Studio711.com – Ben Martens

No Blog Books

I have books sitting on my shelf containing all of my blog posts from 2002-2014. I love the idea of having these all stored in paper form, but the reality is that they NEVER get pulled off the shelf. But I think I’m going to stop making them…

First of all, these books take a long time to publish. I wrote a program that pulls each post from the database and puts it into a Word doc, but it’s very rough and I have to go through each post to clean it up. Then I also add in all my tweets and Instagram photos and whew, it’s a solid couple weeks of effort per book.

I told Tyla I wasn’t going to do this anymore and she thought, “AUGH! What if you die? How will we save all your posts?” So here you go: if I die, someone with WordPress knowledge should ask Tyla for our master Last Pass password and then export it all to a text file. I’m pretty sure you can handle that. And if not, all these pages are probably stored on archive.org anyway.

This blog is unlikely to live forever. I’ve had many thoughts over there years (and they’re increasing in frequency) about dropping the blog and regaining a big chunk of time. It will happen some day. Maybe then I’ll decide that it’s wort the effort to finish out the book series to have a complete set. But until then, I’m going to save a bunch of time and some shelf space and not make dead tree versions of my ramblings.

benmartens February 16, 2017 Site News

Netflix

Every week I listen to a podcast called Cordkillers. As the name implies, they cover all kinds of stories related to getting your TV over the internet. I’ve made it on to the show a couple times with letters that I’ve written. The most recent was episode 155 (link directly to my email) and they seemed to enjoy discussing my comment. They had been talking in a previous episode how the Netflix market was saturated and anyone who had ever thought about getting Netflix already had it. I wrote in to mention that we’re happy with Amazon Prime Video and YouTube.

And then the day after they posted that episode… I resubscribed to the Netflix streaming package. I picked it up every once in a while to watch shows and then drop it when we go a month without watching it. It’s so nice to be able to add and drop services on a whim in this new world. It’s so much easier than adding and dropping cable!

benmartens February 15, 2017 Commentary

Table Saw Assembly

My new Grizzly 1023RLW table saw is assembled and ready to use. It took significantly longer than expected largely because I’ve never done anything like that before and I had to do many of the steps three or four times to get them right. Luckily, I wasn’t in much of a hurry so I was able to take my time and get it right.

I took some extra time to raise the saw up 4 1/4″ to a more comfortable height for me. That’s 3/4″ higher than I had my old table saw set at. I’m a big guy and it’s nice to have things at a level that doesn’t hurt my back when I’m out there for a couple hours.

This thing cuts like a dream. It’s silky smooth on start up and powers through boards like they aren’t even there. I’m looking for excuses just to cut boards!

benmartens February 14, 2017 Woodworking

Butcher 101

So you’ve never been to one, but you’re “butcher curious”. Here are some recommendations for you. If you’re in the same area as me, go visit Golden Steer Choice Meets, and if you’re not, just walk in and introduce yourself. They’ll probably be happy to help you out.

I’ve blogged about my Golden Steer Favorites before, but my list has changed a bit since then. Here are the top three things I recommend that you buy:

  1. Maui beef ribs – Thin strips of meat marinated in their maui sauce. Grill for a couple minute or two on each side and enjoy.
  2. Chicken bacon ranch burgers – These are preformed delicious patties.
  3. Boneless rib eyes – This was the winner of our blind taste test of steaks. You can’t go wrong with this choice.

They regularly have new items to try out too. Our latest purchase included a few prime rib burgers. They were pricey but supposedly fantastic. We are still waiting to test them out ourselves.

The bottom line is that your local butcher knows their meat and they would love to share that delicious knowledge with you.

 

benmartens February 13, 2017 Commentary

Snow Days

We went a few years without any snow in the lowlands (that’s what we call the area where we live as opposed to the foothills or the mountains.) But this year, we’ve had two snow events! This most recent one hit on Sunday evening after the Super Bowl. The forecaster that I follow, Cliff Mass, did a great job of showing the uncertainty around the forecast and what all the various models were showing. The average of all the models nailed the forecast this time and we ended up with 5″ of snow at our house. People who live on the higher hills (500-1000 feet above us) got an extra foot.

This closed everything down on Monday. It started to melt a bit on Monday evening and then it all froze up on Tuesday which canceled schools again on Tuesday. Now we’re melting it all down with more normal weather (50 and rainy.)

The last time we had snow, Elijah couldn’t get enough of sledding, building snowmen, etc. This time he wasn’t as interested in those things and had more fun with his shovel and wheelbarrow. I did get a good giggle out of him though as I clipped into my skis and took a slow run down our street.

All the heavy snow on the branches cause a lot of trees and branches to come down. A small one fell across the street from our house and a lot of big limbs came down at the church. I stopped by on Tuesday night and took six loads of branches over to the brush pile. There was some minor damage to the playground that I’ll repair as well. But we were lucky. At the peak, there were over 200,000 people without power!

This wasn’t the worst snow storm in Seattle history but it’s up there pretty high. It was nice to be able to stay at home for the most part and not feel pressure to drive anyway. I’m able to work from home and Elijah’s school was canceled so it all worked out well.

benmartens February 10, 2017 Family, Weather

Eastside Burgers

More and more great burger places are popping up in the Bellevue/Redmond area. It’s a delicious trend to behold.

The first one (of the ones in this post) was Lunchbox Laboratory. They have a comical menu of awesome burger concoctions. Check out their menu to see what I mean. And don’t gloss over the side dishes. You can get creative and have them apply melted cheese, bacon bits and more to your tater tots or fries.

Next up is Feed Co Burgers in Redmond. This place is great for a quick meal with a young kid in tow. You get a delicious burger and lots of choices of beers on tap, but you order at the counter so the total meal time is much shorter. Side dishes are great here too. Tyla always chooses the fried cheese curds.

The newest entry is Tipsy Cow in Redmond. This restaurant combines the slightly hipster vibe of Feed Co with the bigger menu of Lunchbox Lab. Most recently, I had a burger with fried egg, fried bacon, caramelized onions and more (pictured).

It’s awesome to see what all these places come up with in the realm of gourmet burger. Five Guys is a staple in my restaurant list, but if I’m looking for something a little fancier, all three of these places are excellent choices!

benmartens February 9, 2017 Food

Best of YouTube

Did you know that you can hop on YouTube and get a live stream from the International Space Station? The future is NOW!

Matthias Wandel is an engineering wizard and he recently posted a video showing how to make an air engine out of wood. This one got added to my (very long) project list. I’d love to attempt it some day.

And this last one isn’t a specific video but rather a whole series. For the past few months, Matt Cremona has been building his own enormous bandsaw mill in his back yard. He readily admits that he had very little prior experience and just learned it all from the web as he went. I love that all this information is available! I’ll embed a video showing him operating the finished product, but you can checkout this playlist to see the whole process.

benmartens February 8, 2017 Links

Picking Up The Table Saw

I wrote last week about why I decided to buy a Grizzly 1023 table saw. The next trick was getting it to my house. Having Grizzly ship it would cost about $240 by the time I was all done. They have two showrooms and one of them happens to be 1.5 hours away in Bellingham. (The other one is in Missouri.) I wanted to check out their building anyway, so I made a plan to go get it.

Unfortunately they are only open on weekdays during normal business hours, but I was able to drive up there on Friday afternoon. I went back and forth on whether I should load it right into the truck and rent some ramps and a dolly to move it down or if I should rent a trailer with a ramp on the back. Both rentals were in the same price range so I went with the trailer because it would be lower to the ground and hopefully easier to unload.

I made good time on the drive up there but as I approached Bellingham, the temperature dropped and the rain started to have some snow in it. I was NOT eager to drag a trailer home in the snow so I hustled through the showroom and filled out the paperwork to pick up the saw. I want to go back some time and take it all in!

After getting loaded up, I wrapped it with some stretch wrap and strapped it down tightly. Thankfully the snow held off and I was able to make it home safely.

Tim and Logan stopped by to help me unload and it turned out that I really only needed one of them. It was relatively easy to just push it off the back and down the ramp. Oh well. The main box ended up being 450 pounds and then there was a second ~100 pound box containing the fence and rails.

In the next post, I’ll cover unboxing and setting it up.

benmartens February 7, 2017 Woodworking

Washington Bottle Cap Map

For about the last ten years, I’ve saved bottle caps from most of the beers that I’ve opened. I have… a lot of them. I always knew there would be a project with them at some point, but what? I like the idea of covering a coffee table, but I don’t really want a coffee table in the man cave. And I like the idea of doing a big mosaic but I don’t think I have enough of each color to do anything very impressive. Then I got the idea to do a map. There are lots of cool bottle cap maps around, so this isn’t anything original, but I made the state of Washington with bottle caps. The wood is just simple 1×4 pine and I covered it with some stain that I then sanded down to look a little distressed. This was a very Pinterest-y project.

Along the way, I thought about doing the United States and having bottle caps on the map from where the brewery was located, and I thought about doing something similar for Washington, but in the end, the placement was mostly random. There are a couple bottle caps specifically placed where the brewery is located but I’ll let you find those Easter Eggs on your own if you want to.

benmartens February 6, 2017 Woodworking

Seahawks As High School Prospects

Professional sports teams are looking at younger and younger kids to start recruiting. So how did the current Seahawk players look when they were coming out of high school? The Seahawks released a story showing that info (which comes from a Yahoo site).

After reading through that, it makes me wonder if these things are even worth the effort. There’s only one five star player and that’s Devin Hester. Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner and Doug Baldwin all only managed two stars. So either these ratings are not done very well or people can improve a lot after high school. I’d imagine that both are true.

It would be interesting to look at things the other way around: how are the 5 star high school prospects fairing now? Thankfully BleacherReport.com has already gone very deep on this and has a ton of great statistics. The short answer is that if you are rated 5 stars in high school, you have a better than 50% chance of making it to the NFL and if you go early in the draft, you will probably stick around the NFL for a while.

This stuff is big business, but it must be really frustrating to deal with something so imprecise.

benmartens February 3, 2017 Links