

Our cable TV plus 150Mbps internet was $82/month. When the annual contract ended, it jumped up to $98. I really didn’t want to sign another contract that included TV since I’ve been thinking about canceling for so long, but I don’t mind signing a contract for internet since there aren’t many other options around here. I did drop our speed down to 60Mbps to save even more money. I signed a contract that locks in the price at $45/month including fees, etc for 2 years. So even if we go back to cable TV in four or five months, I’ll still come out ahead with the hardware that I purchased for the antenna solution.

And here’s a breakdown of that hardware…

That tuner purchase was a surprise. I forgot that the InfiniTV card in my Media Center PC doesn’t have an ATSC tuner built in (that’s the over-the-air signal format.) Thankfully I was able to find the older model of the HD Homerun for a pretty cheap price. It hooked up just fine to the Media Center PC. I also played around with the DVR/Live TV features of Plex but I was frustrated that I couldn’t watch a show while it was recording. I’m sure that will come along eventually though. Once it does, then I can ditch the separate PC I have just for running Media Center.

So what happens if we’re having a football party and the signal is too glitchy? Thankfully, there are plenty of online cable providers that I can flip on in just a few minutes. In my area, most of the Seahawks games are on FOX and only DirectTV Now and Comcast Instant TV currently have my local FOX affiliate. So I can sign up with them and be back in the action very easily. The Comcast offering is interesting because it’s only $18/month and includes all the local channels that I’m interested in. The Cloud DVR from the Comcast service was a mess to figure out, but I finally realized that you can only schedule recordings from the Roku app. I think that’s due to a patent war that they lost with Tivo which made them remove any kind of browser or phone DVR scheduling. I get why it is like that, but they are definitely not forthcoming about that limitation.

Yada yada yada, now I’m saving ~$50/month and it feels great!

benmartens July 20, 2018 Gadgets

Lego Downtown Diner

Elijah loves Legos. (And yes, I know the plural is technically “Lego” but too bad. This is ‘merica and most people say “Legos”.) We watch JANGBRiCKS YouTube videos daily. I guess all the Legos floating around the house and the videos got to me, because I finally caved to one of my childhood dreams and bought an enormous set.

Lego has a set of modular buildings in their Creator Expert series that are extremely impression. The detail is beyond anything I’ve ever assembled and it seemed like a fun project to work on with Elijah. It was fun to see the look on his face when the 2480-piece Lego Downtown Diner arrived in the mail.

He sat with me for most of the assembly, but a lot of it was too complex. He had fun looking through all the pieces and finding the new ones that we haven’t had before. It took us 6.5 hours to assemble the whole thing.

I thought about taking pictures, but then I realized that it’s exactly the same as the one that everyone else has built. If you want to really dive in, check out the JANGBRiCKS video review. I’ve also posted some photos below.

If you stop by for a visit, remind me to show this to you! We will be leaving this one fully assembled.

benmartens July 18, 2018 Commentary

Twin Falls Hike

Up until this year, I’ve been carrying Elijah in a hiking backpack when I go on hikes. He finally got too big for it, so this is the year he transitions to walking. While I enjoyed being able to take more adventurous hikes last year, I’m excited to see if he’s still interested in hiking when he has to do the walking.

I decided to start off with Twin Falls for his first hike. I believe I’ve done it three times before and there is a lot to see along the whole trail. It starts off following a river, climbs up a hill through some big rocks and then quickly ends up at the falls. He did great on the entire hike, never complaining. I had told him that he could say when he wants to turn around and he asked for that about a tenth of a mile from the first waterfall. I encouraged him to keep going and we made it. That first set of falls has about 100 stairs going down to a great lookout, so I told him that if he walked down, I’d carry him back up. We didn’t make it to the bridge a little farther up the trail but I’m still calling it a success because, other than the stairs, I never had to carry him. He hiked quite a bit faster than some older kids who started at the same time as us too. I didn’t have my Garmin watch with me, but I’d guess we covered about 2.5 miles.

He hasn’t asked for another hike yet, but I’m hoping to get him out at least once more. I picked up a hiking with kids book to get some good ideas. Maybe next time I’ll work on picking out clothing that doesn’t clash so badly.

benmartens July 16, 2018 Family, Outdoors

Good Brewing Company Taproom

“My neighbor brews beer in his garage.” When I say that, people usually have a picture in their head that doesn’t equate to what is really happening. Five houses down from me, Kevin is making some epic beer. He has over a dozen taps in his garage and some fancy brewing equipment. He’s had his license for a little over a year and he’s already won second place at the Washington Beer Awards for his Pink Boots Double IPA. He makes a lot of great beers, but that one is my favorite.

His garage is a very convenient walk from my house and Elijah loves taking bike rides to see “Mr. Kevin”, but now his garage door is closed a lot more frequently. That’s because he has taken a big step and opened his first taproom! It’s located northwest of the Woodinville Costco and we headed there for the grand opening. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it certainly was NOT what we actually witnessed. There were well over 100 people there with live music, a BBQ trailer and tons of people in line for beer. Kevin seemed happily in awe of the turnout.

I’ve been back a couple times since then and he always seems to have a good crowd on hand. In addition to a big variety of beers on tap, he also has some limited food (pizza and pretzel bread) available for sale. I’ll have to see if I can convince Tyla that this is a viable dinner location. Pizza, beer and cornhole? How could she say no?

Congrats to Kevin for an incredible start to his taproom. I wish you all the best and look forward to seeing what the next year brings!

Web: https://goodbrewingco.com
Instagram: @goodbrewingco
Facebook: facebook.com/goodbrewingco

benmartens July 13, 2018 Commentary

Four Sheets

I first stumbled across Zane Lamprey when he had his Three Sheets show on a now-defunct cable channel called MojoHD. If you’re a Hulu subscriber, you can still watch the whole series and I highly recommend it. After Three Sheets, he had a show called Drinking Made Easy and then a Kickstarter show called Chug. All of them are travel/alcohol shows that mix comedy and learning about other cultures and their drinking customs. It’s a great formula that never seems to quite stick with the people writing the checks.

Now he’s off filming again for something he’s referring to as Four Sheets.There’s a Facebook page for it, but I can’t find a lot of other details. I know a few of you are fans as well, so you might want to follow that page and his Instagram account in hopes of finding out how we’ll be able to watch these new episodes.

Cheers!

benmartens July 11, 2018 Links

Wooden Pixel Mario

A couple years ago, David Picciuto made a Super Mario picture using 1″ square “pixels” cut out of three types of wood. That has stuck in my head as a fun idea and it ended up being the first project that I completed since April. (My shop has been used for storage during the siding and window project on our house.)

I chose maple, walnut and paduk for the white, brown and red pieces. The key to this project is getting all ~150 squares to be totally identical in size so that when you build them into Mario, the lines stay straight. The next trick was getting a chamfer cut on all four sides of the squares. This helps to define the edges and made each square look more like a pixel. I cut two of the sides with a router when the wood was still in 1″ strips. After cross cutting those strips into squares, I set the table on my small disc sander to a 45 degree angle and sanded the rest. Then I had to hand sand each square to clean them up.

David put his on to a square piece of plywood and made a frame for it, but I wanted to make mine frameless. I cut out a piece of plywood on the bandsaw that would be just smaller than the assembled Mario. I picked a row near the center and carefully glued it as straight as I could. From there I glued two or three rows at a time working out toward the top and bottom. I took my time and let the various rows dry before getting too far so that I could make sure I was staying straight.

I love this project! Thank you David for the inspiration!

benmartens July 9, 2018 Woodworking

Elijah’s Birthday Photos

Every year Tyla has convinced me that we should take birthday photos of Elijah and every year I’ve been happy that we have done it. She usually gets a giant number for him to hold. The last two years I’ve cut one out on a laser cutter, mostly because I’m too cheap to pay $10 for one from the craft store. Here are some of the better shots from this year. He loves climbing he magnolia tree in our back yard so it seemed like a natural spot to take the photos… especially because the rest of the house is a wreck from the big siding project.

benmartens July 2, 2018 Family

Fantasy Football 2018-19

Only 79 days left until kickoff of the 2018-19 NFL season. This year we had two managers leave our fantasy league. Thanks to Jim for playing with us the last 10 years and Austin for the last 5! You guys were great additions to the league and you will be missed.

Since we have some new members, I thought I’d introduce everyone:

  • Andy lives near Green Lake and his dog has more Instagram followers than I do.
  • Dad is one of my parental units. He lives in Indiana and has three tractors.
  • Logan is my brother-in-law (Tyla’s brother). He started off pretty bad in the league but somehow seems to be winning too much lately. He lives in Kirkland.
  • Luke is my brother-in-law (my sister’s husband.) He lives in Toledo and just built a fence.
  • Nick currently inhabits half of my office at work. We say that together we make a pretty average software developer. He lives in Woodinville.
  • Tim is my brother-in-law’s (Luke’s) brother. He was also my roommate for a few years.  He lives in Monroe.
  • Tyler lives all the way across the cul-de-sac from me. He has a bigger garden than me and one more MG than I do.

Now that you’ve all been introduced, let’s refresh our memories of the standings for the last 10 seasons.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2008 Ben Tim Jim Luke Dad Ryan Andy Ed
2009 Luke Dad Kyle Tim Andy Jim Ryan Ben
2010 Luke Time Ben Dad Andy Jim Logan Kyle
2011 Luke Time Ben Dad Andy Jim Logan Kyle
2012 Andy Micah Ben Tim Jim Dad Logan Ryan
2013 Logan Andy Dad Ben Jim Tim Luke Austin
2014 Austin Jim Tim Ben Luke Logan Andy Dad
2015 Austin Logan Ben Dad Luke Andy Tim Jim
2016 Logan Austin Andy Ben Tim Jim Dad Luke
2017 Logan Ben Luke Austin Andy Dad Tim Jim

And if you take that chart and calculate average finish, here’s what you get:

Name Average Finish
Logan 3.2
Ben 3.5
Luke 3.5
Tim 3.8
Andy 4.6
Dad 4.9

The first piece of business is picking a date for our draft. We’ll do a live draft party at my house again, but as always, you’re welcome to autodraft if you prefer. I don’t think there’s much correlation between the people that the draft method you prefer and your finishing position in the league so don’t sweat it. Watch your email for a link to a poll for picking the draft date/time. You don’t want to miss out on your chance to pick Kaepernick. I mean, surely some team will pick him up before the start of the season, right?

benmartens June 18, 2018 Fantasy Sports

Disneyland Montage

As I was putting together a montage video for Elijah’s 5th birthday (coming Friday!), I realized that we had enough clips from Disneyland to put together a short video. It will be interesting to see how much of this he remembers as he gets older, but I suspect that all the pictures and videos will help trigger the memories. If I was going to make the most awesome family trip video, I would have been a lot more rigorous about the shots we got, but for just winging it, I think this turned out pretty well!

And if you missed it, there’s a (long) post with lots more details about our trip.

benmartens June 12, 2018 Family, Travel