Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Having just switched into a new role at work, I’m keenly aware of the various stages of learning that I’m progressing through. I think it can be broken down into three stages:

1. What? I look at this list of things you want me to do and I have no idea what any of them even mean.
2. How? Ok, now I understand what you’re talking about but I don’t know how to make progress on these tasks.
3. Why? I’m a productive member of the team, but I don’t really understand the history and philosophy of why we’re doing these tasks.

I’d say with my job right now I’m generally in stage 3 (though there are some areas where I’m still borderline 1/2.) Jumping into a brand new group is disconcerting, but it sure feels good to learn new stuff!

There is a site for everything on the internet. It’s nearly impossible to come up with an idea that doesn’t exist already. But I’ve got one and I’m giving it away for free. As best I can tell, there is no good website that has downloadable (either free or for purchase) woodworking plans along with user reviews of the quality of each plan. Think about having a shopping experience like Amazon.com except it’s all woodworking plans. You could have customer submitted images of each project, reviews saying how good or bad each plan is and a catalog that is both browsable and searchable. Creators could upload their plans and get money from people who buy the plans.

There are actually some sites out there that attempt to collect plans but they are ancient at best and generally they’re indistinguishable from spam sites. They’re flooded with dead links.

Why doesn’t this exist? Somebody please take the idea and run with it! All I want in return is a link to the finished site so I can use it.

I don’t remember where I heard it, but somebody once said: “If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, it would probably be Labor Day.” Technically I guess this holiday is about celebrating unions and the labor movement, but I’ll just enjoy a beer and some meat on the grill.

A while back somebody commented that the emailed receipts from various physical stores feels like a privacy concern because they know your email. Umm… let’s take a step back and think about all the ways that you are being tracked today:

• Do you have a credit/debit card? Each individual store you shop at is able to track all of your purchases through that card. And then on top of that, your credit card company knows a LOT about your personality, your purchasing habits, where you shop, what time of day you’re shopping, and much more. That data all gets aggregated up and most likely is sold off to advertisers etc.
• Do you have a frequent shopper card? Why do you think that the grocery store gives you discounts if you use their frequent shopper card? It’s because they are able to make more money off of you if you know your buying habits. If everyone used their credit card every time they shopped, they wouldn’t need these cards.
• Do you use the internet? Your internet service provider knows everything you do online unless you’ve taken steps to use encrypted sites or a VPN. But even then, almost every website you visit is dropping a tracking cookie onto your computer so they can understand your browsing habits. And have you seen things like the Facebook Like button showing up all over the web? Anytime you even view a page with a Like button, the fact that you saw it is getting sent back to Facebook. Facebook and ad networks have huge amounts of data about what sites you visit.
• Do you walk around? That cell phone in your pocket is a huge tracking beacon. The cell phone company knows where you are at all times because they can tell which cell phone towers you’re connecting to. And when you walk through stores, they can watch for the completely unique WiFi signals that your phone is putting out and then track your path through not just that store but other stores that they are affiliated with.

The list goes on and on and on. You are the product. Companies are buying and selling your information, and thankfully, it’s almost always a benefit to us. We get discounts at stores, cash back on our credit cards, better store layouts, coupons targeted at our interests, and free websites. But if the fact that a company knows your email address creeps you out or you’re paranoid about why ads show up on one site for something you searched for on another site, then you better take a huge step back, educate yoursef and rethink your approach to all aspects of your life. Stop carrying a cell phone. Pay cash for everything. Never sign up for a frequent shopper card. Don’t use the internet. Do those four things and you’re off to a good start (but you’re not even close to done.) You might want to add a tinfoil hat to the list too.

We moved into our neighborhood about three years ago. The neighborhood was built in the 90s, a bunch of families moved in and raised their kids together, and apparently now they are all moving out. Since we moved in, a huge number of our immediate neighbors have sold their houses. Thankfully it wasn’t because of foreclosures or anything like that. I think it’s just a combination of their point in life and the fact that the market in our neighborhood is really hot.

Take a look at this map. The black circle is our house. Red ones have changed hands since we moved in and blue is either up for sale now or will be in the next month.

If you want to be our neighbor, you better be on your game. Almost all of these houses have sold within a few days of being listed and are going for ~10% over the asking price.

I’m thankful that we got in when we did because it looks like a pretty good point in the market history. Our sale price is roughly what it was worth back in the middle of 2005 and now the value is up ~25% back to almost the last peak. It does us very little good since we have no intention of selling, but it’s nice to be on the good end of a real estate investment for once. It gives me hope that down the road when we decide to sell, our good location will continue to make our house an easy sell.

P.S. I’ve been intentionally vague about some of these numbers because it feels a little weird to write about money. But everything here (and more) is public data that you can easily find if you know my address.

I love the idea of solar, but I don’t live in a great part of the country for it. We are one of the sunniest places in the US for 3-4 months of the year and then we switch to one of the most overcast places. A couple years ago, a guy at work did a big solar installation on his house. His monitoring website doesn’t have a password on it, so I check in every once in a while to check out how much money he is saving. Over the two years since he installed it, he has generated 7.51MWh while using 21.9MWh. So he has knocked about a third off his electricity bill saving him roughly $750. I bet he has a LONG way to go to recoup his investment.

I love the idea of solar power, but the technology just isn’t quite there yet if you want to have a quick return on investment. Yes, I know there are other reasons that people do it, and yes I know there are ways you can use it to generate a bigger portion of your usage, but for me, it’s going to be a while before I head that direction. If Tyla and I ever decide to buy some vacation property east of the mountains, I will be revisiting this topic. They get a LOT of sun over there and I could see it being a very useful way to power a vacation home.

After my last post on Friday about the new camcorder I use for recording at church, it dawned on me that I’ve never written up some of my learnings from recording public events. I’m far from an expert, but I’ve made enough mistakes that I have some things to share.

• Get there early. If you’ve never recorded at the venue, go there days ahead of when you’ll actually need to record. Figure out where all the gear will go and where the action will be taking place. But even if you’ve recorded at the same place many times, you can’t arrive too early. There’s always something that needs extra attention.
• Don’t try to do this without a good video editing package that you’re familiar with. I like Adobe Premiere Elements. Whatever you use, you need (at a minimum) to have the ability to sync individual audio and video tracks and then cut between them.
• Unless you are going to have a completely stationary camera, you’ll need at least two cameras. Leave one at a wide angle capturing everything and then do your zooming with the other camera. You can cut to the wide angle while you’re adjusting/zooming the second camera and then switch back to the zoomed view once you’ve got it all set up properly.
• Have at least one backup for everything. So if you’re using the two camera setup described above, make sure you have at least three cameras in the process. For the audio, hopefully you can record straight off the sound mixer, but also set a little portable audio recorder up near the action to use as a last resort. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been saved by what I thought was just an extra device.
• Plan for people getting in your way. If all of your cameras are clustered in the same spot, one person walking in front of you can ruin all of the angles at the same time. Scatter your cameras around the building.
• Start recording early. Don’t try to hit record right as the action starts. Figure out what time it’s scheduled and then walk around hitting record about 5 minutes early. This gives you time to fix any last minute issues, and then you’ll be comfortable behind your main camera well before anything exciting happens.
• The most time consuming part of this for me is always syncing up the various audio/video tracks. If you can pull it off, walk into the view of all the cameras and clap your hands together. (Or if you’re fancy, use one of the clap boards like they do in the movies.) That’s almost never feasible for me so I have to revert to other tricks. Sometimes I’ll cough really loud after turning on all the equipment. Other times I’ll just do my best to work with some other noise/visual that most of the gear picked up. Inevitably I spend a ton of time moving clips back and forth frame by frame trying to get them all lined up.

The more I do it, the more I learn because I keep finding new ways to screw up! If you want to check out my work, a lot of it ends up on the church’s YouTube page.

Things were a little different last year. Our little man has really grown up. I love you!

I’m done with airline miles and points. I want money back from my credit card. In 2008 I switched to mainly using the American Express Blue Cash card which has really good returns for no annual fee. We average just around 1.7% back every year on our purchases with that card. But since not everyone takes American Express, we also carry a Visa. In 2004 I signed up for a card which gave me points for Sony products. Since then I’ve gotten two digital cameras, a camcorder, noise canceling headphones, and two under-cabinet radios. We’re still accruing points but I’ve come to realize that I don’t really want anything that Sony makes anymore. Or at least I don’t want to be forced to chose from only their products. So it’s time to switch!

We ended up choose the Amazon Visa card. We get 3% back on Amazon purchases and credits for all other purchases as well. The rewards come in the form of Amazon points which, for as much as we shop there, is effectively like cash. There’s no minimum required number of points to redeem them.

Part of me thinks it’s fun to get these rewards, but a bigger part of me wishes that credit card companies would just charge lower transaction fees and we could skip all these silly rewards. Just charge me less for the original product and I’ll be happy.

About a year or so ago, the pastor of our church (Pastor Weiser), announced that he would be going into semi-retirement this summer. Instead of just retiring like most people his age, he’s taking a half-time job as our missionary in Nigeria. He’ll spend quite a few months out of each year over there helping to train new Nigerian pastors. It’s always been one of his passions and he’s spent a lot of time there over the decades. I’m excited for him, but that leaves us without a Pastor.

I’ve heard a few comments/questions that can generally be summarized to “What happens if you don’t agree with what your new Pastor teaches?” I’m very thankful and happy to say that there is almost no chance that this will happen and I’ll explain why in this post.

Our local church, Calvary Lutheran Church, is part of a bigger group called the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod or WELS for short. The WELS is the central body that oversees all the churches to make sure we all teach exactly the same thing. While the types of church buildings and the styles of the church services might change from one WELS church to another, I can walk into any one of them and know that they are teaching exactly what the Bible says.

So when our Pastor left, we went put out a “call” for a new pastor. I won’t dive into the details of what a call is and why we do it because the WELS website already has a good description of that. I’ll just briefly say that the process is based on the Bible’s teachings and it’s not like a normal job interview. We ended up getting a Pastor who was just graduating from the WELS seminary. This will be his very first congregation.

Getting back to the original question, even though he’s never led a congregation before, I’m confident that he’ll stay true to God’s Word. His schooling included four years at our teacher/pastor training school (Martin Luther College) and then an additional four years at our seminary (Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary.) He’s well-versed in all of the Bible’s theology and he knows the original languages that it was written in (Greek and Hebrew) so that he can always go back to the most original manuscripts when needed.

But hey, everyone is human and we all sin. All of this training and process doesn’t mean that every single pastor is always right on target. Thankfully there are lots of checks and balances in place. First of all, every single person in the church should be actively listening and testing the words that the Pastor preaches. The book of 1 John teaches us to “test the spirits.” We should be comparing everything the Pastor teaches to what the Bible teaches. If they don’t align, we should investigate and question until the issue is resolved. In the worst case, this could be escalated all the way to the synod body which could take action to remove a Pastor from the synod entirely.

This is quite a bit more rigid and strict than many other church bodies, but that is what has kept our group of churches so rock solid on the teachings of the Bible. I’m very thankful that when I move to a new area or go on vacation, I don’t have to search around for a church. I just pull up the WELS directory, find a convenient location and start attending.