Studio711.com – Ben Martens

25 Free Throws A Day

This summer I challenged myself to shoot 25 free throws a day. It’s a good excuse to get outside, enjoy the longer days, chat with neighbors, and I also wanted to see how good I could get if I did it every day. Well of course I haven’t actually done it every day, but I’ve come pretty close. And of course I tracked all the data in a spreadsheet…

I’ve tracked 700 shots this summer and the biggest change I’ve noticed is that I’m more consistent than I was in the beginning. For example, my first four scores were 16, 9, 17 and 8. Now I hover much closer to 17 with a couple really good rounds mixed in. My record is 22 and I feel like it will be a long time before I beat that, but I’ll keep going and see what happens. The trend is going up, but if you take out those first four rounds, the slope of the line is still positive but much shallower.I don’t have data for this, but it feels like I usually get better as the round of 25 goes on. So would my average go up if I did more in each round? I might mess with the experiment a little bit too and change to either “how many shots does it take to make 25” or just “how many did I make out of 50”.

Mentally I’ve been comparing this to trap shooting. Both use rounds of 25 and both have a big mental factor once you learn the basic physical skills. At this point, I’d say that free throw shooting is harder than trap shooting which seems crazy to me thinking about the physics of it. But the number of free throws shot over my life is dramatically higher than the number of clay birds I’ve broken and yet, my trap shooting scores are generally better than my free throw scores. I also believe that if you look at professional trap shooters, they have higher success percentages than professional basketball players shooting free throws.

Maybe I think too much about going outside to enjoy the sunshine…

benmartens July 20, 2017 Geek, Sports

Little Gym

Elijah has gone to Little Gym for most of his life. Toward the end of each session, they have “Show Week.” I couldn’t make it to this one, but Tyla took a bunch of video and I edited it together. The older man who is a teacher is the founder of the whole corporation. It’s pretty neat to have him as one of Elijah’s teachers!

benmartens July 19, 2017 Family, Video

Talking About Death With A Four Year Old

“How is Elijah doing?” is a common question that I’ve received after the death of Tyla’s mom. People wonder how we explain that she’s not here anymore or how we tiptoe around the topic of death. Hospice gave us a 20-30 sheets of paper about talking about death with a child. I tossed that in the trash and reached for the Bible instead.

Elijah understands that Nancy is dead and that we will never see her again on earth. But he also understands that Nancy believed that Jesus died for her sins, so when she died, God welcomed her into heaven. He knows that we’ll see her again when we die too.

Elijah has been a big comfort through all of this. When Pastor came over a day or two before Nancy died, we all had a devotion together. Elijah saw one of us crying pretty hard and he quietly got up, walked over, put his hand on their knee and said, “Don’t be sad. She’s going to heaven to be with Jesus!”

I think the hardest part of this for Elijah has been seeing people cry. He knows that heaven is a wonderful place and he knows that believers will go there so he doesn’t understand why we are crying. How true! He has been a model for us all to look up to.

Matthew 18:2-4 (NIV)
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

benmartens July 18, 2017 Family

Cutting Board

Cutting boards are a staple of many woodworkers, but I’ve only made a few and they were all gifts. I decided it was time to have one in our house, and instead of waiting to make “the perfect cutting board”, I just grabbed some scraps and threw one together. I’m really happy with the end result! It’s made of walnut, cherry and maple and then a bunch of mineral oil. I had originally intended it to be longer but there was a void in the walnut when I cut it to size. So instead of filling with epoxy or something like that, I just kept cutting shorter until I got past the void.

benmartens July 17, 2017 Woodworking

Bike Ride With Elijah

A year or two ago, we got Elijah the smallest helmet we could find. I put a GoPro mount on it because I thought it would be fun to see what he was looking at, but that didn’t work too well because his neck wasn’t strong enough to support the extra weight of the GoPro. A few days ago, we gave it another shot. As you can tell from the video, he was pretty excited about it. This video is 18 minutes long and we just ride around the block, but I figured I’d still post it because it makes me chuckle as I flip through parts of the video.

benmartens July 14, 2017 Family

Cape Disappointment Drive Timelapse

I enjoy making timelapses when we go on road trips. I rarely watch the whole thing straight through, but sometimes there are interesting spots that are fun to revisit. Plus, it’s a fun little project to have going along the trip.

I made a timelapse of our trip from Woodinville to Cape Disappointment State Park in the southwest corner of the state for our most recent camping trip. The video has the trip down immediately followed by the trip back (6:36 is when we are at the campground.) On the trip down there, notice the incredibly bad traffic. It added 2 hours to the 3.5 hour drive. On the way back we only hit one bad spot but it was really bad and even the backroads were jammed. It added 30 minutes.

We are planning a drive out to Montana soon to visit some of Tyla’s family. I’m working on some modifications to my setup to make it easier to do those super long timelapses.

benmartens July 13, 2017 Timelapse, Video

Camera Phone vs dSLR

I bought my first film SLR a few years before digital cameras were a big thing. It didn’t take long for that to feel obsolete and I sold it. My digital SLR has gotten a LOT more use (over 30K photos taken so far), but I’m at the point where I’m finding fewer and fewer uses for it. The camera on my Galaxy S7 is incredible.

Camera phones have slowly been replacing our big camera for a long time, largely because of the huge convenience factor. Some of the previous phones have had reasonable cameras, but this S7 camera is quite a big step up. Many camera phones do well in bright light, but this one even does a great job in low light situations. A prime example is this shot that I took long after sunset when we were camping.


The camera app on the Galaxy S7 even has full manual controls. I can control ISO, shutter speed, aperture, white balance and more while storing the image in a full RAW format. That opens up a huge range of shooting options.

The dSLR is still my choice for action shots, zoom shots or when I really want to make sure I nail the picture, but when I forget the big camera, I don’t feel that sense of dread that I used to. How much longer before it starts collecting dust on the shelf?

benmartens July 12, 2017 Gadgets

Camp 4 Star Visit

Our area churches run a week long summer camp called Camp 4 Star. It has been around for a very long time. I met one alumni who was there in the 60s! Tyla and her siblings were campers in the 90s. It’s going on this week and Tim and Chelsea are heavily involved in keeping the whole thing going. They’ve been inviting us to come visit for years and this year we finally made it happen.

The camp operates out of rented space at Millersylvania State Park in their Environmental Learning Center. Driving up, I was struck by how much the whole setup reminded me of every summer camp you’ve seen in the movies. It’s awesome! They have 4 areas that each have 4 cabins and then a big main building with a full kitchen and some other nearby cabins. The camp holds 128 campers (plus staff) when it’s full, and it is full pretty much every year. If you want your kid to attend, register early!

Elijah had a blast watching all the big kids running around and playing with some other mini-campers (children of staff.) He got to ride around with Tim on the utility vehicle, swim in the lake and ride around in the canoe with Tyla and me. I think he’s counting the days until he turns 10 and can head down there for a full week of camping!

Thanks to Tim, Chelsea and the other counselors for letting us visit!

benmartens July 11, 2017 Travel

Glamping

While we were camping a couple weekends ago, we came up with a business idea. I don’t know what it’s called yet, but it’s our take on the ultimate “glamping” campground. Here are some of the features that we’d offer (for a small fee of course.)

  • When you arrive at the campground, we’ll set up your tent or camper while you relax in the bar.
  • There are two sides to the camp ground: one for people who want to party around the camp fire until the wee hours of the morning and one for people who want to get up early. There are different quiet hours rules on each side.
  • Don’t wake up early on your vacation. We’ll drop off a dutch oven on hot coals with an egg/sausage/bacon/potato scramble in it. It will be hot and ready when you are.
  • Did you buy a big fancy truck but never learn how to back your boat down the ramp to the water? Skip the pressure of everyone watching you and toss us the keys. We’ll do it for you.
  • Swing by the on-site butcher and pick our some steaks for dinner. We’ll even cook them and deliver them if you want us to.
  • You’ve watched a lot of Bear Grylls and Survivorman in your life, but you still don’t know how to start a fire. No worries! We’ll swing by and get one going for you.
  • You’re probably tired from all this pampering so let us take down your camp for you.

This is so ridiculous, I feel like this probably exists already in some place like San Francisco or Portland.

benmartens July 10, 2017 Commentary

Nancy’s Funeral

As many of you know from Facebook, Tyla’s mom passed away early Sunday morning and her funeral is today, but I know that many of you cannot attend so here is the obituary that will be in the bulletin.

Nancy Marie Brandt

May 25, 1956– July 2, 2017

In Memoriam

Born on May 25, 1956 in Lake City, Minnesota, Nancy Brandt was the youngest of two children of Jess and Marlys Dose. She was received into the Lord’s family through the washing of holy baptism at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lake City, Minnesota. Later, she confirmed her faith in the same church. She attended St. John’s Lutheran School and went on to Lincoln High school, graduating in 1974 to attend Dr. Martin Luther College. Nancy married Don Brandt on October 28, 1978 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lake City, Minnesota.

Nancy worked with special needs children at Lincoln Elementary as a teachers’ aide until she moved to Kirkland, Washington in 1991. She was a stay at home Mom until returning to work in 1997. Nancy worked as a preschool teacher at Calvary Lutheran Preschool and Kindergarten in Bellevue, Washington from 1997 to 2003. From 2003 to 2009 she cooked and served lunches in the public school system. In 2010, Nancy began working for Evergreen Speech and Hearing Clinic transporting records as a courier and organizing the archival of patient charts. In 2014, she was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Nancy stopped working in 2017 when her declining health prevented her from continuing.

Nancy Brandt is survived by her husband, Don, and their three children, Logan Brandt of Redmond, Washington; Tyla (Ben) Martens of Woodinville, Washington; and Megan Brandt of Kirkland, Washington; as well as her one grandchild, Elijah Martens. She is also mourned by her sister, Gloria Burmester. She was preceded in death by her father and father-in-law.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be directed to Calvary Lutheran Church toward the roof replacement project. The church address is 16231 NE 6th St, Bellevue, WA, 98008. Alternatively, gifts can be directed to Evergreen Hospice Care. evergreenhealthfoundation.com/support-hospice

benmartens July 7, 2017 Family