Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Zuneriffic!

The Zune video made a bit of a splash on YouTube. It was in the top 100 most popular videos in the car section for most of the day. I also sent it to the Zune discussion list at work, and one of the guys (Duncan) who writes for On10 saw it. If you haven't heard of On10 before, it's like Channel9. If you haven't heard of Channel 9 either, they're Microsoft-run websites that give you a peak behind the scenes. Channel9 is usually focused more on interviewing people on projects and On10 is more like the old TechTV (including some of the people from that station.)

I re-recorded the demo (minus Billy Ocean) and he posted it on the site today with his own introduction and explanation. Thanks to Duncan for posting it!

Ben Martens, a Microsoft employee and Zune enthusiast sent us over this video of him using his Zune with his Pioneer in-car stereo/navigation system and, being the extroverted type of folks that we are, we thought you might want to check it out.
http://on10.net/Blogs/duncan/hooking-zune-up-to-a-monitor-in-car/

benmartens December 4, 2006 Projects

Miles Per Dollar

Historically we've been focused on how many miles per gallon you can drive. It's an interesting exercise to take a slightly different view and look at miles per dollar. [via Digg] This takes into account local gas prices and your MPG. It would be slightly more interesting if they factored in typical maintenance costs for your car, but this is a good start. My Mustang gets 5.86 MP$ and my motorcycle is 14.41 MP$. That means it costs me about $3.50 more in gas to take my car to work than my motorcycle.

Some of you know that I'm in the market for a new car. I have a specific one in mind but I'll leave that off the blog for now. I'm curious which car you would pick based on my requirements.

  1. Seat four adults "comfortably." That is in quotes because comfort is a relative term. This requirement basically means four doors.
  2. Full or part time four wheel drive (or all wheel drive.) This is a ski vehicle so I don't want to be afraid of snow.
  3. 25+ miles per gallon. I'm usually on the low end of the city/hwy MPG range.
  4. Room for four people on a ski or camping trip. I'm open to roof cargo carriers. If I don't have a cargo carrier, I'll have a roof ski rack.

Those are the filters I have been applying to lists of cars. What would you pick based on those requirements? Are my filters flawed? I'm open to feedback.

If I've told you what vehicle I'm leaning towards, please don't post it in the comments.

benmartens August 31, 2006 Commentary, Motorcycle

Camping Pictures

I posted a bunch of pictures from our weekend in Dosewallips State Park. I think Chelsea has some more so I may add to this in the future. But these pictures should give you a basic idea of our weekend. The picture in this post shows how we lit our fires. Who needs matches when Tim has a blow torch?

[UPDATE] A few of you have asked about the picture of me holding a pot of beans. We needed to use that pot to boil some hot water for dishes in the morning so Tim and I decided to eat the leftover beans for breakfast. About three hours later we realized that may not have been the best idea.

benmartens August 29, 2006 Outdoors, Travel

Back from the Woods

Chelsea, Laura, Matt, Tim and I headed out to Dosewallips State Park on the Olympic Penninsula this weekend for some camping. The weather was perfect with highs around 80 and pure sunshine all day. We did a little camping, a little hiking, a lot of bumming around at the river, and we ate a lot of great food. It may have been the last park with available campsites, but it turned out to be pretty nice. Here's a sampling of the pictures. I'll post more later.

benmartens August 28, 2006 Outdoors, Travel

Motorcycle Dolly

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I don’t have a huge garage. I need to spin my bike sideways to get it to fit in there with my car. So this weekend I built a motorcycle dolly.

It’s not too complicated. It’s a platform on wheels. Unfortunately they cost $400+ if you buy them online or in a store. I had a bunch of leftover wood from the entertainment center that I built for the theater project. The basic design is two large pieces of 3/4″ MDF laid end to end with about four smaller pieces screwed in underneath for some reinforcement and to join the two top pieces together. I also had some 2×4’s that were ripped in half lengthwise and I placed those along the bottom for extra support. The whole platform sits on six strategically mounted 2.5″ caster wheels. Three of the wheels are placed under the three contact points of the bike (two wheels and a kickstand.) Each wheel is held on by four 5/16″ hex bolts. To get up on the platform, I’m just using another piece of 3/4″ MDF as a ramp. It’s not pretty, but guess what, it works and it’s surprisingly solid. Once the rainy season starts back up, I’ll be able to shove the bike in the back of the garage and keep my car out of the rain.

That’s another project checked off the list.

(The picture is a bit deceptive with those strips of unpainted wood, but you get the basic idea. Motorcyle on wood on wheels.)

[UPDATE] I gave this dolly away and upgraded to the Park-N-Move. Check out my post showing a video of the new bike with the new dolly.

benmartens August 14, 2006 Motorcycle, Projects

1000 Words

TylerG (my roommate from Jersey) happens to be in Seattle this week so last night he stopped by my condo. On the way to the grocery store to pick up burger supplies, we stopped at Snoqualmie Falls.

Side note: how high does that rate on the scale of awesomeness? I stopped at a 270 foot waterfall on the way to the grocery store. Washington rocks.

I've been there before, but each time I was there I only saw the falls from the top observation deck which is a few feet off the road. This time a helpful fellow onlooker pointed us to a trail that goes down to the base of the falls. It's a quick 15 minute hike and it was well worth the trip. We were there in the evening so the sun filtered down through the narrow canyon to create a rainbow in the mist at the base of the falls. Luckily Tyler had brought his camera along and we snapped some awesome pictures. This is the point where I would say "go check them out." Unfortunately they're on Tyler's camera and my card reader doesn't accept xD cards. Once he gets back to Jersey next week we'll get them posted. Until then you'll have to take my word for it that it was a great hike.

benmartens August 7, 2006 Outdoors, Travel

Project #2: Finished

I started a finished the second project on my list. There are now shelves in the garage. Thanks to a Home Depot housewarming gift certificate that arrived in the mail, it was pretty simple. Hopefully they'll stay up for a night or two before everything comes crashing down.

I'm now able to fit both the motorcycle and the car in the tiny garage at the same time. I think I'm going to pick up a dolly for the back tire of the motorcycle (anybody have recommendations for those) so that I can maneuver the bike into position a bit easier. But I'm just happy that it all fits. In the winter/rainy season I'll just leave the motorcycle in the back of the garge and be able to keep the car out of the rain.

benmartens July 29, 2006 Motorcycle, Projects

Studio711 On Tour

It's great to have my weekends start to fill up. I'll be travelling all over in the next two months. I'll be in Jersey Aug 18-20. The next weekend I'm going camping with Chelsea, Tim, Laura, and Matt. And finally I'll be in Syracuse/Geneva for the big wedding the third weekend of September. I also just volunteered to be on the Drexel recruiting team so I might get some free trips back to Philly. It's going to be a lot of travelling, but I'm looking forward it.

benmartens July 21, 2006 Commentary, Outdoors

On a Steel Horse I Ride

On Sunday, I joined up with a big group of mostly Microsoft employees for a ride around Mt. Rainier. We had 29 bikes and I covered about 340 miles in 10 hours. It was my first ride over 150 miles and my first time riding with more than 3 people. Needless to say it was quite the adventure.

Although my derriere would vehemently disagree, I had a fantastic time. It was fun to be a part of a ride that big, and the views were stellar. Photos have been posted to the Washington album and I expect more to be posted on the Jeff Henshaw's site. He was the ride coordinator, and yes, I thought his named sounded familiar too. This is the same group of guys I posted about back in March.

So why do I have a photo of a burger on a post about a motorcycle ride? That's no ordinary burger. That's a Logger Burger from a restaurant in Packwood, WA. It had 1/2 pound of beef, ham, onions, eggs, lettuce, tomato, and thousand island dressing. I caught some flack for photographing my burger. If they'd known me a little better they would have known that I've photographed more than a few burgers in my day. I was a bit unsure how the egg would fit into the mix but it was outstanding. I maybe have to attempt it here at the house. I'm still in search of a burger that matches up to our Big Boy Burgers, but this one gave it a run for it's money.

A big thanks for Jeff for putting this together. It might take me a day or two to recover, but it's definitely something I'd like to do again.

[UPDATE] Jeff has put up a post about the ride and a link to some more pictures.

benmartens July 10, 2006 Commentary, Motorcycle