Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Mother’s Day Gifts

Tyla and I don’t usually exchange gifts for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, but I’ve been wanting to try out the vinyl cutter in the maker space at work and this seemed like a good excuse. You can easily buy a very similar sign on Etsy, but I wanted to see how hard it was to make one myself.

I had quite a bit of extra 8/4 maple laying around so I cut it in half and got it down to the approximate size of the finished sign. Then I spent some time on the vinyl cutter and cut out a couple versions of the sign, figuring that I’d screw one up and need to try again.

I stuck the vinyl down on the wood and the peeled up the letters, being careful to leave the interior of letters like A and O. Then I applied two coats of purple spray paint and peeled up the vinyl. That part took quite a while because the paint had made the vinyl brittle, but eventually I was done and it came out pretty well.

The final step was using a keyhole router bit to cut a notch in the back for easy hanging.

Will I do this again? Ehh… maybe if it’s something really custom, but it did take quite a while. If the sign you want is on Etsy for $20, it’s probably worth just paying for it.

Elijah also made a sign for Tyla. Ever since he saw this piece of purpleheart, he has talked about making it into a sign for Tyla. I bought a white pen and he wrote his name on the board. I finished it up with “loves mommy” and added a couple coats of spray lacquer.

Happy Mother’s Day!

benmartens May 15, 2017 Maker, Woodworking

Safeway Monopoly Recap

A year ago, I wrote a post detailing the terrible odds of the Safeway Monopoly game. And yet I still played it this year.

I had a pretty good setup for processing the tickets. Now that I have an Android phone, I loaded the app that lets you scan the second chance tickets automatically instead of typing them all in. I also created an Excel spreadsheet to help me keep track of which game pieces I had received and figure out if I had any winners.

Here’s what I won:

  • About 6 free donut coupons
  • ~$30 worth of free or discount coupons for products that I actually use
  • $5 cash
  • $5 Safeway gift card
  • ~9 free movie rentals from Fandango Now

The last one was the most common one. Many of the second chance game pieces went towards free rentals on the Fandango Now service. It’s not a service that I use otherwise, but hey, free is good. We’ve used three of those free rentals while my parents were visiting and I don’t have any complaints about the service.

So was it worth my time? Definitely not. But I still had fun and won a little more than last year so I guess that’s probably enough to keep me going next year.

The only difference is that I saved a few of the game pieces and I want to write an app that will automatically detect which board game pieces I have. Those could all go into a database along with the pieces from any friends who want to play with me. It will save us all the time of typing them in and we can pool our resources.

benmartens May 12, 2017 Geek

Ford Android Auto

One big reason why I waited for a 2016 F150 instead of getting a 2015 was because the 2016s were going to come with the new Sync 3 system. Sync 3 includes options for Android Auto and Apple Car Play. I’ll be focusing on Android Auto because that’s what I use.

My truck came from the factory with Sync 3, and while that was an upgrade to the original Sync, what I really wanted was Android Auto and I didn’t have that version of the firmware. Late last year, a firmware update for Sync 3 which adds Android Auto and Apple Car Play leaked online. I saw hundreds of people reporting success installing it themselves, but I was a little nervous to brick an expensive piece of my truck. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

This week I finally saw the update appear on the Ford Sync website. I quickly downloaded it onto a USB key and headed out to my truck. The install took 20-30 minutes, but when it was done, I had Android Auto! It’s pretty slick. You can easily switch back and forth between Ford Sync or Android Auto. Maybe I should pause to explain what Android Auto is…

The common problem with fancy head units in vehicles is that by the time you buy one, it already feels obsolete. And in 10 years? It’s almost a joke how far technology has progressed leaving your fancy head unit in the dust. But we carry around phones in our pockets that get upgraded every few years, have internet connections, and have way more capabilities than head units. So why don’t we just use the head unit as a dumb display and use the phone as the brains of the head unit? That’s exactly what Android Auto does. When you connect, an app starts up on your phone and is displayed on the head unit. It’s a simplified interface with bigger buttons and a reduced set of capabilities for safety. But even with those restrictions, it’s AWESOME!

For example, I can touch the voice button on my steering wheel and talk to Google to send text messages, ask the internet a question, etc. I can pull up the maps and say “Find the nearest Dairy Queen”. A list shows up on the screen, I pick one, and it finds the route with the least traffic. My podcast app integrates with the system as does Spotify. It’s super slick and very snappy. If you want to see it in action, I’ve included a couple photos below but you can also head to YouTube and find lots of demo videos.

My only complaint at this point is that you have to plug in your phone to use Android Auto. They technically do support Bluetooth connections, but I don’t know if that’s just coming later or if it requires slightly different hardware. It’s not the end of the world because I often plug my phone in while I’m in the car anyway.

The best part is knowing that this interface will keep getting updated and improved, my maps will always be up to date, and I don’t have to pay any silly subscription fees to get live traffic on the maps in my vehicle!

benmartens May 11, 2017 Gadgets

Garden Update

Our garden is off to a shaky start. I started the plants indoors and I did it WAY too soon. The tomato plants took off but rapidly started crowding each other out. I moved some to solo cups and they are growing and some even have flowers on them. I’m trying to put them outside for a bit each day in hopes of a good transition.

The zucchini plants came up too and i had them in 5 gallon buckets. They grew in really weird shapes along the ground with very little elevation. After a few days moving in and out of the house, I put them in the garden. So far… ehh… I don’t have high hopes that they will succeed.

Lesson learned: forget starter plants. It’s impossible to predict the spring weather around here. I’m about ready to just throw the rest of this stuff outside, let it die, and then buy starter plants when the weather is warm enough. Next year I’m just going to copy our neighbor. She has a great garden!

benmartens May 10, 2017 Commentary

Grizzly Bandsaw Riser Block Kit

Keeping up with the theme from yesterday, I realized that I haven’t written about the riser block kit for my bandsaw. I got the Grizzly bandsaw 1.5 years ago and have really enjoyed it. It gets used most often for curvy cuts and resawing thick stock.

I never really felt like I had the hang of resawing thick boards. I always got a lot of blade drift and I’d just try to free hand it to compensate for the drift. It sort of work, but I wasted a lot of material with wavy cuts.

For Christmas, Dad and Mom got me a riser block kit for the saw. The stock configuration gives you about a 5 3/4″ capacity but the riser block kit doubles that. I don’t usually work with 11″ boards, but I do regularly have 6 and 7″ boards so this is very handy. Getting the kit also meant that I had to get rid of my old blades and buy longer ones. I had learned a little more about blades by this point so I bought some nicer Timber Wolf blades. I have one for resawing and one for cutting smaller curves. I don’t know whether I have it all tweaked better this time or if the blade made all the difference, but wow, resawing with this thing is incredible! I can just set the fence to the thickness I want and watch the saw plow through. It has no problems going through 8″ of hard maple and when I’m done, I have a pretty smooth and straight cut. It means I no longer fret too much if I have to resaw a 1″ board into two 3/8″ boards. I know I can nail the cut right on the money.

P.S. If you follow my woodworking account on Instagram, you’d have already seen this picture.  @martenswoodworks

benmartens May 9, 2017 Woodworking

Grizzly Table Saw Three Month Update

As you already surmised from the title of this post, I’ve had my new table saw (a Grizzly G1023RLW) for three months. It was a huge splurge and way more than I needed, so I was curious how I’d feel after a few months. Would I regret going big?

No way. I LOVE this saw! It’s dead accurate, or at least better than I can measure and it has gobs of power. I’ve plowed lots of different pieces of wood through it and I’ve never heard the motor change pitch. It just laughs and says, “Is that all you’ve got?” I thought I finally got it to bog down with a 2.25″ piece of walnut, but it turned out that my fence was a little bit out of alignment so I was getting a small pinch (yikes!) That was easily adjusted and the saw resumed it’s monotonous sawdust making.

I’d buy this saw again in a heartbeat. That’s a relief because I have a nasty habit of getting bored with a hobby about the time that I finally spend money on a really nice piece of equipment for it. With RC planes, I fizzled out around the time I bought a Spektrum Dx6 transmitter. With skiing, I slowed way down right after I bought brand new, high end skis. Was the same thing going to happen with the table saw? So far, the answer is no. I’ve been amazed at just how many nights I’ve used the saw and there’s no end in site for all the projects I want to build.

Maybe this is the hobby that sticks with me?

benmartens May 8, 2017 Woodworking

Android Emulator

There are millions of apps for Android, and some of them are so useful that I think they’d even be nice to have on my desktop. It turns out, that’s not an impossible task. There are a number of Android emulators.

I searched around for a while and settled on BlueStacks because it was free and generally rated well. Once you get it installed, it basically launches a tablet in a window. You can connect to the Google Play Store (or Amazon Underground) and install apps just like you would on your device.

There are a few drawbacks though:

  1. It feels weird to use a mouse instead of a finger. Most apps are ok, but forget about it if you require two fingers at a time.
  2. It’s an older version of Android so more modern stuff might not work.
  3. This is probably burying the lead, but I fired it up when I wrote this post and it immediately blue screened my machine. I had been using it fine about a month ago so I don’t know what happened.

The bottom line is that if you’re doing reviews of apps or have some very specific need for running an Android app on your computer then yes, it’s possible. But otherwise, it’s probably more frustration than you want to deal with.

benmartens May 5, 2017 Geek

Goodbye Red Hook

Say it ain’t so! The Seattle Times reported yesterday that Red Hook is packing up their kegs and leaving Woodinville. Apparently Red Hook is selling less beer than it used to and the Woodinville site has been operating at 30% capacity. They are adding on to a brewery down in Portland so there’s no need to keep this site open anymore.

I’m personally sad to see them go. While their beer is very popular (which means somewhat generic), I really enjoy having them close by. They were a great dinner location and their tour was a great activity with out-of-town guests. The article says that they are opening a brew pub over in Seattle so I feel like this Woodinville location will probably be closing.

The site will be sold to another buyer, and with a hundreds of up-and-coming breweries in the area, I don’t expect it will be difficult to sell. It’s a big facility for those smaller guys but maybe a couple of them will band together or something along those lines.

Goodbye Red Hook! I still love you but I’ll probably never make it across the lake to your new location.

benmartens May 4, 2017 Commentary

Lots o’ Legos

In on of my recent Best of YouTube posts, I mentioned a user named JANGBRICKS, but I think he deserves his own post. His real name is Bamidele, but he goes by the name JANG which stands for “Just a Nice Guy.”

Elijah likes to watch his Lego videos, but he has lots of other collections like Playmobil, Halo stuff, and knives. I don’t know where all his money comes from, but he worked for PayPal and EduSoft in the past.

Regardless of how he does it, his Lego collection is enormous. In a recent video, he mentioned that he has about 500,000 pieces that came from buying Lego setes and a couple tens of thousands more from custom orders. If you figure an average price of $0.10/piece, that’s a big investment, but honestly, it’s not as much as I thought when I saw his setup.

On his YouTube channel, he reviews all (?) the new Lego sets and he also shows custom builds that he does for his big city. He states many places that Lego does not sponsor him at all and everything is bought with his own money. His custom builds are a treat to watch. He’s a magician with Legos.

If you enjoy Legos, this is a great channel to subscribe to.

benmartens May 3, 2017 Links

Azure Growth

I work on the Azure team. It’s one of the hottest areas in the whole company because it’s growing at an unbelievable rate. That leads to a lot of really interesting problems that keep life interesting. The chart below is a little old but it gives you a good idea at the rate of acceleration.

The future looks bright. There’s enormous room for growth even with heavy competition between Azure and Amazon Web Services. It appears that it’s raining money and the major cloud computing competitors are just trying to build enough buckets to catch it all.

benmartens May 2, 2017 Commentary