Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Links

Craft Classes

Craftsy LoglA 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.

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.

jobsinamerica

Forecast Accuracy

forecastadvisorlogoDo you get your weather forecasts from The Weather Channel, Weather Underground or Accuweather? There are so many options out there, and often they can differ by quite a bit in their forecasts. There’s a website called Forecast Advisor that compares the accuracy of a variety of sources for your specific location.

I always thought The Weather Channel was kind of watered down basic stuff for general audiences, but it turns out they are the most accurate forecast for my location. Weather Underground is a very close second and they’re my personal favorite so I’ll probably keep using them.

Check it out for yourself, and also check out the Cliff Mass blog post that alerted me to this site.

Fresh Fruits And Veggies

freshfruitAs the growing season approaches, prices in the produce section start to swing wildly. I’m regularly confused about what is a good deal and/or what is currently in season. There are a few websites that give this info, but one of my favorites is http://www.eattheseasons.com/ It’s a super simple design that tells you what is in season now. I’ve got it saved as a favorite on my phone’s web browser so I can pull it up at the store.

Drought

reservoirlowEven though the Pacific Northwest had a terrible ski season, we’re not doing too badly on our water supply to get us through the summer because there was just more rain than snow. But whenever drought rears it’s ugly head (like it has been in California for the past few years), you hear lots of talk about taking shorter showers, not filling your swimming pool, not watering your lawn, etc. But does that really make a difference?

This blog post has a lot of interesting charts and data showing how water is used in each of the fifty states. (Also, the charts are really fun to play with, but make sure you use Chrome because they don’t render well in IE.) There’s a ton of great information in there. For example, did you know that Idaho and Utah use way more water per person than any other state? But less than 2% of that water is used for domestic purposes. If you look at total water used, California uses WAY more than any state but most of it goes to irrigating arid land so it can be farmed.

So yes, taking a 3 minute shower will help, but it’s not even a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Casper

caspermattressZappos, whom I mentioned yesterday, is not the only online retailer disrupting a market that you wouldn’t initial think of as a good fit for online sales. Casper is doing it too because buying a mattress is a pain. You go to some sleezy store that is always having a sale that ends in 30 minutes, get endless upsold by a salesman who is throwing out terms you don’t understand, and then you walk away paying gobs of money and wondering if you got scammed. It’s not hard to see how this market was ripe for disruption.

If you’re in the market for a mattress, check out Casper. You get a 100 night risk-free trial, free 5-day shipping, You can read a full writeup on the company in this NYTimes article, but basically you get a high quality memory foam mattress for well under $1000. Similar mattresses can easily run double or triple that, if not more.

But augh! What if I don’t like it! No problem. Call Casper in those first 100 days and they’ll send a courier to your house to pick it up. I don’t think it’s going to be too long before we’re in the market for another mattress and I’ll be surprised if we don’t give Casper a shot. Why not?

Zappos

zapposlogoZappos, mostly a shoe company, is an old company in Internet time. They officially launched back in 1999 and ever since then, they have built their brand on incredible customer service and easy returns. Buying shoes online is difficult since you can’t try them on, but Zappos makes it easy: don’t like them? Return them for free for up to one year.

They’ve branched out a bit to cover some clothing and accessories, but Tyla and I have only used them for shoes. We’ve always had a positive experience. You get a huge selection and you can be sure you’ll get one that fits without paying lots of money for shipping.

Here’s a protip for you: If you use the Windows 8 Zappos app, you get FREE 1 business day shipping!

Location Sharing With Windows Phone

squadwatch-iconTyla and I are regularly texting each other saying that we are leaving various places, headed home, etc. There aren’t many people that I’d share my location with, but letting Tyla know where I am would be pretty useful (and vice versa.)

Microsoft recently launched an app called SquadWatch which purports to do just that. It was built as a fun project by some employees and it feels like it has some growing pains. The first day I wasn’t able to get our phones linked together and since then it has taken quite a while to acquire the location of the other phone. If they get their act together, this could be a good app.

While I was reading about SquadWatch, I learned that there’s another location sharing app called Glympse. Right now it has significantly better reviews that SquadWatch so I’ll be checking that one out as well.

This seems like a super valuable tool for families, but I can see how it could feel like Big Brother watching over you. Will my son be ok with something like this when he’s older? That opens up a whole other set of questions that I’m not ready to answer yet. Parenting is hard.

UPDATE: There appears to be one major difference between the two apps. Glympse lets you share your location with someone for a specific period of time (similar to Waze), but SquadWatch appears to actually contact the other phones to determine their current location. That’s much more useful for my purposes. Once you have set up the “squad”, you can always know where the other people are. There are still some performance and reliability issues with the app but I’m going to keep it on my phone.