Alex "Gus" Gustafson

  • The Neighborhood

    One of the things I like about Louisville, and I suppose cities in general, is how you describe attributes by neighborhood. I grew up in a small town and you can’t really describe anything about Murray, KY without assigning it to the whole city. But living/working/playing in the Highlands of Louisville can be very different from attempting the same in Old Louisville.

    Every neighborhood has its value. But here’s what I’ve come to value of the Smoketown/Shelby Park neighborhood where we live:

    • Cheap housing
    • Walking distance to the Highlands (hip nightlife/boutiques/restaurants)
    • Bike lanes to access Old Louisville and Downtown
    • Good snow maintenance on the roads during winter
    • Less than 2 miles to a grocery store, our workplaces, public library, multiple breweries and coffee shops

    And all these boil down to being close to the things I most want – but far enough away the rent is reasonable. There’s still a lot of work to be done to make Shelby Park & Smoketown (you’ll see ‘Shelby Park’ more but the communities share the same resources for the most part) a neighborhood unto itself, much less a destination for people that live and work elsewhere to come.

    The cool thing is that I see that work being done. Projects like the Three Points Beautification and Vision Smoketown are making strides in the perception of our neighborhood. Businesses like BAREfit, Falls City Community Bikeworks, ooHology, and Access Ventures all make positive investments in our area.

    It seems like everyone has an easier time making their neighborhood better. Improving a whole city is tough – but helping the folks right here, we can do that.

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  • Zero to One by Peter Thiel

    Most people that don’t work in technology probably know the name Peter Thiel from watching The Social Network. Or maybe from when the Thiel Fellowship started, asking talented young technologists to put off college for a couple years and build startups instead. But if you work in tech you probably know that he’s a vocal and talented venture capitalist whose ideas are worth listening to, trying, and experimenting with in your own world.

    Zero to One in hardcover with avid reader cat, Bagheera
    Zero to One in hardcover with avid reader cat, Bagheera

    This book is built out of notes from a course on running a startup that Thiel gave at Stanford University in 2012. Blake Masters was a law student who attended the class and took copious notes. The notes are still available online. After they got a lot of attention and readership, Thiel and Masters developed them into what is now a compact read that examines the needs of success in the difficult environment entrepreneurs face.

    Unlike some other business reads I’ve written about, you’re not going to find any fluff here. Thiel takes his ideas seriously and defends them well. But it’s also a book that will leave you with more questions than answers. There’s no guaranteed answer or advice you can give to make a startup successful, and Thiel doesn’t lie about that. But you’re a lot more likely to play the game well if you understand what you’re getting into.

    This is a must-read for anyone wanting to start any company ever.

    Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

    Amazon ; Goodreads ; Wikipedia

    http://zerotoonebook.com/

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  • Dog Day

    Nada got some grooming and lab work done as part of the Central High School Veterinary Science magnet. They had a photographer there this time and we got some pictures.

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  • Theme Development Tools

    Just getting started to work on Loot, my first WordPress theme, and I quickly realized how little I’ve done in a local WordPress environment recently. Focusing on WordPress.com issues have made me much better and faster at troubleshooting for my job, but much squishier on working in WordPress core.

    https://twitter.com/alexjgustafson/status/644541133184454657

    Thankfully, I still had MAMP installed and this post got me going with pretty much anything else I needed:

    “WordPress Theme Development Tools” by Ian Stewart | ThemeShaper

    It’s part of a complete tutorial on WordPress theme development to which I’ll keeping coming back.

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  • Before and After

    Before BAREfit

    before BAREfit
    Derp

    After BAREfit

    after barefit
    Where am I? What year is it?

    But I went and that’s what counts. Give me food.

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  • My First Theme

    One of my projects to finish out 2015 is to create a new WordPress theme. Getting more concrete than that has been hard – it’s clear I’ve never really worked on a design process before. To help get me going I started scanning through the theme directory for WordPress.com and speaking out loud why I liked certain themes.

    I gained some traction once I realized the most compelling statements were not about any technical element, but how the theme made me feel. What the theme seemed to help inspire. Kind of like how Apostrophe makes me want to start a magazine, I want the theme I make to have the same effect on someone.

    After some brain dumping (I dump, I don’t storm) it became clear that I’d like my theme to inspire gaming and fantasy – like D&D which I love so much. If my theme inspires even one person to blog about their gaming, or to game in the first place, it’s a success.

    With that in mind I started wireframing. First, some mobile ideas…

    mobile wireframes wordpress theme
    Featured Posts will be important

    And next, a front page reminiscent of a character sheet…

    A few widget areas, and heavy on post content
    A few widget areas, and heavy on post content

    Obviously there’s a ways to go, but now I’ve got some near-term goals I work on to get the project running. Working name is “Loot.”

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  • Pain in the…

    Ber found it funny. For (almost) six months, she’s dealt with the various pains, discomforts and not-good-feels of being pregnant. So after meeting with my personal trainer today and I told her “I’m going to be sore and uncomfortable pretty much every day for the next three months,” she couldn’t help but laugh.

    But her response was much sweeter, “we can do it together,” she said.

    She really is the best.

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  • Baremetrics’ Rules for Self-Care

    My employer, Automattic, is a fully-distributed company; meaning that my colleagues are hired regardless of their location. You can work from home, from coffee shops, from an RV that’s currently on the move, or you can expense fees for a coworking place. (By the way, we’re always hiring.)

    Today I learned of another company that works remotely, Baremetrics. I wanted to share their rules for Self-Care in their remote environements:

    1. Have set work hours and stick to them.
    2. Exercise every single day.
    3. Alternate between sitting and standing.
    4. Eat well.
    5. Take frequent breaks.

    Having worked remotely for a year, I will vouch that these are very good rules. I’m only now starting to figure out the true value of some of these.

    Click here to read the full article, “Lessons learned building & managing a remote team” by Josh Pigford, the founder of Baremetrics.

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  • You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day

    I’m usually not much for biographies or memoirs. Normally with non-fiction I tend to read business books, or books for helping me learn a skill. But I love everything Felicia Day creates so I needed to read this one.

    You're Never Weird on the Internet hardcover with dog
    With avid reader pup, Nada

    More accurately, I needed to read this one after Amber finished it. While I wanted to read the book someday, my 2015 reading list was so cram packed I wasn’t sure I’d get to it anytime soon. But Amber wanted to read it right away, so we requested it from the library when it was still in preorder. Once the book was released, she was one of the first to get it. I decided to fit in the read before the book had to be returned for the next library patron who requested it.

    It’s a super fast read in a good way. Her stories are entertaining and engaging, so 20 pages a night is nothing when you could read 50 and giggle 2.5 times as much! And giggle all the way through is what I did.

    This book is best read by someone who already knows and loves who Felicia Day is, she says so herself. Haven’t watched (or at least heard of) The Guild? Ehhh, maybe you won’t giggle as much.

    But the memoir is smart as much as it is funny. I respect her even more having heard her story and the struggles of her creative life. Really glad to be in her audience, and really thankful to hear more about the person behind the online avatar.

    You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day

    Amazon ; Goodreads ; Wikipedia

    http://feliciadaybook.com/

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  • To Switch or Not To Switch? Part 5: The Decision

    This is the fifth and final post in a series called “To Switch or Not To Switch” about whether or not my gaming group should switch to Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition, or stay with Pathfinder.

    Our gaming group discussed the switch a couple weeks ago. It didn’t take long to realize that some folks were excited about one option, and everyone else was happy regardless of the system we used. We all agreed the most important thing is that we like playing together.

    Once our current storyline is complete, we will be switching to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, for our system.

    There will be some details to iron out. Some folks would like to keep their characters and others are thinking they’ll roll up new ones. Some folks like the prospect of the long adventure path, some prefer we keep making our own stories. We’ll face those as they come. It’s likely we’ll need the rest of the year or more to finish out our current campaign anyway. Since we only meet every 2 weeks, we likely will only have 4 or 5 more sessions before Amber and I are in newborn-baby-mode.

    Since the switch has been decided on, some cool stuff has happened.

    The 5e Dungeon Master Screen, Dungeon Master's Guide, and my new set of dice were all birthday presents.
    The 5e Dungeon Master Screen, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and my new set of dice were all birthday presents.

    We’ll need to start investing in rulebooks, so Amber got me the Dungeon Master’s guide for my birthday. Her mom asked her what she should get me and Amber suggested the Dungeon Master screen.

    Also, Amber got me a set of matching dice. I find this incredibly touching. When our group first got together we bought a pound-o-dice and split it up evenly. But Ber was DMing and she had her own set of matching dice that no one else was allowed to use. We lovingly called them “the DM dice.” I’ve DM’d enough that I was due my own set of “DM dice.” No one else is allowed to use these. It might mess up the mojo.

    Thanks for reading my series on my gaming group’s decision between Pathfinder and D&D 5e. I’m sure I’ll write more on 5e as we learn the system and play in it. If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

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