Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Commentary

Slow Netflix

netflixmailWhile I’m excited about all the streaming options available for TV and movies, I’m still a fan of the Netflix disc service. I get full quality movies and a much bigger selection. Netflix disc service used to be a great option. I would ship out a disc on Monday and have the next one in my mailbox on Wednesday. It has slowed way down though and I think it’s because the discs appear to be going all the way to California whereas previously there was a distribution center in Seattle. This means that if I ship a disc out on Monday, I don’t get the next one until about Friday. Those extra days really cut down on the value I get from the service and has made me drop it. I’m going to try to use Red Box more since it’s cheaper anyway.

benmartens May 21, 2015 Commentary

Sport Brella Review

sportbrellaAfter having three hunks of flesh cut out of me because they were suspiciously heading towards skin cancer, it should be no surprise that I don’t mess around with sunburn anymore. Having a kid has amplified that since they can burn so easily. Tyla and I saw a “Sport Brella” at a concert in the park one time and decided to pick one up.

It’s basically a big umbrella that isn’t quite round on the top and it lays down on the ground to provide shade. You can stake it into the ground if it’s windy and the pole of the umbrella drives into the ground too. It sets up in a matter of seconds and does a great job providing shade anywhere you need it.

We don’t use it a ton, but we’re always thankful when we do get it out.

benmartens May 15, 2015 Commentary

Grill Care

webergenesisI’ve seen a lot of people crank up their gas grill after they take the meat off to burn off the remainder of whatever was cooking. I did the same thing for many years too. But after I got my Weber Genesis, I found out straight from Weber that this is a bad idea. Very high temps are fine if you really need to cook something that way, but doing it every single time you cook puts a lot of extra wear and tear on the grill. There shouldn’t be any need to burn anything off if you have good grill grates.

So give your grill a rest. Maybe you want to brush it while it’s hot but otherwise, just let it cool down while you eat and then scrape it off.

benmartens May 14, 2015 Commentary

Tom and Jerry

tomandjerryOne of my favorite cartoons growing up was Tom and Jerry. Listening to the latest Hardcore History episode, I learned that Germans called British solders “Tommy” and British called the Germans “Jerry.”. That really put a new spin on the cartoon series! … Until I learned that it wasn’t actually were the name came from. In fact, in the original episode of Tom and Jerry, Tom’s name was “Jasper.”

Or at least this is what the Internet tells me. If you can find otherwise and prove that Tom and Jerry were really named after those nicknames then I think I’ll like the cartoon even more!

benmartens May 13, 2015 Commentary

The Fridge

refrigeratorrunningI had a random thought while putting away the groceries: why do we call that cold box in the kitchen a “refrigerator” instead of just a “frigerator”? What is frigeration and why does this box redo it?

The answer is pretty boring (so I thought it would fit in perfectly with the other blog posts here). The word “refrigerate” comes from the Latin refrigeratus, past participle of refrigerare “make cool or cold.” So the “re” part of the word isn’t the prefix that means to do again.

benmartens May 12, 2015 Commentary

Exponential Growth

in-the-year-2000A common generalization is that grandparents have a hard time keeping up with technology (though there are exceptions of course.) My grandparents were born before about 1930. Think about what the world looked like back then. That’s horse and buggy territory. Technology has come a LONG way since then.

Humans have a bias toward thinking that progress happens linearly meaning that in the next 80 years, we’ll see roughly the same amount of progress that we did in the previous 80 years. If that’s true, I can’t even begin to imagine what the world will look like when I’m heading for assisted living.

The truth is even more remarkable though. Instead of progressing linearly, technology is advancing exponentially. This means that not only is technology advancing, the rate of advancement is also increasing. We will advance more this year than last year and so on.

It’s hard to think about this or observe it while you’re in it, but if you look back in history, it’s a little more obvious. It took us thousands of years to go from horses to cars, but the cars from just 50 years ago are relics compared to what we have now. Similarly, computers were huge and bulky for the first decades of their existence, but now they are getting small, faster and more powerful every year.

The amount of data that we collect is rapidly increasing too. At a recent Big Data conference, one of the speakers estimated that 90% of all the data that the world has was generated in the last two years. By 2016 the total amount of data will double every two months and by 2020, it could be doubling every SECOND. Even if those numbers are a bit off, it helps to show what exponential growth looks like.

With all that in mind, how will I ever keep up with technology as I grow older? Grandparents have a hard enough time now. With the exponential growth of technology, is it hopeless for us who think we are sort of in touch now? Probably, but maybe we’ll be able to abstract technology away from the user in such a way that the user doesn’t have to understand much about how it works to get value out of it.

I’m not a futurist and I struggle to bring this post to a reasonable conclusion. I don’t have any magic answers but this stuff has been on my mind a lot lately, especially when I see Elijah interacting with any technology. He’s going to look back on these times as the technological stone age, and it’s awesome to think about what the future world will look like.

benmartens May 6, 2015 Commentary

Safeco Date

Yesterday was a big day for Tyla and me. It was our first time out of the house without Elijah! As a thank you for some stuff I did at work, one of the directors gave me some very nice tickets to Safeco. It worked out well to have Tim and Chelsea babysit after church so we went for it.

It felt weird leaving the house without Elijah, but it was a great afternoon. The tickets were for the “All Star Club.” I didn’t know what to expect but we got VIP parking and a private entrance into the game. It looks like they took about five or six of their private boxes and combined them. There’s a huge buffet and private bar set up. Food and non-alcoholic drinks are included with your ticket. Tyla and I stuffed ourselves! There are only three rows of padded seating and Tyla and I had front row tickets. It was quite the experience!

When we got home, Tyla ran inside and … Elijah hardly seemed to have noticed that we were gone. Chelsea said he was a little confused when he woke up from his nap and we were gone but he never cried and they had fun playing together all afternoon. A HUGE thanks to Tim and Chelsea for giving up their afternoon for us! (And thanks to everyone else who has offered to do the same thing for us in the past even though we’ve never taken advantage of those offers!) Hopefully this is something we’ll get to do a bit more going forward.

allstarclub4 allstarclub1 allstarclub2 allstarclub3

benmartens April 27, 2015 Commentary

I-405 Construction Update

i405We live right off of I-405 so we have been living with the enormous construction project for years. However, it’s slated to finish this fall and some of the details about the new traffic flow are starting to come out:

  • An extra lane is being added between NE 6th and NE 160th St
  • That extra lane along with the existing HOV lane will be “express toll lanes.” Cars with enough occupants will travel in them for free, but others can pay to travel in them.
  • During peak hours, three people are required to use the express lanes. In off peak hours, two people will qualify.
  • The rate for non-HOV users will vary based on the traffic. More traffic? Higher rate. They try to keep traffic flowing on those lanes by pricing people out of them.
  • Motorcycles are always exempt as with other HOV lanes.
  • You need a new “Flex Pass” to use those lanes. If you already had a switchable pass, you can call for a free upgrade.
  • There are defined entry and exit points for the express toll lanes.

I’m interested to see how much the extra lane helps traffic. Having the defined entry and exit points should help keep the traffic segregated a bit. For example, there’s no entry point right at 520 which will hopefully reduce some of the congestion as 520 drivers merge onto 405.

I do wonder about the sensibility of adding an extra HOV lane instead of regular lane. I really hope that it’s being done because this actually reduces commute times for everyone and not as some environmental action to try and force people to carpool.

Thankfully I have multiple routes that I can take to and from work. 405 is just one of the options. With almost 200,000 people traveling this stretch of road every day, I’m sure I’m not the only one who is eager to see how this is going to turn out.

benmartens April 16, 2015 Commentary

No More Custard

peakscustardlogoAfter Tyla and I bought our new kitchen table last month, we decided to celebrate with some Peaks Frozen Custard. We love their custard but don’t get to go very often because it’s on the Seattle side of the lake. Since we were already over there, it seemed like a good fit.

I did some quick searching around to find the quickest route there and discovered that they were closed. Not just closed for the day, but closed permanently. And what’s more, they had been closed for 1.5 YEARS! Wow! I, umm, guess it had been a while since we were there.

The couple articles available online don’t offer a strong reason why they quit. This article provides most of the information that I found and they quote the now-defunct Peaks website as saying:

We could not be more grateful to all of you amazing custardmers. It has been 5 years of wonderful. So why would we close? Peaks is a small family business that takes 100% of our families attention. We had fun, but now we’re on to a new lifestyle! At the same time, our lease comes to an end- so it was renew, relocate or stop!

Goodbye Peaks! I’m sorry we didn’t visit you more often!

benmartens April 15, 2015 Commentary

Easter vs. Christmas

emptytombAs we drove to church on Easter morning, I thought about how different it was than Christmas morning. Many of the stores were still open and traffic was about average for a Sunday morning. Almost nobody had been taking vacation at work the previous week and only parents with kids on spring break were taking the following week off. I bet a large part of the population didn’t even know it was Easter.

As a Christian, it’s hard to decide whether Easter or Christmas is a bigger holiday. Both are critical to my future. I suspect that a lot more people understand the importance of Christmas than Easter. A couple years ago, I wrote an explanation of what Christmas means for the Christian. Today I’ll do the same thing for Easter. If you’ve ever been a little curious why we get excited about this holiday, here’s your chance to find out.

At Christmas we celebrate the almighty God coming to earth as a human. That in itself is pretty impressive, but if that’s all it was, we’d all still be in a bad spot. That’s because every one of us is sinful. We’ve all broken God’s law at least once (more like millions of times) and God demands perfection to enter heaven. So on our own, the only fate for us at death is eternal damnation in hell. But that’s where Easter comes into play.

Jesus didn’t just hang around on the earth for a while to sight see. He was here to live a perfect life and take the punishment for ALL of us. His death, which we remember on Good Friday, wasn’t just one man dying. It was God punishing His only Son for our sin. But it doesn’t end there. On Easter morning, Jesus rose from the dead proclaiming his power over death and the devil.

Without the death and resurrection of Jesus and without our faith that it happened, when we die, we would be judged by our own track record. We’re all sinful so we’d all be condemned to hell. But because Jesus did die and rise. Those who believe will not be judged on their own record. Instead, Jesus steps in and points out that he paid the price for our sins so God the Father counts us as blameless and we enter heaven for eternity.

So THAT is why Christians are so excited about Easter. We should be this excited every day of the year, but Easter is an extra special reminder of the incredible gift that we have been given.

P.S. I’m turning off comments on this post because I’m not looking to start a public discussion, but if you want to know more about what I believe, you can of course ask me or check out this website from our church group. I also left out specific Bible references to keep this short and approachable, but I’m happy to provide passages to back up everything written here.

P.P.S. If you want to hear Pastor talk about this more in his sermon from this past Easter service, you can view it on YouTube.

benmartens April 13, 2015 Commentary