Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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

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

Forecast Accuracy

Do 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.

benmartens June 9, 2015 Links

Shop Smart At Costco

I love my Costo membership (though probably not as much as a few of you do!) I stumbled across a price comparison of a local grocery store to Costco. Obviously you’ll want to verify this for your local stores before changing any habits, but it’s an interesting read. A couple key takeaways for me are:

Better at Costco: frozen and canned foods
Better at the grocery store: fresh meat, fresh veggies

benmartens April 30, 2015 Links

Fresh Fruits And Veggies

As 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.

benmartens April 29, 2015 Links

Drought

Even 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.

benmartens April 23, 2015 Geek, Links

The Magic Number

If you have ever in your life thought that math was even remotely interesting, watch this video and be amazed. I’m not really going to say more than that because I don’t want to ruin the surprise. But if you want to read more, you can start here: Tupper’s self-referential formula.

benmartens April 21, 2015 Geek, Links