Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Motorcyclists Make Better Drivers

If you’ve ever driven a motorcycle, you are familiar with the heightened sense of awareness that comes with it. You develop a sixth sense that helps you avoid accidents. “I bet that guy waiting to make a left turn is going to try to squeeze through the gap in front of me.” “I bet that SUV with screaming kids in the back is going to merge into me because traffic is slowing ahead.” It’s a survival instinct. You either get it or you crash.

Most of you riders will also agree that this extra sense also translates to driving a car and makes you a better driver. Now there is some data to back that up. Insurance companies are one of the biggest aggregators of statistics since it affects their profit margin and an insurance company is now saying that a car driver who also has a motorcycle is 23% less likely to make a claim on their car. I hope this translates into some lower rates for me!

http://www.visordown.com/motorcycle-news–general-news/motorcyclists-23-better-behind-the-wheel-of-a-car/23971.html

benmartens November 18, 2013 Commentary

Ben FM

Back in 2005, I wrote a post about a radio station in Philly called Ben FM (95.7.) I joked that it was nice to have my own radio station and actually got a few gullible random Philly residents who wrote in with their comments on the station. Unfortunately those comments have been lost to time.

But now that joke is a bit closer to reality. If you come to my house and tune your radio to 91.9, you’ll here my very own radio station. Why? Well Tyla and I generally listen to country and the two country stations around here are terrible. 94.1 plays the same dozen songs over and over again and 100.7 has one of those stereotypical overdone morning show radio guys who is painful to listen to. Nevermind that if you have the radio on while taking a shower, you are lucky to hear two songs in the whole 10-15 minutes you’re in the bathroom.

I’m too cheap to cover the house in Sonos equipment, so instead I purchased 0.5 watt FM transmitter from Amazon. I hooked it up to the server in our house which is always on anyway. The server is currently playing music from a Christmas playlist that I put together on Xbox Music, but in the future I could see paying for a Pandora subscription and letting that run.

So far it’s working out really well. Every radio in our house easily gets a clean signal and now we have a station playing exactly the music we like with no commercials.

benmartens November 15, 2013 Gadgets

Here Come The Drones

I’ve been thinking about building my own UAV. Prices are coming down and it’s getting to be a pretty straightforward process. I’m planning to start with a multicopter. Do any of you have RC or UAV experience? Here’s my plan and you can let me know if you have a better recommendation.

The initial purchase (probably next spring after I save my pennies) will involve:

  • A 3DR Y6 kit 
  • Some kind of radio… maybe the Futaba 7-Channel model? I’d love some advice here. I don’t mind spending money to get a good one that will last me, but I also don’t need the top of the line model.
  • At least one battery and a charger

Hopefully that’s enough to get me flying. After that I’d add in an Ardupilot board, GPS and maybe a live telemetry link. I also want to add some kind of gimble to mount a GoPro.

So that’s the plan/dream. Advice is welcome! There are so many options that it gets overwhelming pretty quickly. I’ve found diydrones.com to be really helpful but I’m sure there are other good sites?

benmartens November 14, 2013 Geek

Fantasy Football – Week 10

All of the scores this week were very similar. The standard deviation was only 11.82. All of the visiting teams won in our league and when the dust settled, I was alone in first place. Andy and Dad are tied for second. Logan is alone in 4th and then everyone else is tied for 5th. Yahoo thinks that Andy, Austin, Dad and I will make it into the playoffs, but then again, on draft day they predicted Andy would end up last in the league. We have four games left in our regular season and I think we’re probably four weeks from deciding most of the playoff spots.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Logan had 134.33 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Tim had 98.26 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: I beat Jim by 22.14 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Dad beat Andy by 8.7 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Drew Brees had 39.68 for me. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  Luke and I are on 2 game winning streaks. Andy and Jim have 2 game losing streaks.
  • Crystal Ball: No perfect rosters, but Jim was within a couple points of it.

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Jacksonville is on a 2-0 streak against Tennessee and an 0-20 streak against all other teams.
  • Stretching back to halftime of their playoff meeting, the Seahawks have outscored the Falcons 61-20 in their past six quarters.
  • Nick Foles has 16 touchdown passes versus no interceptions.
  • New England will enter its meeting with red-hot Carolina on a 10-1 streak on “Monday Night Football.”
  • The Giants are 3-6, have committed a league-worst 28 turnovers and are a game and a half out of first.
  • Denver is on a pace to score 660 points; the NFL record is 589 points. Peyton Manning is on a pace to throw 59 touchdown passes; the NFL record is 50. The Broncos’ 219 points in the second half exceed the total points scored in all quarters by 17 teams.
benmartens November 13, 2013 Fantasy Sports

Custom Storage and Desk: Part 3

Part 1 showed the cabinets going in. Part 2 talked about building and finishing the desk surface. Once that was all done, it was time to install the desk!

The two desk pieces fit into their spots pretty well. There were some non-square walls that I had to deal with and it required a bit of sanding on one end for a good fit, but overall, it wasn’t too bad. The oak desk surface was screwed to the cabinets and supports from the bottom up. I added a couple 45 degree angle supports just to ensure that the desk was solid. I was able to put all my weight on the biggest span so it should be ok.

After installing it, I drilled a hole for the cords to snake down under the desk and installed a grommet. This was one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the build. I had to take a giant hole saw and cut through this piece of wood that I had spent weeks building. Thankfully it went smoothly.

Once it was all assembled, I realized that the surface was an inch or two too high. I’m a big guy so I like a tall desk, but this was too much. When I designed this, I had only accounted for the height of the cabinets and forgot to include the thickness of the desk and the spacers I had to put under the cabinets so the doors wouldn’t scrape against the carpet as they opened. It wasn’t a huge deal though because I knew I could use a keyboard tray. I don’t generally like keyboard trays because I feel like they are too small or too flimsy so I decided to build my own. I ordered 14” slides and then used some leftover oak plywood to build a keyboard tray that is almost 3 feet wide and over a foot deep. Now THAT is a keyboard tray! It’s rock solid and plenty big enough.

After that was all done, it was time to move in. I ran all the cables and tried to start with some nice cable organization. One of my favorite features is this little cord manager which sits to the left of my keyboard. It holds all of the little USB dongles that I use regularly (micro USB, mini USB, smart card reader, etc) so that I don’t have to go digging through a door or under my desk to find the right one.

I’ve started cleaning up the pile of boxes that used to be up against this wall. A lot of it is getting thrown away or donated, but the remainder is getting organized into the cabinets. Once that is done and I finish a couple other house projects, I would like to build some small shelves under the desk to the right of where my desk chair is to help even out that space. Right now that opening looks a little lopsided. I also need to add some handles on the drawers and cabinet doors. Those parts can wait a little while though.

This was a huge project, but I’m very proud of the way it turned out. I did it for about $3500 less than a contractor would have charged me. It’s not overly fancy, but it gets the job done.

benmartens November 12, 2013 Home Improvement, Projects, Woodworking

Vote Local

I’m saying this too late to have an impact this year, but the next time a voting opportunity rolls around, make sure you spend some time on the local races. They have enormous impact on your day to day life, much more so than the national races. Tired of congestion downtown? Nervous about some potential new zoning decisions? Tired of that street that needs to be repaved? Want to improve the quality and safety of the parks where your kids play? Concerned about your water quality? All of these things are done right in your hometown, not at the federal level.

Woodinville had a very hot race for city council with lots of mud-slinging and hype. The incumbent is apparently a psycho stalker making physical threats during meetings and the incumbent is accused of violating campaign finance laws. With all this hype, there were a grand total of 1380 votes cast in the race. Your vote really could swing an election. Our water district commissioner race was won by 17 votes!

You’re not going to find tons of commentary in the big media about your local election. They’re going for ratings so they’re going to cover what is common to everyone: the state and federal elections. It’s pretty challenging for me to think of any way that any of my federal votes last time around have had any effect on my life. But the local ones? Those are big. Pay attention, do your research, formulate an educated opinion, and vote!

benmartens November 11, 2013 Commentary

Dipping A Toe

Up until this summer, I followed 75-100 websites via RSS on Google Reader. If you don’t know what RSS is, don’t worry about it. The important takeaway is that it basically gave me an inbox style view of all the new posts on each website. It allowed me to make sure that I didn’t miss any post on any of the websites that I follow. Google Reader was killed off this summer so I was left with a change to the system I had been using for many years to get my news.

What I’ve landed on now is dramatically different but I’m enjoying it more. I finally gave up on the inbox-style news gathering and decided that for most blogs, it was ok to not see every post. Instead, I created a river of information from these websites and I would dip my toe in as I had free time and see what was happening. I use Weave News Reader on Windows Phone for that, but there are many apps that will help you read news in this fashion.

For the very few low-traffic websites where I want to make sure I see EVERY post (xkcd, friend’s blogs, etc), I still subscribe via RSS. After trying theoldreader.com for a while, I ended up using feedly.com as my RSS reader. And actually, I don’t use the website very often. On Windows 8 I use the Nextgen Reader app and on the phone I use Phonly to consume RSS from Feedly. They all sync together so no matter what platform I’m on, I can keep up with the trickle of information that I’ve deemed extra-important.

It took a while for my OCD to let go of reading EVERY post on all these sites, but now I’m loving the feeling of freedom knowing that it’s ok to let posts go by on these sites. In reality, I never got to them all anyway and there was always this sense of unfinished business when I’d look at my RSS list. I’m still alerted to important information because it gets repeated often in the stream or I see it in various social media sites. All in all, it seems like a good solution.

benmartens November 8, 2013 Geek

Sickies

Elijah got hammered by some kind of bug about a week and a half ago and a few days later, I got what appeared to be the same thing. Thankfully Tyla has somehow managed to stay healthy throughout this and she’s been an enormous help. Our nights have been long (Tyla’s have been longer than mine!) trying to keep our coughing, sneezing, snotting boy asleep and content. Throw in a time change and it really has made for some interesting nights.

So that’s why you haven’t seen as many pictures of Elijah lately if you’re friends with him on Facebook. While we do post lots of photos of him, we are trying to make some judgment calls about what we post since it will all still be alive on the Interwebz when he’s older. We’ve decided no bath photos, no sick photos, and no status messages about major diagnoses.

Every parent should draw their own line, but it’s an important decision to make. This is the first generation of kids that is going to grow up with every day of their lives documented. It’s hard to predict how that will play out, but we’ll make our best guesses. I just try to picture 15 year old Elijah standing in a group of friends when they find the mother lode of pictures, or an employer who has the ability to datamine old status messages and find out if there are any major mental or physical weaknesses in this employee he is about to hire. It’s impossible to predict perfectly because everyone grows up with their own ideas of humor, but hopefully we’re making good choices.

Enough of all that, let’s see a picture already! Here’s Elijah wearing his first Halloween costume!

Mom is scanning in the slides from our childhood years so I now have access to a lot of my childhood photos. Want to see my first Halloween costume?

benmartens November 7, 2013 Family

Fantasy Football – Week 9

Fantasy football is great for math geeks because there is always something interesting in the numbers each week. This week, in each matchup, the lower ranked team won. Also, all winning and losing streaks came to an end.

I challenged Andy’s hold on first place and it came down to the final minutes of the Monday night game. A touchdown from any of his remaining players would have tipped the scales in his favor. In the end, it appears that a late injury scratch of Marques Colston from his starting roster was probably the difference in helping me win. Andy still has top spot because of points though. Dad has third place to himself and then spots 4-8 are separated by only one game.

We have five weeks left in our regular season so everyone has a good chance. The league seems pretty even this year.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Ben had 155.11 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Jim had 74.94 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: Austin beat Jim by 59.39 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: I beat Andy by 5.87 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Nick Foles had 59.64 as a free agent. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  All winning and losing streaks were broken this week.
  • Crystal Ball: Logan started a perfect roster for the second week in a row.

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • At Oakland, Philadelphia scored 39 more points than in its previous two games combined.
  • The Dolphins are 6-0 on Halloween.
  • The Cowboys’ defense allowed 1,016 yards in eight days.
  • At 1:39 Eastern on Nov. 3, St. Louis scored its first rushing touchdown of the season.
  • Six weeks ago, Seattle came back from a 20-3 deficit to win in overtime; Sunday, Seattle came back from a 21-0 deficit to win in overtime.
  • Kansas City has six touchdowns on defense; Jacksonville has seven touchdowns on offense.
benmartens November 6, 2013 Fantasy Sports

Oakley Airwave 1.5 Ski Goggles

If you want the ultimate ski goggle, your search starts and ends with the Oakley Airwave 1.5 ski goggles. Oakley took one of the top ski goggle lines in the world and added Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and a bunch of sensors which all feed to a heads up display inside the goggles. Version 1 was introduced last fall and this year they’ve included some upgrades like an upgraded graphics processor and better battery life.

So what can you do with all this tech strapped onto your face? These goggles will track your speed, airtime in jumps, total vertical feet skied, and show you where your friends are (if they’re using the goggles too or running an app on their phones). All of this is presented via the heads up display. The goggles can also connect to your smartphone to control your music, receive text messages, and a lot more. As you probably guessed, these aren’t cheap. MSRP is $650, but when you consider that the Google Glass beta kits are going for $1500, this is a steal.

It all sounds pretty incredible, but you have to wonder how it works in real life. Is it safe to have a display like that always at the ready even as you’re skiing down the hill? Oakley has offered to let me demo these later in the year so I can give you a firsthand review! We’ve tentatively agreed on a January test so stay tuned.

benmartens November 5, 2013 Gadgets, Skiing