Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Disneyland

Tyla and I decided that this year would be a big vacation for us. (Well, big for us anyway.) We tossed around a number of options but finally decided that we’d give Disneyland a shot. I went to Disney World when I was five, and Tyla and Elijah have never been there so this will be a pretty new experience for all of us.

I’m a planner so I wanted to suck in some information before making plans, but whew, that’s like trying to take a sip from a firehose. As part of my research, I checked out “The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland 2018” ebook from our library. I liked it so much that I ended up buying a physical copy of the book to take with us for quick reference.

I won’t know if it’s any good until I’ve been through a trip using their info, but I like their approach. They are basically a bunch of data scientist nerds who love Disneyland. They collect tons of data and model out crowd flows so that you can optimize your route through the various attractions that are interesting to you. And of course in addition to all the data (available in an app for your phone), you also get detailed descriptions of all the rides, restaurants and hotels. Should you stay in the park, withinin walking distance or drive to the park? Is the MaxPass add-on worth it? Will my four year old be scared on ride X? I had tons of questions and this book had a lot of the answers. Hopefully the answers were correct.

So now we’ve booked the flight, transportation to the hotel, the hotel, and our park tickets. We’re working on dinner reservations (for bigger things like character dinners) too. While I don’t like to build a strict itinerary before a trip, I do like to get the majority of the spending decisions out of the way ahead of time.

Our plan is visit Disneyland one day, spend a day resting at the hotel and hanging out in the pool, and then do California adventure on the third day. I don’t really know what to expect with a four year old in tow, but hopefully we’ll leave wanting just a little bit more as opposed to thinking we’ve overdone it.

Look out Mickey! Here we come!

benmartens March 8, 2018 Travel

Credit Freeze

Tyla and I have been part of numerous security breaches over the past couple years. I’m confident that all of our private data is floating around out on websites to be easily purchased for a surprisingly small amount of money. (Seriously, you can buy tens of thousands of credit card numbers for less than the cost of going out to dinner.) A couple months ago, I put a fraud alert on our credit reports. It’s free and it basically adds a note that says that you have to be called before any new credit is opened. That’s a good step, but it only lasts for 90 days and it’s not bulletproof.

I recently took it a step further and put a full credit freeze on our account. Nobody can see our credit report while it is frozen which is an even bigger red flag for creditors to see before they extend a new line of credit. There are plenty of downsides to it though. If we ever need have our credit reports checked (buying a car, signing up for a new cell phone, etc), we have to go through some extra steps to unfreeze the report. And oh yeah there are three credit agencies and oh yeah, two of them charge $10 to toggle the freeze flag.

Before you do anything like this, you should understand all the ramifications by reading the FTC page. Herb Weisbaum, the Consumer Man, has a good article that also talks about some of the other services that the credit agencies are offering that are more convenient (and cheaper) than the full freeze. But read the fine print and understand that you’re probably saving money because they are selling a bunch of your data. That was a deal breaker for me.

If you decide to go through with the full freeze, grab your credit card (remember it will cost you about $21 to do this) and head to these three sites:

Experian: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
TransUnion: https://freeze.transunion.com/
Equifax: https://www.freeze.equifax.com

Each one will give you a pin which you need to keep in a safe place so you can unlock your credit report at some point down the road.

It’s a lot of work, but it’s nice to know that I’m much less likely to have surprise credit cards opened up in my name.

benmartens March 6, 2018 Commentary

Robot Art

Frank Howarth got involved in an auction at his kids school again this year and made an incredible neighborhood art project. He started by cutting up a bunch of scraps and having he kids put them together to form pictures of their houses. Then he combined all the houses into a single neighborhood on a piece of wood.

As I was out in the garage with Elijah a couple weekends ago, I thought he might like giving something like that a try. I cut up various pieces from some nice scraps and asked him to make a house. That proved to be a little challenging so we switched to robots. He was immediately on top of that and made two of them almost completely by himself. At that point we ran out of the scraps that I had cut and he ran out of patience so we called it quits.

Later, I took a picture of what he had made and then transferred it onto a square piece of cherry plywood. I made a simple frame out of some walnut scraps and voila! I’m excited to get this finished and hung on his wall. I’m waiting for the weather to warm up a bit so that I can put some finish on it.

benmartens March 1, 2018 Woodworking

Indiana Jones

Tyla and I recently finished watching the Indiana Jones trilogy. It was her first time seeing any of them and she at least enjoyed them enough to watch all three. Honestly I’m not sure that I ever saw the entire second movie. I remember watching it on TV as a kid and always shutting it off at the eyeball soup part. The third one is my favorite by far. Sean Connery is an excellent addition to the cast and there are so many memorable scenes.

Logan asked me how well the movies held up. There are definitely some cheesy special effects and some laughable plot moments, but overall, they still seemed good. I’m no movie critic, but there wasn’t much of the incredibly slow pacing that you sometimes find with movies that are a couple decades old.

A fifth Indiana Jones is slated for the summer of 2019. The bar is set very low after the train wreck of a fourth movie. Disney wasn’t in charge for that movie, but they are for this new one so hopefully they do a better job.

benmartens February 27, 2018 Commentary

Polytopia

Thanks to NickS for pointing me to The Battle of Polytopia. It’s a turn based strategy game similar to Civilization but MUCH simpler. It’s available for free for both iOS and Android, but there are optional in game purchases if you want to get more tribes and support the author.

You can either play to get the highest score in 30 turns or to conquer every other civilization on the map. After choosing your tribe, you’ll get one person in your tiny little village and then you set off exploring the land, gathering resources to expand your city and investing in technology. Along the way you’ll probably encounter other tribes to battle and conquer.

The game walks the perfect line of complex strategy and easy to understand game mechanics. The technology tree is pretty diverse but it’s simple enough that you can easily memorize it. It’s also the same for every civilization which helps dramatically. The differences between civilizations are their starting technologies and the type of terrain that they normally start on.

A multiplayer feature was recently added so you can play against your friends. It’s fun but it takes a lot longer than playing against the computer.

If you’re at all interested in strategy games, this one is worth a look! It has totally sucked me in. My high score in points mode is 63,730 and in domination mode, I’ve gotten 3 stars with 6 of the tribes so far. Can you beat those marks? (Judging by the high score tables, lots of people can.) If you want to join me in a multiplayer game, send me a note! So far I’ve gotten Logan hooked but the more the merrier.

benmartens February 22, 2018 Gaming

RetroPie

I’ve played around with classic gaming system emulators in the past. There was the time I bought an old Asteroids machine and stuffed a computer inside, and I also modified an original Xbox to run old Nintendo games. Classic games are still fun for me and I thought the simpler games might be a way to introduce Elijah to video games as a super rainy weekend special activity kind of thing. Or at least that was my excuse.

It’s a lot easier to get a system up and running now. Here’s a shopping list:

Things you might have already:

Now you’re ready to follow the instructions (Lifehacker has a good guide too) and get gaming!

That only took me a couple hours to put together. I wasn’t thrilled with all the cables and pieces laying around so I decided to build a nice box for it. I have done some bandsaw boxes but I don’t recall doing any nice small wooden boxes with a lid. This seemed like a good excuse. I started with some walnut scraps from the side table build.
 For the top, I found part of the wood with nice grain and tried a bookmatch. That just means that you use the bandsaw to cut down the middle of the board (the thin way) and lay it open like a book. The grain ends up as (almost) a mirror image. I was really happy with how it looked though in the final product I did goof it up a bit. I think I flipped one of the boards end for end.Because I was using scraps, I couldn’t quite get a continuous grain all the way around the box, but I did pay a little attention to it and some of the corners look pretty cool. I put in some small maple splines to reinforce the corners. The box walls were thin so the splines are pretty tiny. I finished it off with a couple coats of shellac.

I’m happy with it for a first attempt. Everything fits inside so that’s a win and the grain is pretty to look at. I want to try another box soon to use what i learned. Crosscut Hardwoods is selling small pieces of curly maple and I picked up some of that to try on the next box.

benmartens February 20, 2018 Geek, Woodworking

Tool Sharpening

I got a set of cheap chisels and a block plane from Home Depot a few years ago. There are times when they come in super handy, but how do I sharpen them? If you search online, there are a bazillion different options and each one is a bit of an investment. I wanted something that I couldn’t screw up and was quick to use without much cleanup. I ended up buying the Work Sharp WS3000.

The basic kit comes with two glass plates and four different abrasive levels. The abrasive sheets adhere to the glass so you can pick the right one and flip it to the correct side. My chisels were in rough shape but in less than half an hour, I had flatted the backs, and established both a bevel and a micro bevel. Brilliant! I’m so excited to finally start using my hand tools more.

Fear of sharpening was a major reason why I haven’t invested in a bigger plane yet. Maybe a jack plane will find it’s way into my shop.

benmartens February 15, 2018 Woodworking

Safeway Monopoly

Monopoly is back at Safeway (and related grocery stores.) I know it’s a ridiculous game and the odds of winning anything are astronomically low, but for some reason I still find it fun. And last year I did win a reasonable amount of small stuff so why not go for it again.

During the “off season”, I had spent a little time futzing around with a phone application that would read playing pieces and keep track of how you were doing along your futile journey to win prizes. I even thought you could get into a group with friends and digitally pool your playing pieces for a little better chance at winning something. I’m glad I didn’t spend too much time on that because they have improved the app that comes with the game. Not only can you scan the bar codes for the second chance prizes like last year, but now you can also scan a 2D barcode on the back of the playing pieces. It figures out what all four pieces are and keeps track of your progress in the app. You still need to keep the physical playing pieces to redeem your prize, but this automates away a lot of the time consuming part.

I’ll do another post in a couple months and let you know how it turned out this year. If you aren’t playing and want to fuel this silliness, feel free to pass your tokens along to me.

benmartens February 13, 2018 Commentary

Best of YouTube

I hope you got a chance to watch the Falcon Heavy test launch by SpaceX earlier this week either live or afterwards. If you didn’t, grab your popcorn and fire up this video. I watched it live at work and it was quite a thrill to watch the biggest rocket since the Saturn project lift off and then see the two boosters land simultaneously back on earth. Unfortunately the main booster didn’t land successfully back on the floating platform (not in the video), but two out of three isn’t bad. Since this was a simple test flight, Elon loaded his personal Tesla Roadster into the rocket for weight (generally companies just use heavy chunks of metal, etc) and there was a subsequent live stream of the car floating through the solar system.

I love the videos about the science behind games at the fair, but Mark Rober’s video was the first time I’d seen the same formula applied to an arcade. it taught me something about the rainbow circle game that will change my life forever.

And everyone’s favorite woodworking geek, Matthias Wandel, posted a video showing how you can use a free app on your phone or tablet to measure the RPM of your shop tools.

 

benmartens February 8, 2018 Links

Barbacoa Beef

I enjoy a Chipotle burrito every now and then, and I always get their barbacoa beef. For the Super Bowl party, I finally got around to attempting to make something like it myself. I picked up 6.5 pounds of chuck roast from the butcher and plopped it in the slow cooker for about 8 hours. It was so good! This one is going into our regular rotation. Below you’ll find the recipe that I used from Genius Kitchen, modified just a little bit:

Ingredients

  • 1⁄3 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 4 teaspoons minced garlic cloves
  • 4 teaspoons cumin
  • 2 teaspoons oregano
  • 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3 tablespoons lime juice
  • 3 dried chipotle chiles
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 3⁄4 cup chicken broth
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 4 -5 lbs chuck roast

Directions

  1. To make the adobo sauce combine vinegar, lime juice, chipotles, garlic, cumin, oregano, black pepper and salt in a blender or processor on high speed until smooth.
  2. Remove most of the fat from the roast and then cut into large chunks.
  3. Pour oil into a frying pan and sear all sides of roast on medium-high heat until browned.
  4. Place meat into slow cooker and pour adobo sauce over meat.
  5. Pour in the chicken broth and add bay leaves.
  6. Cook on high heat 6 hours or on low all day.
  7. While still in the Crockpot, shred the meat with two forks and turn the heat to warm. Serve with hard or soft tortilla shells when ready.

 

 

benmartens February 5, 2018 Food