Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Fantasy Football – Week 16

This has been a very frustrating season to watch the Seahawks. They were supposedly playing an easy game and ended up playing terribly. It feels like somebody flips a coin before each game and they’re either a Super Bowl contender or the Browns. They better not lose to the 49ers. Ugh.

Congrats to Logan for winning our league! He had the highest total point total in the playoffs and ended with a six game winning streak, so it’s hard to argue that he deserved the victory. The final standings are:

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

This is Logan’s second championship and breaks Austin’s attempt for a 3-peat. Here’s an update on our championship count since 2007:

Jim – 1
Ben – 2
Luke – 2
Andy – 1
Austin – 2
Logan – 2

I’ll probably have more stats for you in a couple weeks.

  This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Logan had 138.13 Logan had 170.69 (Week 5) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Jim had 90.02 Dad had 65.22 (Week 14) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Tim beat Jim by 28.78 Logan beat Tim by 79.46 (Week 5) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Dad beat Luke by 21.30 Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (Week 9) Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (2016)
Highest Scoring Player Aaron Rodgers had 45.18 on Ben’s bench. Le’Veon Bell had 49.80 for Austin. (Week 14) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Logan has a six game winning streak Was Andy and Logan had 5 game winning streaks Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Ben has a six game losing streak Dad had an 8 game losing streak (Week 15) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens December 28, 2016 Fantasy Sports

Purple Box

Tyla got an espresso machine for her birthday and there are quite a few little pieces that go along with the process. I’ve had some random pieces of purpleheart wood laying around so I decided to make her a small box to hold all the little parts. The sides are walnut and I used a box joint jig for the corners. The bottom and inlay are purpleheart. A few quick sprays of lacquer finished the project off.

purplebox

benmartens December 27, 2016 Woodworking

Dump Truck

I’ve been working on Christmas gifts for various people for the last couple months. I’ve enjoyed the projects, but it has been killing me to not share these with you! I’ll start with the biggest project first: Elijah’s dump truck.

Last year I built Elijah a front end loader for Christmas. I decided to follow it up this year with a dump truck from the same series of plans. I ordered the kit which contained the wheels, axles and the hardware but everything else came out of a couple maple and walnut boards. The plans for this project could have been better, but I was eventually able to get it all put together and I’m really happy with the end result!

wooddumptruck1 wooddumptruck2

benmartens December 26, 2016 Woodworking

Merry Christmas

LUKE 2
THE BIRTH OF JESUS

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.

4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

benmartens December 25, 2016 Commentary

2016 Christmas Card

2016cardfront

Voila! There is our 2016 Christmas card. This year as I was addressing them, I thought it would be fun to put all of the addresses on a map. I used the mapping feature of Excel to do it in case you’re curious.

christmascardmap2016

benmartens December 23, 2016 Family

Elijah’s Favorite Songs

colorful_noteElijah loves music and regularly bursts out in song when you least expect it. If you’re shopping at Safeway at the same time as us, you might hear Jesus Loves Me or Jingle Bells (at any time of the year.)

I thought it would be fun to look back on these songs when he’s older so here’s a list of what I think are his top songs right now. The first three are from the Cars soundtrack.

  • Chuck Berry – Route 66
  • Rascal Flatts – Life is a Highway
  • The Chords – Sh-Boom
  • Peter, Paul and Marry – Puff the Magic Dragon
  • Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside
  • Away in the Manger
  • Jingle Bells
  • Now Thank We All Our God
  • A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
  • Little Drummer Boy

I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton more but this is a pretty good start.

benmartens December 22, 2016 Family

Fantasy Football – Week 15

There are two different Seahawks teams that show up to play. This week it was the good one and they won solidly over the terrible team that always beats them: the Rams. The Rams were in quite a bit of disarray after the firing of their coach but they kept up their streak of ridiculous trick plays. I loved Pete Carrol’s fake punt when it was totally pointless and unexpected. That’s about 100 trick plays for the Rams to 1 for the Seahawks. Kick ’em while they’re down. I support it… except for the ending of that play with Ryan unable to run and carry a ball at the same time and then ending up in the hospital. This team is goofy this year. This article does a good job of summing it up.

In our league, Logan beat me and Austin beat Andy. I know that this happens to everyone, but I literally made a last minute roster change that lost me the game. AUGH. Every time I do that, I think “This is dumb. I always regret it.” But then I go on to convince myself that this time is different. I need to write a bot that automatically undoes my last roster change. But I’m not bitter.

Austin and Logan will face off for the championship. Sound familiar? It’s a repeat of last year’s championship game. That time, Austin edged out Logan for the win. The power rankings say that Logan has the advantage, but we’ll see who comes out on top this year.

1. Logan
2. Austin
3. Ben
4. Andy

  This Week Season All-Time
Highest Team Score Tim had 132.32 Logan had 170.69 (Week 5) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Luke had 96.26 Dad had 65.22 (Week 14) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Tim beat Dad by 33.12 Logan beat Tim by 79.46 (Week 5) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Logan beat Ben by 3.24 Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (Week 9) Luke beat Logan by 0.11 (2016)
Highest Scoring Player Drew Brees had 37.36 for Austin Le’Veon Bell had 49.80 for Austin. (Week 14) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Logan has a 5 game winning streak Was Andy has a 5 game winning streak (Week 12) Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak Dad has an 8 game losing streak Was Dad has a 7 game losing streak (Week 13) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens December 21, 2016 Fantasy Sports

Shop Paper Dispenser

I’m loving the outfeed/assembly table that i built a while back. I don’t take great care to keep it nice. It’s a work surface. When it gets too bad to use, I can just screw off the top piece, flip it over and screw it back down. That being said, there are some really messy activities where I do still put down paper.

We have a 4 foot long roll of brown paper that gets used both in the shop and for Elijah’s craft projects. It doesn’t have a good home so it usually ends up in a corner of the house or in a closet. I’ve seen various YouTube woodworkers mount it to their assembly table. Tim was over at the house for an afternoon so we decided to give this project a shot.

We made a quick run to Home Depot for some 1/2″ threaded rod. That’s what supports the heavy roll. The interior hole is only about 3/4″ so I needed something thin and strong. We cut out a couple holders for the rod just using some scrap 3/4″ plywood. Those got screwed onto the sides of the table and the project was done! It’s one of those projects where I think “Why didn’t I do that months ago?”

assemblypaper1 assemblypaper2

benmartens December 20, 2016 Woodworking

Smart Home

smartthingshubI’ve dabbled in the past with a few smart home devices like some Wemo light switches and the ecobee thermostat. One of the problems with home automation is that lots of different manufacturers are making cool devices, but they don’t all work together. There are some companies out there trying to bridge the gaps and one of them is Samsung with their SmartThings hub.

I’ve had that hub on my CamelCamelCamel price watch list for a while and one day I got a notice that it was half price so I jumped on it.

The device sits in your house and abstracts away some of the differences between the various devices. When you go through the hub, you get simplified functionality, but it’s consistent. For example, if it’s a light switch, the hub knows it can turn it off and on but it doesn’t know how to get your specific light switch hooked up to WiFi. You can kind of think of it like a universal remote.

The default setup is already useful. There are pre-loaded apps and routines to let you do things like “when you see motion on this device, turn this other device on”. That’s good but of course I wanted to dig in more and one of the reasons I picked this device is because they have a pretty good developer API.

You develop apps for the hub through a web interface in a language called Groovy. I wrote an app that logs events from my house (light switches on and off, etc) and another app that turns lights on and off in relation to sunrise/sunset with some randomness built in. It took me a while to figure out the available commands and learn the Groovy language, but it’s quite the interesting toolset once you get the hang of it.

My favorite use case right now uses the fact that our hub recognizes our Android phones as location sensors. So when Tyla and I are both out of the house, our thermostat automatically turns down a few degrees and when we get close to the house, it turns the thermostat back up. I think that one is actually going to save us money because we regularly forget to do that ourselves.

If you like to tinker with home automation, I recommend the hub. If you’re just a user who’s not going to write code, it’s probably worthwhile too, but honestly, if you’re not willing to tinker with your setup, then home automation probably isn’t your thing yet. We’re getting a lot closer, but the technology still has a way to go.

benmartens December 19, 2016 Gadgets, Geek

Snow Day

Seattle is a very mild climate. The ocean and the sound keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. That being said, every once in a while, cold weather aligns with wet weather and we get snow. It hasn’t happened in a few years, but if we get enough to cover the roads, it usually shuts everything down. I made fun of people for this when I moved here, but quickly learned that it really is hazardous. The roads usually start wet, then freeze, then get covered in snow. There are hills everywhere and oh yeah, there are only a handful of plows to cover the entire area. Thankfully a few years ago they changed the laws to allow the use of salt on the roads.

Anyway, we finally got a good snow the other day and it was perfect timing for Elijah to play in it. He has seen snow a few times before, but never at our house. We headed straight out as soon as we were up and he played in the snow with Tyla from 7:30 until noon with only a short break to warm up and change clothes. We had a couple sleds in the garage and those were a big hit. There were some roads in the neighborhood that were steep enough for sledding. All of the neighbor lawns were quickly covered in snowmen. Elijah had a lot of fun telling me about his big snow day!

snowday2016_1 snowday2016_2 snowday2016_3 snowday2016_4snowday2016_6

benmartens December 16, 2016 Family