Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Data Logging Changes

Welcome to another Tesla Tuesday!

I’ve been running the TeslaMate service since the first day we got our car. I have data points from our cars complete life at a resolution of multiple data points per minute. There are dozens of sensors recorded in every data point. It’s a mountain of data and the TeslaMate dashboards do a great job of making use of that data. For a data nerd like me, it has been amazing.

One of the key takeaways I get from it is the ability to get an extremely accurate measurement of what a gas car would have cost me because I take my daily miles and the cost of gas at the local gas station every day. I can compare that with my energy cost and voila, I know my savings over the life of the car.

There are also some fun aspects like seeing a map of every road we’ve ever driven, calculating exactly which counties we have visited, knowing our longest stint without stopping for the bathroom, and the list goes on and on.

But for the last week I’ve had the data logger turned off. It’s gotten to the point where background work of keeping it running, making sure the data is backed up, etc just doesn’t feel worth it anymore. Plus, our car has never done a great job of falling into its low power sleep state and I wonder how much of that is related to TeslaMate (even though the devs say it’s highly unlikely to matter.) The Tesla app has slowly improved over the two years of ownership to the point where, other than the data logging, all my scenarios are covered by the app.

Furthermore, I’ve noticed that while I initially learned a lot from the data, it’s not really teaching me anything new now. I’ll still keep track of daily gas prices and even with fewer recorded mileage checkpoints, I’ll still be able to get a very accurate estimate of our total cost savings. Barring a major repair bill (so far our total is still $0), I’m highly confident that this car will end up being cheaper than what we would have got instead. I liked having the data to really prove it to people who don’t believe me, but meh, it’s not my job to change their minds, and if they hate EVs, my data isn’t going to convince them anyway.

As a data hoarder, it’s hard to let this go, but I’ve gotten to the point in life where I feel the need to simplify. Some of that is physically getting rid of stuff and some of that is letting go of commitments and projects. Maybe this is a healthy step in the right direction, or maybe I’ll reget it in the future! I’m going to leave everything hooked up and I’ll turn it on every once in a while so I still have some data points, but for the most part, this will free up some head space.

benmartens August 27, 2024 Electric Vehicles

Coat Rack

We generally use the entry door from the garage but there’s no easy place to hang up coats near that door. After more than 10 years of living in the house, I finally bought a cheap coat rack and screwed it to the wall. It worked but I wanted something a bit nicer.

While the design is almost exactly what you’ll see from many internet shops, the advantage of building it myself is that I can make it fit our space perfectly. For example, when the door opens, it hits the door stop just before it hits the wood. I was also able to put the mounts on the back directly in line with the studs but still have the shelf be centered in the wall.

The project went together very quickly. The white part is poplar with some rattle can white paint and then the top is walnut with David Picciuto’s experimental finish. On the back, I routed an insert for some metal keyhole hangers. The project was quick but it made use of a bunch of previous Christmas and birthday gifts such as dividers, self-centering drill bits, and plug cutters.

We’ve always had a photo hanging on that wall (a sunset from Camp Ticawa) and I can’t decide if it fits with the new coat rack. Perhaps a different frame would look better or maybe I need to move it completely.

I was happy that the rack installed level without any drama. I used a laser to make sure everything was aligned. Now we’ll see how it holds up to a school year full of heavy book bags!

benmartens August 22, 2024 Woodworking

Check Status Without Waking Up

Welcome to another Tesla Tuesday!

It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these updates, but I’m still loving the car and looking for excuses to drive it. We have 48,000 miles on it and we’re still on track to meet my goal of having this car cost the same or less over 100k miles than the car we would have purchased instead.

The topic today is a quick one with a big impact. Previously when you opened the app, it would immediately wake up the car. When the car is awake, it consumes a percent or two of battery just sitting there. Ideally it falls back into a very low power sleep mode quickly but sometimes that can take hours to happen. (Side note: why does it take so long? I wish I could push a button and force it into sleep mode.) TeslaMate let me easily see if the car was asleep without waking it up, but a recent change to the Tesla app now does the same thing. If I open the app while the car is asleep, it will stay asleep until I issue it a command.

benmartens August 20, 2024 Uncategorized

Election Year

Are we going to make it through the next few months? Even a quick peek at the news for the last four years reveals an angry torrent of people screaming at each other or worse.

Watching from the sidelines, there are so many similarities between politics and sports. In politics and sports, both sides cheer for their own team and some people take it way too far. The difference is that at the end of the day, the sports fans usually know it’s just an ephemeral game. The people glued to their team’s news source haven’t figured that out.

Have you ever thought about how there are always about 50% on one side and 50% on the other side? The political teams don’t take permanent, principled positions. Rather, they are two riverbanks following a meandering course of public opinion and fighting to control their half of the river. They would have you believe there are only two opinions, and if you question anything about their side, you must be part of the other team. Can we please get more people who freely admit that not everything from the other team is wrong and that there might even be a third or fourth answer to a particular question?

A country where people are quicker to argue than to listen doesn’t bode well for our future. How would things be different if we only talked about politics when people asked our opinion? Hateful, predatory internet culture has now somehow become what we expect from our political candidates instead of rational, respectful discussions between people who happen to disagree on the best way to solve a problem. Political debates and speeches frequently sound like people trying to fit in the name-calling and zingers that will make their team yell “OOOOO! They got you!”

So if you do tell me about your political viewpoints, expect me to change the topic or just make my way out of the conversation even if I’m voting for your candidate. I’ll do my own reading and research before I vote. If we do have a chance to talk, I’d rather have a conversation about Jesus than about a political candidate. Imagine what our country would look like if all the Christians focused as much time on the Bible as they do on their news source.

benmartens August 15, 2024 Commentary

Changing Guidelines

Our family had a brush with COVID again, but thankfully it was extremely light, and we wouldn’t have even suspected it if we weren’t being overly cautious and testing before visiting with some highly susceptible people. I was surprised to see how much the guidelines had changed since the last time I read them. Due to some unknown combination of herd immunity, vaccines, improved scientific knowledge, and political pressure, there’s no more mandatory 5-day isolation, 5 days of masking, etc. My stance on this has always been to follow what the experts are saying because I don’t have access to as much data and knowledge as they do. But that means I’m aligning myself with guidance that will change. It’s great when guidance changes because more data has become available, but regardless, the guidance still changes.

As I was processing all that, it struck me how many people in this world do the same thing with their religion. They base it on what the leaders of their religion are saying today. Some churches even put out a regular magazine just to keep up with all the changes to the religion. Current rules and guidelines can disagree with what was said before and now you’re just expected to change your life view and align with the new writings.

You know what never changes? God’s Word. My faith is based on what is written there, not on what any human says or writes. That document has been unedited and unchanged for thousands of years. I’m thankful to be a part of a church body that bases all its teachings directly on the Bible. Teachings today are directly in line with what was taught hundreds or thousands of years ago. I don’t have to wonder if the core foundation of my life is going to get shifted by what a human decides when they wake up tomorrow.

Interested in learning more? Or just interested in free burgers and hot dogs? We’re having our annual outdoor worship service and cookout this Sunday at 9:30am in Bellevue.

benmartens August 8, 2024 Commentary

2024 Indiana Trip

We try to get back to my parents’ house in Indiana every summer and this year was no exception. Things were almost thrown off by a case of COVID, but then I learned that the CDC has updated their isolation guidelines. Thankfully that all worked out for us and the case was very mild (not even a fever.) It unfortunately did mean that we didn’t see some higher risk family members, but we still had a good time.

Dad and Mom surprised us by installing a new diving board! There was a diving board for all the years I lived there but about 20 years ago, it had to be removed because the rusty base couldn’t be safely held to the concrete anymore. The board was a BIG hit and got a lot of action! I’ve always wondered at what age I’ll do my last backflip and hmm… we might be past that point already. Either that or I need more height to get it done. Each time I tried it, I made it about 3/4 of the way around.

We went swimming every day but we also visited the new South Bend Chocolate Company location, played disc golf, picked berries, played croquet on Elijah’s made-up courses, went to a farmer’s market, and ate a lot of good food. I did edit a bunch of our videos together to remember the event, but don’t expect a cinematic masterpiece.

Thank you Dad and Mom for all the work you do to make our trip easy and enjoyable!

benmartens August 1, 2024 Uncategorized

Invest TODAY

I have a nephew graduating high school and heading off to college. With that comes a lot of thinking about how much to invest in college, how much debt to take on, and what your earning power will be when you graduate. It also gets me thinking about the importance of investing. It’s something many people realize too late in the game.

I’ve been thinking for weeks about how to put this into a blog post but then I listened to a recent “How To Money” podcast episode and it covered it perfectly. So whether you read this post or not, consider checking out episode 842 – Millionaire Mission.

When I was young, investing seemed really complicated, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. That podcast is an interview with the guy behind MoneyGuy.com, but there are plenty of other popular financial sites that will help you avoid debt, make smart decisions, and get in the habit of saving 20% or more of your income.

I don’t want to try to summarize every little thing because they do it much better than I can, but here are a few key points:

  1. Save money in the market. Literally anything helps. There’s a great page on the “Wealth Multiplier” at MoneyGuy.com which shows the impact of compound interest. If at age 20, you put $95 per month into the market, you’ll have a million dollars by the time you’re 65! Or putting it another way, if you spend $1 when you’re 20, that takes away $88 when you’re 65. Early investing has unfathomably large impacts on your future.
  2. Be conscientious about every dollar that you spend. Look at a report at the end of every month and year to see where your money went. For example, let’s say that starting at 20, you spend $10/week on coffee. If you invested that instead, you’d have $145k when you’re 65. AARP has a great calculator for showing the value of regular investing.
  3. If investing is complicated, you’re doing it wrong. Start by maxing out your 401k and/or your Roth IRA. These give you tax advantages later so there is a limit on how much you can do per year. Once you hit that limit, open an account with Fidelity or Vanguard and buy an index fund like VTI. Do not invest in individual stocks because that’s a guaranteed losing game over the long run. (For more info on that topic, read this book.)

There’s so much more to learn, ways to pay minimal taxes, getting completely out of debt, etc, but the main message here is start investing TODAY. You literally cannot afford to wait.

benmartens July 18, 2024 Commentary

Studio711 Day

It’s July 11. Happy Studio711 day! This website has gone through a lot of iterations over the last 22 years of blogging, but it’s fun to look back over all the randomness. It started with pseudo-microblogging (aka what is now Twitter), then moved into a “moblog” (aka what is now Instagram), then I had a long streak of blogging every weekday, and now I’m into the fourth style which is weekly-ish posting. None of it has been any good but it sure has been voluminous!

benmartens July 11, 2024 Site News

Book Quotes

I love being able to highlight parts of books on the Kindle and then easily look through them later on the web. Here are some of my favorite quotes looking back over the things I’ve marked in the two years since my last post on this topic.

His internal GPS updated and the horror that had become his life came rushing back.

Blake Crouch, Pines: Wayward Pines: 1 (The Wayward Pines Trilogy)

I especially love that quote! This is how I feel when I wake up before my alarm in the morning. If I can fall back asleep before my internal GPS gets a lock on the day, I’m good, but as soon as I remember all the troubles that I have to face, I’m done for and I might as well get up.

At least twenty percent are going to be wrong, and we’re going to alter them later. But if I don’t make decisions, we die.
…
It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong.
…
I’m a big believer that a small number of exceptional people who are highly motivated can do better than a large number of people who are pretty good and moderately motivated.
…
Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.”

Elon Musk as quoted by Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk

When we struggle with depression, what we need most is not a list of things to do. It’s a reminder of what God has already done through his only Son.
…
Jesus did not tell his disciples to tell people who aren’t his disciples to start acting like disciples.
…
You’re not being bold when you stand up for God’s law on social media.
…
Our job is simply to love every person and love every passage, even the passages that tell us to repent.
…
What’s the goal of the government? Peace on earth. What’s the goal of the church? Peace with God… No legislation can do what the Bible values most: changing the human heart.

Mike Novotny, Taboo: Topics Christians Should Be Talking About but Don’t

Jorgen had always seen Cobb as strong, immovable. And he was strong. But strong men could still be used up.

Brandon Sanderson, Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

It was one of life’s rules – Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff

Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

I have always found that there’s an inverse relationship between the number of people in a room and the amount of useful work that can be done.

John Scalzi, The End of All Things
benmartens July 4, 2024 Books

Kitchen Backsplash

Our kitchen backsplash was in need of repair. It had the original 90’s wood backsplash which didn’t bother us a ton aesthetically, but having wood right behind the sink wasn’t a great design choice. It was difficult to keep the wood from getting rotten and moldy. We have long talked about a large remodeling project for the downstairs so that always got lumped in, but finally I decided that I should just fix the backsplash even if we end up ripping it out later.

While I’ve seen tile projects done before, I’ve never actually done one myself. Thanks to YouTube, I felt like I could figure it out. After some searching, I found a mosaic tile that would fit in the 4″ gap between the counter and our windows, greatly simplifying the project. I was also able to use pre-mixed adhesive and pre-mixed grout which simplified the project more. And even though I only needed to make about a dozen cuts, I rented a wet tile saw for a day.

The whole project went pretty smoothly. There was definitely a learning curve and I would do better if I was repeating the process, but nothing in the final result made me want to rip it out and start over. The hardest parts were the 45 degree angles in the bump out around our sink.

A day or two before I started working, I realized I didn’t have any tile spacers. While the mosaic tile came on a mat, I figured there would be spots where I’d need the spacers and I also needed spacers to hold the tile off the counter top at a consistent height. Rather than try to find spacers that exactly matched the tile layout, I pulled out my calipers, got the measurements, and 3d printed a huge number of the spaces. Each one cost less than a penny and only took about 3 minutes to print.

During the project, I missed some adhesive that dried onto the wall outside of where it was needed. I had also nicked the wall with a knife in that spot. Whenever we do paint projects in the house, I buy a small sample jar of the same color and keep that, but after ~12 years, would it still match? I was surprised to see that, yes, it matched perfectly!

So now I’ve got a tile project under my belt and I feel more confident to try something bigger. That’s good because our upstairs guest bathroom could use a makeover. Maybe I’ll have a bigger tile project in my future.

benmartens June 20, 2024 Home Improvement