Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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Bottoms Up!

I love beer. The Pacific Northwest is one of the best places in the country for a beer drinker. There are 186 breweries in Washington alone and it seems like new ones are popping up regularly. With all the great beer around here, I was amazed when I saw the latest list of beer consumed per capita by state. Washington ranks 45th on the list! You people disappoint me.

Here’s the full list in order from most to least:

  1. North Dakota
  2. New Hampshire
  3. Montana
  4. South Dakota
  5. Wisconsin
  6. Nevada
  7. Vermont
  8. Nebraska
  9. Texas
  10. Maine
  11. Louisiana
  12. Mississippi
  13. Iowa
  14. Delaware
  15. Wyoming
  16. South Carolina
  17. New Mexico
  18. Missouri
  19. Hawaii
  20. Oregon
  21. West Virginia
  22. Alabama
  23. Ohio
  24. Colorado
  25. Arizona
  26. Illinois
  27. Alaska
  28. Pennsylvania
  29. Minnesota
  30. Oklahoma
  31. Kansas
  32. District of Columbia
  33. Idaho
  34. Florida
  35. North Carolina
  36. Michigan
  37. Arkansas
  38. Virginia
  39. Rhode Island
  40. Massachusetts
  41. Tennessee
  42. Indiana
  43. Georgia
  44. California
  45. Washington
  46. Kentucky
  47. Maryland
  48. New York
  49. New Jersey
  50. Connecticut
  51. Utah

Google Reader Replacement

RSS feeds have been a great way for me to keep up with a long list of websites in a very efficient manner. Google Reader was the app of choice for me, but unfortunately it closed it’s doors on July 1. The search was on for a replacement.

After trying out a variety of sites designed to fill the void, I settled on one called theoldreader.com. As the name implies, it’s pretty much a clone of the old Google Reader. It might be boring, but since the Google app was all I needed in the first place, I wasn’t keen on learning something completely new.

It’s free so definitely give it a shot if you haven’t found anything that you like yet.

Speedy Caterpillars

Last spring I wrote about a YouTube channel called Smarter Every Day. It continues to be one of the best web video series that I’ve found. The last episode about caterpillars was pretty incredible. Imagine you’re a caterpillar and you want to move as quickly as possible. There’s only so fast that you can walk by yourself, but what if 100 of your friends are walking to the same spot? How could you walk faster as a group than as an individual?

Watch the episode to find out:

And while you’re at it, I also recommend the Minute Physics channel. In each video he very quickly breaks down a complicated physics topic.

Streaming TV

Now that we’ve restarted our Netflix streaming membership thanks to Arrested Development, I think we’ll probably keep it going for a while. This gives us access to more online streaming content than we had with just our Amazon Prime membership and Comcast streaming options. So now the problem becomes how do I figure out which service has the content I want? That’s exactly what canistream.it aims to answer. Type in a TV show or movie and it will search Netflix, Amazon, Hulu Plus, XFinity and a bunch of other streaming options as well as places you might be able to purchase the show. It’s pretty handy!

Calendar For Couples

Early in our relationship, Tyla and I set up a joint calendar. There’s so much going on that without it, we’d be constantly confused about our upcoming schedule. It’s so useful that it seemed worth sharing. There are many calendar apps you could use, but we use http://calendar.live.com. I created the calendar on my account and then shared it with her. Not only can we access it through a browser, but it shows up on our phones and even in my Outlook calendar at work. Tyla is really good about keeping it updated so whenever we need to schedule something, we know that if we check the calendar, we can grab any open slot. If you have trouble planning with your friends or family members, give this a shot!

Featured Photo

There is a relatively new (at least to me) website called dailyhiker.com that I’ve been following. The guys who run it are local to the Pacific Northwest but the blog covers hiking around the world. They ran a contest recently for the best lake photo so I submitted my photo of MattM skipping rocks into the Puget Sound (technically not a lake I guess) on last summer’s camping trip. I didn’t win but I did make it into the top 13. Interestingly it’s the only photo in that group that has a person in it. This photo was taken with our little point and shoot. I’m really looking forward to hiking around with the T2i this summer.

http://www.dailyhiker.com/news/best-lake-photos-from-readers/

What’s Our Vector Victor?

During my brief stint with Lockheed in Minneapolis, I contributed a bit of code to an after-hours UAV project. Unfortunately I didn't get involved until almost the end of my time up there, but I was enthralled with the project. Since then I've always had an idea in the back of my mind to buy an off-the-shelf RC plane and add an autopilot to it.

The project either boils down to a ton of time or a ton of money. That might be changing though. Some clever individual has created a simple autopilot with pieces from the Lego Mindstorms kit. The kit now includes a gyro sensor and that is the piece that enabled this project. Currently the autopilot will maintain level flight and control the rudder to return the plane to the launch area.

If you see a tiny plane flying overhead taking pictures of you, look for the Studio711 logo on it. I'd love to create my own version of this project.

[source via slashdot]