Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Quick Install

It had been a while since I rebuilt my computer so I decided to do it over Thanksgiving break. I was amazed at how quickly it went! Windows 8.1 installed off a USB key in the blink of an eye. I probably could have used the reset functionality built into Windows 8 but I really wanted to do a bare bones completely clean install. Windows 8.1 remembers pretty much every customization I did to the machine and even all of the apps that I had downloaded from the Windows Store. Office and a few other desktop apps required manual install, but Office 2013 is takes literally a couple minutes to install.

I also gave Ninite a try for the first time. It’s free to use and it streamlines the install of some of the most popular apps. Put a check next to whatever you want to install (Chrome, 7-Zip, Skype, Notepad++, ImgBurn, Steam, etc) and it will install them with default settings and tell you when it’s done. It saves so much mindless clicking!

The final thing that made the reinstall so quick and painless is that all of my files are backed up in the cloud. So I didn’t think twice before formatting my hard drive. I knew if I had forgotten some important files, I could quickly restore them from a backup.

I remember when a task like this used to take the whole weekend or more. This time I fired it off before going to bed, clicked a few buttons in the morning, and I was pretty much done!

benmartens December 12, 2013 Geek, Links

Fantasy Football – Week 14

And there you have it, the final week of the regular season is in the books. As predicted last week, Logan secured the final spot in the playoffs. Here are the playoff seeds:

  1. Andy
  2. Ben
  3. Logan
  4. Dad
  5. Luke
  6. Tim
  7. Austin
  8. Jim

Spots 1-4 will play for the championship while 5-8 square off in the consolation bracket. Good luck everyone!

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Ben had 151.20 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Tim had 88.43 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: I beat Tim by 62.77 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Andy beat Luke by 13.9 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Josh McCown had 47.52 for Austin. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  Jim has lost 6 in a row.

Stats mostly via TMQ (but not this week as there doesn’t seem to be an article available):

  • Austin and I are the only ones playing the League Pick’em on Yahoo and we both perfectly predicted last week’s four games in our league.
  • Logan has beaten his projected points three weeks in a row.
  • This was the 5th time this season that Tim had the lowest score.
  • Austin snapped a four game losing streak this week.
  • 7 of Luke’s 8 losses have been to teams who scored higher than their season average.
  • Luke had the 8th highest points of any losing team this season.
  • Jim has been on the receiving end of what Yahoo deems a “blowout” 5 times this season.
  • With two games left to play, Andy is already tied with Logan’s previous record for most points from the originally drafted team. He has also tied the season record for touchdowns.
benmartens December 11, 2013 Fantasy Sports

CryptoLocker Virus Protection

The CryptoLocker virus has been making the rounds in the news lately, and well it should. If you get infected, the virus will encrypt everything on your harddrive and on drives that are attached via the network. You then get a message saying that you have a few days to pay them ~$500 to get the data unencrypted or they will wipe it all. It’s quite clever and now that people see how successful this type of attack is, I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a lot more of them.

How do you protect yourself from this? Well obviously you need to be careful when you’re opening attachments in your email, but in the end, it’s pretty much impossible to guarantee that you’ll never get a virus on your computer.

So if you think about this, it’s a lot like the situation where your hard drive fails. All of a sudden, you no longer have access to all of the data on your computer. The only difference is that now the odds of that happening to you have increased (and they were already huge to begin with since all hard drives fail eventually and many of them fail after just a few years.)

The answer to both problems is the same: BACK UP YOUR DATA. If we somehow get CryptoLocker in my house, and even if it encrypts every hard drive we have, I won’t lose any of my data. It’s all backed up in the cloud and the cloud backup has versions so even if it somehow overwrites my backups with encrypted data, I can just sync back to the point before the virus and get my data back.

What would happen if you got the virus right now? The good news is that if you don’t have a plan, you can be quite safe for just $50/year. I’m not getting paid by Crashplan.com, but I love their service and highly recommend it. Set it up on your computer and then forget about it. Your data gets backed up all the time without any intervention from you. Then you can rest easy and know that your data is safe!

It’s not a matter of if your hard drive will stop working or it gets hit by a virus like CryptoLocker, it’s a matter of when. Be prepared.

benmartens December 10, 2013 Commentary

Lumber Rack

My garage is plenty big, but I’ve never figured out a good place to store leftover wood, especially big sheets of it. The original plan was to build something that hangs from the rafters, but for lots of boring reasons, it just wasn’t the right answer. So instead, I decided to stack the wood up against the wall.

I had to build a platform to keep the wood above the water main, so that’s why it’s not resting directly on the ground. It’s a very simple design. The bottom platform bears the weight and then there is a bar running across at about 5 feet up from the platform to keep the wood in place. That bar is held in place with a U bracket so I can just slide it up and out when I need to access big sheets of wood.

This solution won’t hold a LOT of wood, but I think it will do the job for a while. I actually don’t have a lot of big scraps left. Many of them went to this project!

benmartens December 9, 2013 Home Improvement, Woodworking

Free Apps Retrospective

I have about a dozen Windows Phone and Windows 8 Store apps. They’re all paid apps, mostly because I’m too lazy to mess around with advertising and it’s nice to get a little money, even if it’s just a few bucks, for my hobby. CascadeSkier makes up about 90% of all my downloads, but even that one isn’t huge. I decided to open the kimono a bit and share the results of a recent experiment where I offered both apps for free for three days.

Windows 8 Store
This version has been out since 2012 and as of today I have 1574 downloads. This app offers a free trial for a couple days and then you have to pay $1.99 to continue using it. During the period where the app was free, I got 120 downloads so that’s a pretty good chunk considering I only have 1500 total downloads. The really interesting part is that after the free period ended, I saw another peak of about 20-30 downloads and about a third of those people bought the app. We’re not talking huge money here, but it does appear that some of the people who downloaded the app for free convinced acquaintances to buy it later.

One random stat unrelated to the free trial: over the last 12 months, 1 out of every 7 people who view the app in the store download it. 27% of those people buy the app and 75% of those people buy it without even attempting the trial.

Windows Phone
The Windows Phone app has been out since 2010 and it has 1758 downloads. During the free period I got 200 downloads but there was no follow-on peak of paid downloads.

This was an interesting experiment. In reality I probably should have done this a long time ago and maybe I’ll do it again in the future. The reviews show that pretty much anybody who uses the app loves it. So that implies that the more people that are using the app, the more people will hear about it. The flip side of this argument is that I target a very small customer base. This app only applies to skiers and snowboarders who live in Washington or the Portland area and who use Windows Phone or run apps from the Windows 8 Store. I often wonder how close I am to saturating that market.

benmartens December 6, 2013 Geek

Remote Control Christmas Lights

Every Christmas, we set up a tree and the Christmas village. Turning these on and off as we enter and leave the house can get a bit tedious, so this year I introduced a little technology to the picture. Enter the Belkin remote controlled power strip! Our tree and village are plugged into this power strip and then the remote is left near the door. The ease of use means that we turn it on more and get more enjoyment out of the decorations. I picked this up at Home Depot but it’s also available at Amazon via the link above.

benmartens December 5, 2013 Commentary

Fantasy Football – Week 13

I’m sure there were some other good games this week, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Seahawks game on Monday night. They made a big statement about their chances of making it to the big game this year. There’s a lot of work to do, but it would feel great to have home field advantage. The 12th Man regained their title as the loudest NFL crowd. Kansas City briefly took that title from them earlier this season. They can keep yelling a bit longer since the Saints plane broke down last night forcing them to spend an extra night in Seattle.

I had my own personal dilemma as I decided to bench Drew Brees and start Cam Newton instead. That ended up being a good move but I felt like I was turning my back on my Purdue roots and embracing Seattle instead. Maybe I have, at least when they’re facing each other.

What’s your prediction for the Super Bowl? Seahawks vs Broncos?

Our league remained relatively similar as far as the playoff picture goes. Andy is still on top with Dad and I chasing him. Logan dropped a game but remains in fourth place. With only one game remaining until our playoffs start, Andy, Dad and I have clinched playoff spots. The fourth spot is almost certain to go to Logan. Even if he loses and Luke or Tim win, he’ll still have enough points to win a tiebreaker. So this last week will be about setting the playoff seeding. My money would be on Andy to win it this year. He cranks out a lot of points. We’ll need to watch out for Dad though. Josh Gordon has been on FIRE lately, scoring over 100 points in the last three weeks.

Now on to the weekly awards:

  • Highest Team Score: Andy had 156.03 (Record, Week 4: Tim had 195.50)
  • Lowest Team Score: Jim had 83.11 (Record, Week 6: Jim had had 72.17)
  • Biggest Blowout: Tim beat Jim by 42.24 (Record, Week 3: Dad beat Andy by 63.83)
  • Closest Win: Andy beat Logan by 24.4 (Record, Week 1: Logan beat Tim by 0.89)
  • Highest Scoring Player: Eric Decker had 45.40 for Andy. (Record, Week1: Peyton Manning had 60.28 for Andy.)
  • Mr. Consistency:  Luke is on a 4 game winning streak and Jim has lost 4 in a row.
  • Crystal Ball: Dad started a perfect roster.

Stats mostly via TMQ:

  • Andy has the best record in the league and has only made 4 roster moves, the fewest in the league.
  • Jim has made the 6 roster moves, the second fewest in the league, and he’s in last place.
  • With their win on Monday night, Seattle is the first team in the NFL to clinch a playoff spot.
  • Every team in the NFC West has a positive points differential against opponents.
  • The Saints and Drew Brees ended their NFL record streak of 43 consecutive games with at least 200 passing yards.
  • The Giants and Jets, the New Jersey teams, are first and second for giveaways, combining to turn the ball over 58 times.
  • Nick Foles has 19 touchdown passes and no interceptions.
  • Kansas City became the first NFL team ever to open 9-0 then go 0-3.
  • In opening 9-0, Kansas City’s defense allowed 11 touchdowns while scoring six. In going 0-3, the Chiefs’ defense allowed 13 touchdowns while not scoring.
  • Outgaining the Packers by 435 yards, the Lions won at home on Thanksgiving for the first time in a decade.
  • Carolina, which has allowed just two touchdowns in the first half, is on a 13-3 run.
  • The Seahawks are 14-0 at home when Russell Wilson starts.

A correction to last week’s stats: Logan had the high score with 151.53. I’ve updated that post.

benmartens December 4, 2013 Fantasy Sports

DBAN

So you’re getting rid of some old hard drives, but you’re nervous about just throwing them in the trash. If the idea of creating a USB boot key doesn’t frighten you, then you should know about Darik’s Boot and Nuke. Simply deleting files or formatting the drive doesn’t actually erase the files on the drive. You need to overwrite every sector on the drive multiple times to really be sure.

Reboot the computer with either a CD or USB key inserted and you’ll boot into DBAN. From there you can choose a number of options for wiping the drive that range from writing 0’s one time across the whole drive to doing much deeper scrubs with multiple passes. I generally default to “DoD Short Wipe” which does three passes. That could take you a day or two with today’s larger drives, but it’s nice to know that nobody is going to find my old hard drive and pick any data off it.

I’ve also been known to physically take drives apart and smash the platters with a hammer (wear safety glasses!) That’s messy and technically it’s still possible to read data if the pieces are big enough, but it’s good enough if I’m in a hurry.

P.S. If you find yourself doing stuff like this often, consider picking up a hard drive dock. It’s a lot easier to swap drives in a dock then to physically open your computer. This is the one I’ve had for a while, but you might want to consider a USB3.0 model too.

benmartens December 3, 2013 Geek

Extended Warranties

There are a couple stores around here that push their extended warranties ridiculously hard. Sports Authority is probably one of the worst. No matter how I say “No”, I continue to get the guilt trip throughout the entire transaction. It almost makes me want to explain why I never buy it, but I question whether they’d understand the math. Here’s how it works out:

The break even price of a warranty is equal to the cost of replacing the item times the percentage chance that you’ll need to replace the item. So if the product costs $100 and there’s a 20% chance that it will break, then you should buy the warranty if it’s less than $20. The trick is that it’s usually impossible to define the odds that you’ll need a warranty. There’s still a way to prove that it’s a bad deal though.

Think about the company offering the warranty to you. If they charge everyone less than that breakeven point, they’re going to go out of business. They need to make a profit so the warranty is almost ALWAYS going to cost more than that breakeven point. Therefore it’s a bad financial deal for you to buy it.

There are, however, some cases where warranties and insurance are a good thing. Those cases are generally when you do not have enough financial reserve to cover the replacement cost if the item is destroyed. Think about your house or your car. If you have $30K lying around to buy a new car, then you could technically get buy without insurance (though they’ve made insurance a legal requirement since almost no one has this kind of reserve available.)

So when you’re standing at the register and they offer you the extended warranty, know that it’s a bad deal and if you can envision paying that much money again to replace the product, do not buy the warranty. You’ll come out ahead in the long run even if you do have to pay full replacementreplacmenet value every once in a while.

benmartens December 2, 2013 Commentary

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History

A few weeks back, KenC mentioned Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast and I listened to one (three hour) episode. It’s incredible! He takes a small slice of history and dives really deeply into it. The story he weaves is deep and really helps you understand all of the complicated forces that combined to shape the event.

He only cranks out a handful of episodes a year and I imagine that’s because each one requires so much time and effort. There are 50 total episodes and starting with show 34, they’re available for free on his website.

If you enjoy history, I recommend that you give one episode a shot. That’s all it took to get me hooked.

benmartens November 29, 2013 Commentary