Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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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.

benmartens April 23, 2015 Geek, Links

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?

benmartens March 5, 2015 Links

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!

benmartens March 4, 2015 Links

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.

benmartens March 2, 2015 Links

Amazon Promotional Credit Balance

slowershippingcreditIf you’re a Prime member, you’ve probably noticed that at checkout you can choose a slower delivery and get $1 towards books, movies, etc. While I love the free two day shipping, I’ve been choosing the credit for things that I don’t need quickly.

But finding out how much credit you have built up turns out to be a bit complicated. Ignore all the step-by-step instructions and just go to this link: http://bit.ly/mp3-balance

You’ll quickly see how much money you have available. The only thing it doesn’t tell you is when various parts of it expire. Generally it seems like the credits are good for about two months. I figure it’s free money so if I have a purchase that can use them, great, if not, oh well. And I’m sure that makes Amazon happier. They end up saving money overall because they don’t have to ship so much stuff with the higher two-day shipping cost. It’s brilliant… I pay them $100/year to ship things to me at normal speed in exchange for credit that I don’t always use. These guys are good.

benmartens February 16, 2015 Links

Being A Programmer

I picked this up from MattB’s recent Facebook post. It’s a Forbes article entitled “Why Don’t More People Work As Programmers?” It does an excellent job of describing what it takes to be a great programmer. Programming is not something that you can learn by taking a class or two or ten. Give it a read if you’ve got a code monkey in your life. Our profession is a mystery to a lot of people. The article won’t explain the mystery, but it might help you appreciate the complexity of the trade.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/10/31/why-dont-more-people-work-as-programmers/

benmartens November 18, 2014 Links

Netflix for Legos

The fun part of Legos for me was usually putting them together. Grabbing random pieces and building from your imagination is fun, but building an actual kit was always special. There’s a great service that I just learned about called Pley. You set up a queue from about 250 different Lego sets and for $15/month, they will send you one of the kits. When you’re done, box it back up and send it back. Then they send you the next one. And yes germophobes, they are cleaned and sanitized before they go out again.

benmartens October 10, 2014 Links

Skin In UV Light

After having multiple chunks of skin cut out of my body over the last couple years, I think about UV light pretty much whenever I’m outside. There’s an interesting article on Slate about a photographer who took video of people under UV light. You can see how different skin features like freckles absorb and reflect UV light. And after watching the video, I’ll never look at sunscreen the same way again! It works by absorbing UV light so it doesn’t reach the skin. When people put it on in the video, it looks like they are smearing black tar on themselves. You can check out the video below but the article is worth a read too.

benmartens August 25, 2014 Links

I Like To Make Stuff

Patreon.com lets you see who else supports the same shows as you and then you can see what other shows they support. It was via that feature that I learned about I Like To Make Stuff. I’ve been looking for a good woodworking podcast that’s in my skill range (as opposed to The Wood Whisperer which is awesome but way over my head.) I Like To Make Stuff has been very interesting and I’ve already picked up quite a few tips and tricks even for the projects that I have no interest in doing. They’re pretty short and packed with good stuff. If you like wood working, check it out.

benmartens August 6, 2014 Links