Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Wool Socks

A couple years ago, TimS and AndyD convinced me that I need to try wool socks. It sounds silly, but it was a life-changing discussion. Since that first purchase, I have worn wool socks almost exclusively. In the winter they keep my feet warm and in the summer they keep my feet from getting sweaty and wet. They’re brilliant! You can get them fairly cheaply in big bundles at Costco. Unfortunately they only sell them during the winter so I like to stock up and have a few bundles in the closet in case I wear some out.

benmartens February 19, 2014 Commentary

Power BI

My project at work is called Power Query for Excel. We released our first version last summer and now our second version is available as part of a larger offering called “Power BI for Office 365.” BI stands for Business Intelligence. The offering includes a bunch of tools that help you make sense of your data, create nice reports and then share them out with your colleagues. This marks the first time that something I’ve worked on at Microsoft is available for purchase!

But never fear home users, while the collaboration and sharing features require payment but you can use some of the pieces for free. For example, you can download the latest version of Power Query from the Microsoft download center.

It’s exciting to see all our hard work available for public use and we love getting feedback! Please use the smile/frown buttons on the Power Query tab in Excel or leave feedback in the Power Query forum (or one of the other Power BI component forums.)

The marketing department put together a nice Power BI overview video. The Power Query specific part is in the “Discover” section around the 36 second mark.

benmartens February 18, 2014 Geek

Printer Tech

I love that everything around us is becoming a gadget. The buzzword/phrase is the “internet of things.” Add our printer at work to the list. It has always had capabilities like scanning and emailing documents, but it was also a huge paper waster and logging in for advanced features was a pain. People would print stuff and then forget to pick it up. The default setting is that when you print something, it sits in the printer’s queue but doesn’t actually print until you walk up to it. At that point you swipe your badge over the card reader, it brings up all your jobs and ask which ones you want to print. At this point you’re also logged in so scanning and emailing is very simple too. It’s one of those seemingly obvious “why didn’t we do this before” inventions.

benmartens February 17, 2014 Commentary

Sweet And Sour Slow Cooker Chicken

We heard about this one from MandyE on Facebook and really enjoyed it! You can find the original recipe from Kraft or use our slightly modified version below.

Use at least a  2 quart slow cooker

Ingredients

  • 1 onion, sliced
  • 1 carrot, sliced
  • 1 stalk celery, sliced
  • 1-1/2lb. boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-size pieces
  • 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/3 cup KRAFT Classic CATALINA Dressing
  • 1/4 cup lite soy sauce
  • 1 tsp. grated gingerroot
  • 1 Tbsp. cornstarch
  • 1 can (8 oz.) pineapple chunks, drained, liquid reserved
  • 1 bell pepper, cut into strips
  • 3 cups hot cooked rice

Directions

  • PLACE onions, carrots and celery in slow cooker; top with chicken.
  • MIX sugar, dressing, soy sauce and ginger; pour over chicken. Cover with lid.
  • COOK on LOW 4 to 5 hours, increasing heat to HIGH for the last 30 min.
  • STIR cornstarch into reserved pineapple liquid. Add to slow cooker with pineapple and peppers after it has started boiling on high heat in the previous step; stir. Cook, covered, 30 min. or until sauce is thickened. Serve over rice.

Can be made ahead the night before and placed in fridge

benmartens February 12, 2014 Food

GoPro FT Flyer

Now that I’m an expert RC pilot (translation: I flew about 10 minutes without crashing), I decided to strap a GoPro onto my plane and take some video. GoPros and RC planes are a very popular combination. You can even set them up to feed the video live straight into goggles on your head so you can fly the plane as if you’re sitting in the cockpit. For this first test, I simply zip tied the camera to the bottom of the fuselage, right at the center of gravity. The camera was pointing straight down so the video is nothing wonderful, but I was thrilled that it worked. As I build bigger planes I’m looking forward to doing a lot more with this type of thing.

That day of flying also had a couple other firsts:

  • I got to go flying twice. (I need more than two batteries so that I can just have one longer trip!)
  • As I was flying, I saw something float down to the ground. A quick flyby showed me that one of my wheels had fallen off. That made for an interesting landing.
  • I hand-launched the plane a couple times since the landing gear needed some attention.
  • I completed my first loops.

I’ve included the video below, but like I said, it’s not that amazing. I did fly overhead a few times though. I’m standing right next to a picnic table along the edge of the field. You can spot me for the first time around the 20 second mark in the video. This plane only has three channels (throttle, elevator and rudder) so the turns end up sliding the plane around strangely. I have a couple more three-channel planes waiting to be built but then I’m looking forward to getting/building a four channel model.

benmartens February 11, 2014 Radio Controlled Flight, Video

Bike Trailer

Last year, Tyla got a bike for her birthday, and we’ve been hoping to do some family bike rides this summer. Elijah probably won’t be riding a bike yet so we decided to get him a bike trailer. When I hopped online to do some research I was amazed at what you can buy for a bike trailer! We opted for the lower end of the spectrum until we prove that we actually need something fancier and settled on this very well reviewed model from InStep.

Assembly was quick and easy. Elijah fits into the straps just fine so we decided to give it a shot. He did ok on a very quick ride around the cul-de-sac. He’s a very curious kid and his curiosity was definitely winning though he wasn’t laughing or smiling. We decided to go for a ride around the neighborhood but after about a quarter mile, he decided he was done.

It’s generally too cold and/or wet for this kind of activity right now anyway. I’m guessing that by the time spring rolls around, he’ll be loving this!

benmartens February 10, 2014 Outdoors

MailStore

I don’t know about you, but I’m an email packrat. Steve Gibson, the security genius behind grc.com, recommended mailstore.com and I’ve been really impressed with it so far. It runs locally, sucks in mail basically any source you might have (online mail, local Outlook, Exchange, etc), removes duplicates and then indexes it all for crazy fast searches. I love having everything in this nice clean searchable format across all my various accounts through the years. It’s so much cleaner than my old mess of saved PST files and multiple web mail accounts. This also lets me delete all my old email from GMail and Hotmail. There’s no longer a compelling reason for me to let them see all my old data.

I’m still dusting off some old email archives and finding more lost messages, but right now I have 110,000 messages in this database and it only takes up 3.6GB (and that includes attachments.) Searches return results almost instantly, and if for some reason I don’t want to keep using this program, there are easy options for exporting to a wide variety of locations and formats. The only complaint I have is that it can’t detect duplicates that are loaded from the same source. So if I have a piece of mail that gets loaded from GMail and also from my Outlook cache, it will show up twice.

 

They have a paid corporate version but there is also a version that is free for personal use. There are probably other solutions out there, but I’m loving this one and I give it two thumbs up!

benmartens February 7, 2014 Geek

Throwback Thursday: Mowing in 1986

This was one of my favorite jobs! Dad and Mom bought this tractor the year I was born and they’re still using it today. The keen observer will notice in the background that the area between our property and the golf course hadn’t been cleared away when this photo was taken. The trees are a lot bigger now too!

benmartens February 6, 2014 Throwback Thursday