Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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Sunburns

The Stuff You Should Know podcast is full of awesome trivia, but one of their recent episodes taught me a lot about a subject I thought I already knew well. The title is “Sunburn, Suntans and Sunscreen“. Throughout the episode they busted a bunch of myths that I thought were facts and explained the science behind sunscreen. I’m especially interested in the topic given the three chunks of skin that I’ve had cut out of me. If you only listen to one episode of that show, this is a good one to listen to! You don’t have to do anything fancy to subscribe if you don’t want to. Just go to that link and click play.

And if you like that one, check out another one of my recent favorites: How Ketchup Works.

benmartens August 10, 2017 Links

Amazing Live Streams

The other morning I stumbled across the NASA live stream and they were doing a space walk. I threw the video onto the TV and Elijah and I watched live video of someone in space. Then later at work I read the day’s xkcd comic and it referenced a live video stream from a robot that is exploring the ocean. The future is now!

benmartens May 17, 2017 Links

Lots o’ Legos

In on of my recent Best of YouTube posts, I mentioned a user named JANGBRICKS, but I think he deserves his own post. His real name is Bamidele, but he goes by the name JANG which stands for “Just a Nice Guy.”

Elijah likes to watch his Lego videos, but he has lots of other collections like Playmobil, Halo stuff, and knives. I don’t know where all his money comes from, but he worked for PayPal and EduSoft in the past.

Regardless of how he does it, his Lego collection is enormous. In a recent video, he mentioned that he has about 500,000 pieces that came from buying Lego setes and a couple tens of thousands more from custom orders. If you figure an average price of $0.10/piece, that’s a big investment, but honestly, it’s not as much as I thought when I saw his setup.

On his YouTube channel, he reviews all (?) the new Lego sets and he also shows custom builds that he does for his big city. He states many places that Lego does not sponsor him at all and everything is bought with his own money. His custom builds are a treat to watch. He’s a magician with Legos.

If you enjoy Legos, this is a great channel to subscribe to.

benmartens May 3, 2017 Links

Best Of YouTube

This first video is actually two videos. Sneaky. The one embedded below is a series of physics riddles. Watch it first and think about your answers. Once you feel good about your answers, what this video to see the actual answers. I only got two right (and one was little more than a lucky guess.)

Mark Rober is the world’s most awesome uncle and he’s done it again with an awesome Hot Wheels video. Elijah loves his Hot Wheels track and I want to show this to him, but I don’t think he’ll understand that it’s not totally real. He’ll spend the next month asking me for enough track to fill up our whole house.

And finally, I’ve never thought about how ravioli noodles are made, but now that I’ve seen it done, it seems like it could be a fun project. I’ll add this to the list of things to build if I ever get a lathe.

benmartens May 1, 2017 Links, Video

Best Of YouTube

Destin over at Smarter Every Day posted a great video with a guy who can talk backwards. They test him to see how different activities affect his ability to talk backwards. Destin is also the co-host of a good new podcast called No Dumb Questions.

This next recommendation is really an entire channel: The Q. These videos show how to make some fun machines with common household items. His main materials are cardboard and hot glue. For example, here’s a robotic arm made from simple syringes and cardboard.

How many do think are in Australia herding cattle with a HELICOPTER? 10? Well, according to this article, 10 of them die every year. This looks very effective… and completely crazy.

benmartens April 17, 2017 Links

Best of YouTube

Colin Furze is blowing up YouTube. Almost literally. I recommend that you watch almost all of his videos, but here’s his most recent one. He made a giant fire tornado with fireworks on top to celebrate hitting 4 million subscribers to his channel. Tim, I expect something like this at your next Fourth of July party.

Matt Cremona is an accomplished woodworker, but he’s been spend the past months building a giant bandsaw mill in his back yard. This is a big step up from the chainsaw mill he used before. After cutting some “smaller” logs, he was finally able to load test it with a 53″ cut. The saw didn’t even bog down. If I still lived in Minneapolis I’d be excited to visit Matt and buy some wood from him. It’s probably not economical to drive from Seattle though.

As part of Elijah’s bedtime routine, he gets to watch a few minutes of YouTube. Originally it was usually something like a music video from Caspar Babypants but now he just asks for something and we pull it up. For the past few weeks he has been asking exclusively for Lego videos. That’s how we stumbled across a YouTube user called JANGBRiCKS. He’s a full time YouTuber and he spends his time working on his enormous Lego layout and reviewing new sets that come out. Most of the videos are too long for Elijah’s bedtime, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t continued watching them after finishing putting Elijah to sleep.

benmartens March 10, 2017 Links

Best Of YouTube

Bad Lip Reading makes it into the list again with a recap of the NFL for 2017. “My brain is so loud.”

Adam Ruins Everything is apparently a show on TruTV, but there are a bunch of clips on YouTube and that’s how I’ve been watching it. Learn why that electric car might actually be worse for the environment than a regular car and why that lady who sued for hot coffee from McDonald’s isn’t as crazy as you probably think she is.

The White Rabbit Project is on Netflix, not YouTube, but it might tickle your fancy if you liked Mythbusters. Tory, Kari and Grant are back together again and they are sort of testing myths but it’s a little different format. It’s not as good as Mythbusters, but if you liked those three, this is at least a good one to have on in the background while you do other things.

benmartens February 22, 2017 Links

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

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

Best of YouTube

Let’s dive right in. Nachos on the grill? Yes please.

I’ve only recently started digging into the back catalog of the crew at Bad Lip Reading. There are so many fantastic videos on that channel, but here’s one of my favorites from The Hunger Games.

This last one isn’t on YouTube, but it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. I rarely laugh out loud when I’m watching something alone, but while I watched this one I was laughing so hard that I was crying. It’s episode 4 of The Grand Tour. This is the new version of Top Gear with Clarkson, May and Hammond. The whole season has been fantastic but this was my favorite episode so far. If you have Amazon Prime, it’s free to watch.

benmartens January 23, 2017 Links