Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Lego Whitening

As I dug through my old Legos as my parents house, it was hard to ignore how yellow the white pieces had become. I have two fairly big sets (Lego Model Team) with lots of white Legos and I was curious how hard it was to make them white again.

First of all, why does white plastic turn yellow over time? The core reason is that bromine is added to the plastic as a fire retardant. Over time, that chemical reacts with the plastic and produces a yellow color. The change can be accelerated by light, especially sunlight. Thankfully, the process can also be reversed… with SCIENCE!

There are many websites out there describing various ways to whiten Legos, but I’ll use the one from the Jangbricks video below. The basic steps are:

  1. Wash with soap and water, brush
  2. Put on eye protection and water proof gloves
  3. Find a plastic container that fits the parts
  4. Completely submerge the parts in 3% hydrogen peroxide
  5. Put in a sunny spot (UV light), 3-4 hours (5 at the most) if it’s mid day direct sunlight
  6. Pop the bubles every hour to make sure the water stays in contact and completely wet
  7. Rinse with water and dry (salad spinner)
  8. Spread the parts out to air dry
  9. Reuse the hydrogen peroxide several times. When it stops bubbling enough, dump it down the drain.

It’s hard to find days with strong sunshine this time of year, but we did get some sun last weekend. I’d say we got about 80% of the way there. I’m debating whether I want to try to find some artificial lights to replace the sunlight piece of the puzzle or just wait until next summer to try again.

benmartens September 29, 2017 Science

Yard Watering Recap

We’re coming out of the dry season, and what a dry season it was. We tied the warmest summer ever (1967) and got the record for the driest summer ever (1910). Even with all that, I’m happy to say that our yard stayed green and I think I used about the minimum amount of water possible to make that happen. Here’s the data from our sprinkler system showing the cumulative gallons used by year:

The 2015 line is especially interesting. It was very hot and dry that summer too, and even with all that water, my yard died. I had the settings really dialed in this year. The key was getting the runtime for each zone set properly and then trusting the Zimmerman algorithm inside OpenSprinkler to automatically adjust those runtimes based on the previous day’s humidity, temp precipitation and the forecasted precipitation. I only overrode it once when we had a streak of weather in the mid-high 90s.

The rain came a little earlier than it has the past two years so I’ve already shut it off, at least for now. The yard looks healthy enough and the weather is wet enough that I doubt I’ll need to run it again.

benmartens September 28, 2017 Home Improvement

Fantasy Football – Week 3

The Seahawks are 1-2. At least they scored a touchdown AND an extra point. There were some flashes of offense but it clearly wasn’t enough. After the game, I told a Packer fan that the odds weren’t looking good for a Seahawks/Packers playoff game. The Seahawks were pretty good odds for winning the Super Bowl before the season. Kudos if you were smart enough to bet against that. I’m not saying you can predict a season from 3 games, but they clearly aren’t dominating the league early on, even against teams like the 49ers.

Our league had low scores for the first two weeks but that ended this week with almost everyone breaking 100. Logan is the last man standing with an undefeated record. I’ll take the next shot at him in Week 4.

This Week This Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Luke had 161.89 Ben had 124.88 (Week 2) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Jim had 74.22 Dad had 61.50 (Week 1) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Luke beat Jim by 74.22 Luke beat Dad by 51.52 (Week 1) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Dad beat Ben by 5.33 Dad beat Andy by 10.12 (Week 2) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Tom Brady had 45.72 for Luke. Kareem Hunt had 43.10 on Logan’s bench (Week 1) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Logan has a 3 game winning streak Logan and Ben have 2 game winning streaks. (Week 2) Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Tim has a 3 game losing streak. Austin and Tim have 2 game losing streaks. (week 2) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens September 27, 2017 Fantasy Sports

Allowance

My sister and I never had an allowance when we were growing up, but I also remember having a few bucks here and there so it worked out fine. I’m it would have worked out fine for Elijah too, but Tyla and I have really enjoyed having our own individual allowances (we call it a “fun budget”) so I liked the idea of doing one for Elijah too and using it as an educational tool.

Natali Morris has a couple great posts on the topic and I’m largely stealing the ideas from her, but here is how we set it up for now:

  • We’re not paying him to do chores. Everyone in our house does chores. It’s expected, not rewarded.
  • Each Saturday, he’ll get $4. $1 goes in the piggy bank for long term savings. (Eventually we’ll migrate that to an actual child bank account.) $1 is for donating to church. And the remaining $2 go in his spending jar.
  • For now, everything in his spending jar is a one dollar bill. That makes it easier to explain how much money he has and how much he needs for a particular toy.

There are a few ideas for expanding this in the future beyond what I mentioned above:

  • If he wants to earn additional money, we’ll find some jobs for him to do around the house (not chores!)
  • After he has a few purchases under his belt, I’m willing to let him buy something that he doesn’t have money for, but I will charge him interest on that loan.

It seems like a lot for a four year old to grasp, but so far so good. If this works out, we have a chance at raising a kid who understands the value of money, saving, and staying out of debt. And oh yeah the “Can I have X? PLEEEEEAAAASE?” questions while in the toy aisle have a very easy answer now: “You can spend your own money on this if you want it.”

P.S. I walked into the bank and asked for $100 in one dollar bills. As soon as those words came out of my mouth, I said, “Oh. Wow. That sounded way more dirty than I thought it would. Honestly, it’s for an allowance for my kid.” The teller got a good laugh out of it and said she sees lots of interesting stuff.

benmartens September 22, 2017 Family

Fantasy Football – Week 2

The Seahawks got their first win of the season. Barely. Against the 49ers. That’s hardly inspiring. They also got their first touchdown of the season but we’ll keep waiting for that first extra point. It was nice to see Russell Wilson happily scrambling around though. Jimmy Graham has a total of 4 catches for 9 yards this year. Hopefully they can get him back on track and/or he can get through whatever injury is slowing him down.

In our league, all four of the undefeated teams faced each other. Logan and I came out on top so we are now the only undefeated teams left. Logan is leading our league in roster moves already this year. He has 5 and the next highest is 2. I think his mid to late season roster moves were really what set him apart last year so maybe we can gang up on him this year by being better about picking people up off waivers.

This Week This Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Ben had 124.88 Ben had 117.17 (Week 1) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Tim had 70.74 Dad had 61.50 (Week 1) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Logan beat Luke by 28.68 Luke beat Dad by 51.52 (Week 1) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Dad beat Andy by 10.12 Andy beat Austin by 15.9 (Week 1) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Tom Brady had 36.78 for Luke. Kareem Hunt had 43.10 on Logan’s bench (Week 1) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Logan and Ben have 2 game winning streaks. Andy, Luke, Logan and Ben had 1 game winning streaks (Week 1) Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Austin and Tim have 2 game losing streaks. Austin, Tim, Dad and Jim had 1 game losing streaks (week 1) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens September 20, 2017 Fantasy Sports

Samsung Gear VR

My first experience with virtual reality was probably playing with a Nintendo Virtual Boy in a store in the 90s. It has progressed a wee bit since then and now the phone that you carry in your pocket can provide a pretty impressive virtual reality experience.

Thanks to Don and Megan for getting me a Samsung Gear VR for my birthday! I had a Google Cardboard set up from last year and that was enough to convince me that it could be really cool but not good enough to really scratch the itch. The Gear VR is a very nice experience.

Setup was pretty easy but required a lot of app installs on my phone. But once that was done, I plugged the phone into the goggles, adjusted the straps, and entered the world of virtual reality. I’m still learning my way around, but so far the coolest thing I’ve done is take a flight with the Blue Angels. 2D videos are great, but being able to move your head around while watching the video really takes it to another level. It’s an awesome experience!

I can’t see using this for long periods of time on a regular basis, but it’s really neat to see how far the technology has come. It makes me want to experience a full-blown setup with dedicated goggles driven by a beefy computer (but not nearly enough to pay for all that myself!) I feel like we’re getting closer and closer to my dream video game: Forza Motorsport VR Edition. It has to be coming some day. RIght? Pleeeeeeeeease?

benmartens September 19, 2017 Gadgets

Automatic OBDII Reader

I first learned about OBDII back in 2003. It’s the on board diagnostics system in your car that lets you get all kinds of live data while your car is running. I bought all the electronics to make my own reader and then… nothing. Eventually in 2008 I realized that I was never going to build it and bought a ScanGauge. I happily used that little device in my Subaru and later in my F150. It worked flawlessly, but now it’s sitting in the garage because I got an upgrade.

For my birthday, Tyla and Elijah gave me an Automatic. It’s an OBDII reader with a built in GPS and 3g modem. While you drive, it automatically records a bunch of you car data along with your current position and it uploads it all to their cloud service. You can also connect to the device via Bluetooth to get live data displayed on your phone. Setup was a breeze and so far it has worked flawlessly.

I think the target audience for the device is someone who drives for business and needs an easy way to track their business trips. You can easily flag a drive and it gets added to a report. Personally I’m more interested in downloading my data and doing my own analysis on it. There are some nifty apps that work right out of the box as well. For example, one app shows you your min, max and average commute times to and from work. Another builds a heat map of the places you have visited. Another one draws one of those maps where every county that you have visited is colored in.

Do I need this? Nope! But I love having gadgets that collect data about random stuff in my life so this fits right in. Time to crack open their API and see how to pull my data out of their cloud.

benmartens September 18, 2017 Gadgets

Cutting The Cord

We still have cable in our house, but it’s the most basic package and it only costs us $10/month. We’d probably ditch it entirely except that we can’t get good over the air reception in our location. To help figure out where to watch things, a bunch of great websites have popped up. (All of these tips have come form the excellent Cordkillers podcast.)

  • JustWatch.us – Create a list of the TV shows and movies that you want to watch, tell it what streaming services you subscribe to, and then the website will tell you which shows you can watch on those services. I’ve gotten in the habit of putting movies on my list and then eventually when they make it to the streaming services, I can watch them from the comfort of my own home.
  • WhereCanIWatchMy.team – This site only works for NFL and College Football right now, but it’s still a great idea. You tell it which teams you want to follow and it tells you which streaming service you should subscribe to so you can watch the most games.
  • Suppose.tv – What’s the cheapest way to watch all your favorite channels? This site will help you figure out. But here’s a tip: don’t select channels that you would be willing to subscribe to separately (like HBO). That will give you better search results.
benmartens September 15, 2017 Links

Indiana Trip

Our summer vacations were dedicated to family this year. At the end of July, we went to a family reunion in Fort Peck, MT and then a couple weeks ago we flew out to Indiana. We had originally planned to go earlier in the year, but we ended up moving the trip as it was the same week that Tyla’s mom passed away. Thankfully Southwest has an incredible flight change policy!

We were in Indiana for 8 nights, and, as usual, we had a great time. It was so relaxing to just hang out with very few responsibilities. Luke, Rachel and David came for the weekend so that added some extra fun. Grandpa and Lynnette came down for the day too so Grandpa and I could celebrate our birthday together. We didn’t do anything huge but we had a bunch of good day trips including a botanical center, lots of tractor rides, putt putt golf, go karts, the Studebaker Museum and a water ski show.

Thanks again to Dad and Mom for hosting us and spending so much time playing with Elijah!

benmartens September 14, 2017 Commentary, Family

Fantasy Football – Week 1

The Seahawks Packers game is always a favorite of mine since we have so many friends who are Packer fans. While we had fun watching with a good group of people, the game felt like kind of a dud. Neither team could really get anything going but the Packers pulled out the win. I’ll keep waiting for the first Seahawks touchdown. Maybe next week.

The first week in our league was underwhelming. There were a lot of low scores and everyone under-performed according the Yahoo prediction (which means nothing but still…) Andy, Luke, Logan and I have started down the path toward an undefeated season. Trying to remember what happened last year? Here were the final standings:

1. Logan
2. Austin
3. Andy
4. Ben
5. Tim
6. Jim
7. Dad
8. Luke

For the record book, I’ll leave last season’s stats up for a week or two.

This Week Last Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Ben had 117.17 Logan had 170.69 (Week 5) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Dad had 61.50 Was: Jim had 77.82 (Week 2) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Luke beat Dad by 51.52 Logan beat Tim by 79.46 (Week 5) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Andy beat Austin by 15.9 Tim beat Dad by 0.45 (Week 4) Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Kareem Hunt had 43.10 on Logan’s bench Ben Roethlisberger had 43.90 for Andy (Week 4) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Andy, Luke, Logan and Ben have 1 game winning streaks Tim had a 4 game winning streak (Week 4) Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Austin, Tim, Dad and Jim have 1 game losing streaks Dad had a 4 game losing streak (Week 5) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens September 13, 2017 Fantasy Sports