Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Just trying to get through life without looking stupid, so far it's not going very well.

Stuff You Should Know

If you listen to podcasts, check out the Stuff You Should Know podcast. (If you don’t listen to podcasts, this is a great one to start with). The hosts, Chuck and Josh, take hour-long deep dives into literally hundreds of different topics. Here are some of their recent subjects: caffeine, Isaac Newton, Satanic Panic of the 1980s, the Great Wall of China and maggots. Each episode is full of great facts and plenty of comedic relief.

They have built up 500+ episodes of the podcast so you can listen for a LONG time before you run out of fresh content. Plus they are still publishing two podcasts per week.

benmartens February 1, 2016 Links

Woodinville Christmas Lights

For quite a while, I’ve been hearing people talk about a home on the east side of town that has an incredible lighting display. It’s just a guy who decided he wanted a light display and it kind of got out of hand.

We finally went over this year to check it out and wow, it did not disappoint. There are just under 125,000 lights, 3.5 miles of extension cords, 13 miles of wiring and a computer to control it all in sync with the music. You can see it all at their website: http://www.woodinvillewonderland.com

It’s worth the trip if you have some time next year.

benmartens January 4, 2016 Links

Printing Tiled Images

I’m working on a new decorative sign for our house. After I had drawn it at full size in Photoshop Elements, I needed to print it full-size, tiled across multiple sheets of paper. It seems like there are a lot of ways to do this, but it took me long enough to figure out that I figured I should write it down.

My approach was to save it as a PDF from Photoshop Elements and then open that PDF in Fox It Reader. (I think Adobe Reader has a similar feature.) There’s an option when printing to print it as a tiled image. You should get some extra marks on the paper to help you line up the multiple sheets and tape them together. One easy way to accomplish that is to hold it up to a window when it’s light outside and then you can easily align the sheets.

If you do this regularly, you might want to check out Big Print. It costs $22 but check out the videos and you’ll quickly see why it’s probably worth the investment. On a side note, if you have an engineering mind and you enjoy woodworking, check out the rest of that guy’s site and his YouTube video. He makes incredibly complex tools and projects out of wood.

benmartens December 22, 2015 Links, Woodworking

Name Check

If you’re thinking about starting a business or any kind of website, one of the hardest parts is coming up with a name. It’s not just coming up with an idea, it’s coming up with an idea that has an available domain name, Instagram name, Facebook name, etc.

There are a bunch of websites out there to help with this, but one of my favorites is https://namechk.com/. You just type in the name you are interested in using and it checks across a whole bunch of services at the same time to tell you where it’s available.

benmartens December 18, 2015 Links

Amazon Price Watches

If you’re stalking some items on Amazon, watching for a good price, check out camelcamelcamel.com. They will alert you if the price drops below a threshold that you set and it will also show you a price history chart. It’s interesting how much prices fluctuate! It’s also fun to scroll through their Top Price Drops page to see what items they are discounting the most today.

Even if you aren’t waiting for a product to hit a specific price point, it’s nice to check that site and make sure you aren’t buying it at a temporary price peak. It’s also handy to combine this with Amazon’s price reduction policy. It changes regularly, but right now it seems to be good for seven days. There’s some minimum price change is required too, but as an example, I watched a product drop $20 and seven days later, I called back and got a refund. I had to mention the policy to get the refund though. At first the rep told me to ship it back and then buy it again.

benmartens December 10, 2015 Links

Amazon Handmade

When you think about buying handmade craft projects online, you probably think of Etsy. They’ve been around for a long time and they’re the uncontested leader in the market. However, Etsy has left a lot of angry makers in their wake. You can read a good write up about that on Wired, but for example, Etsy made a change to allow companies to sell their products. So if you’re thinking about selling a few of your crafts on the site, you’re going to be competing with a company doing a million dollars in sales. Not only does it make it really difficult for the individual maker to survive, it also dupes buyers into thinking they are buying something handmade when really it might be just churned out by a company.

Amazon is capitalizing on that frustration with their Handmade section. They emphasize that items must not come from a factory and they must be genuinely handmade. Products on Amazon Handmade aren’t cheap but that’s viewed by many makers as a good thing because hand making items is not cheap. The prices seem to reflect actual costs for someone trying to make a living doing this type of work.

It’s just getting started but they already have over 80,000 items. That’s a small number compared to Etsy, but it’s worth checking out when you’re looking to purchase, and it might be an interesting option if you’re looking to sell your crafts too.

benmartens November 30, 2015 Links, Woodworking

Great Washington ShakeOut

What would you do if the ground starting shaking right now? How would you reunite with your family? How would you survive for a few days if the area infrastructure was messed up? Education around those questions is the target of the Great Washington ShakeOut taking place today at 10:15am.

Tyla and I recently purchased an earthquake survival kit which just amounts to a backpack loaded with three days of food, water, and some basic supplies. We also have a generator and a bigger cash of canned food in the event that we’re able to stay on our property but can’t get food from the stores. It’s all stuff you hope that you never have to use, but if you do need it, you’ll probably wish you had done more!

Check out the site for some good information about how to be prepared.

benmartens October 15, 2015 Links

Apocolyptic Bunker

Imagine building a 70mph mobility scooter, a bed that launches you across the room as a morning alarm, or a jet bicycle. These are just some of the things that Colin Furze has done on his YouTube channel. His latest project trumps them all though: an apocalyptic bunker. He’s digging a huge hole in his back yard and building a bunker! You can watch parts 1, 2 and 3 on his channel now, but there will be a few more videos before he finishes. I love watching videos from makers, but Colin is in a league of his own. He dreams up crazy things and then actually makes them happen.

benmartens October 6, 2015 Links

Craft Classes

A recent thread on the woodworkers discussion list at work mentioned craftsy.com. As the name implies, it’s a craft site that provides lessons, kits and supplies. The part that specifically interested me was woodworking, but they also cover quilting, sewing, cooking, knitting, photography and more. A lot of the videos will cost you some money to watch, but there are a few free selections as well. The free woodworking videos include on one finishing (which I’m not very good at) and setting up a band saw (which I hope to purchase soon) so I plan to watch them. Yes, you can probably find similar stuff on YouTube for free, but if this site lives up to the promise then these should be more in depth and higher quality to justify the price.

benmartens July 23, 2015 Links, Woodworking

American Jobs

At the big data conference in San Jose earlier this year, there was a speaker from the US Census. They deal with LOTS of data and do a fantastic job of making their datasets freely available with good documentation. A great example popped up recently from a PhD student at Harvard. He used the census job data to put a single dot on the map for every single job in America. You can see the full result here. This is such an exciting time in data analysis. We’re just scratching the surface of what kinds of decisions we can now make based on data instead of intuition.

benmartens July 22, 2015 Links