Alex "Gus" Gustafson

  • Ingress Fielding and Avoiding Phantom Fields

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  • Titansgrave Concept Art

    Bit by bit, Wil Wheaton has been sharing pieces of the concept art for his upcoming RPG show, Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana. Today he released the entire image in its enormous glory.

    Titansgrave complete concept art | WIL WHEATON dot NET.

    In fact, this image is so large, you could probably use it for your desktop if you were so inclined.

    I am so inclined, Mr. Wheaton. I am.

    Great desktop. Or best desktop?
    Great desktop. Or best desktop?

    I’m sure I’ll come back to you one day, Wapuunk.

    Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana premieres on Geek & Sundry this June.

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  • Ravioli Skillet Lasagna

    ravioli skillet lasagna

    Ravioli Skillet Lasagna

    • Servings: 4
    • Difficulty: easy
    • Print

    Credit: Anyone Can Cook (Better Homes and Gardens), p. 307

    Ingredients:

    • 2 cups red pasta sauce
    • 1/3 cup water
    • 1 9-ounce package refrigerated or frozen ravioli (your choice of filling)
    • 1 egg
    • 15 ounces ricotta cheese
    • 1/4 cup (and a little extra) grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
    • 1 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well-drained

    Directions:

    If you haven’t thawed and drained the spinach, do that first. Also grate the parmesan cheese if you bought it by the block instead of pre-grated. This recipe cooks really quickly, so you’ll want all the ingredients prepped before you start.

    1. In a 10-inch skillet combine pasta sauce and the water. Bring to boiling; stir in ravioli. Reduce heat.
    2. Cook, covered, over medium heat about 5 minutes or until ravioli are nearly tender, stirring once to prevent sticking.
    3. While that’s cooking, in a medium bowl lightly beat the egg, then stir in ricotta cheese and the 1/4 cup of grated cheese.
    4. Distribute the ravioli and red sauce across the skillet evenly. Top the ravioli with spinach. Spoon ricotta mixture on top of spinach.
    5. Cook, covered, over low heat about 10 minutes or until ricotta layer is set and ravioli are tender.
    6. Serve, sprinkling each serving with additional grated cheese on top.

    I got this cookbook as a gift from my mom when I first moved out of the UofL dorms and into an apartment. I don’t enjoy cooking, but since I’m an adult who likes saving money I figure I should get used to the idea. After looking at all the easiest recipes in the book, this was the first one I thought I could handle all on my own and that Amber was equally interested in tasting. The first time I made this it was met with rave reviews.

    https://twitter.com/zarrek33/status/596466941461659650

    Best thing about this recipe is there are so few dishes to clean afterwards and barely any prep time. You can use all pre-packaged ingredients! But if you buy high-quality stuff they’re all still really tasty. Newman’s Own red sauce is way better than any red sauce I could try to make from scratch. Simple Truth ricotta is damn creamy. And I’m pretty sure every italian restaurant I’ve ever gone to used frozen ravioli too.

    Worst thing about this recipe is the name. No one will confuse this with lasagna. Everyone to whom you serve this will say, “this ravioli is delicious!” Feel free to call it just ‘ravioli,’ and then you’ll be seen as a vanguard chef, unafraid of boldly adding layered ricotta mixtures and spinach to your regular stand-by of pasta with red sauce.

    I made this for the second time on Saturday and subbed out fresh kale for the frozen spinach, mostly because we had a coupon. It was still a non-life-crushing amount of prep and dishes, but I plan to go back to frozen. The time it takes to chop and wilt the leaves is about the time to cook the entire dish, and I didn’t taste a difference.

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  • Working tunes for Caturday

    Normally Saturday is a day off for me, but this week has been weird and I feel the need to catch up on work with a half-day. While doing so, I thought I could use a change of pace with music. I pulled up Spotify and thought I’d look to see if Wil Wheaton had any public playlists. I saw none, but then I remembered that my boss, Matt Mullenweg, does.

    So today, I hope you’ll join me in listening to some Jimmy Smith:

    [spotify spotify:user:1211384122:playlist:0UyeHgR2wU5KVj5nts7zrJ]

    Or check out the rest of Matt’s playlists here. Maybe I should share some of my own too. 🙂

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  • Credit Card Security

    Amber and I switched to Chase when we combined bank accounts. It’s seriously been a wonderful experience. Today I had some fraudulent charges appear on my account and Chase sent me some emails asking me to let them know if they were valid or not. Of course, I’m always on the lookout for a phishing scam so I just called the number on the back of my credit card to clear it up.

    Turns out, the warnings were legitimate and the card services rep was nice, professional, and got the situation handled quickly. Though they really do need new hold music.

    https://twitter.com/alexjgustafson/status/599310321807921152

    My only problem now? This credit card  is so damn fancy I’m having a hard time destroying it.

    This is the best I could do. Nearly broke my scissors so I had to bend it. Still thinking through more options.
    This is the best I could do. Nearly broke my scissors, so I had to bend it. Still thinking through more options.

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  • Birthday Ingress

    For Amber’s birthday she mostly wanted to hang out with friends. When our friends hangout we play Ingress. At Ber’s request, I planned a small bit of multi-layering downtown the night before. The operation went by smoothly and everyone had fun in the nice weather.

    Everyone even wore blue shirts to support the Resistance! Totally unplanned!

    The group’s first hack
    Danny levelled up
    Yup, that’s a portal. It’s normally not on so it’s called “Intermittent Fountain”
    Creepy shriner statue? Definitely a portal.
    Not sure why they walked over there
    Parental units can be agents too
    At the medical school
    Abstract art portal
    Group photo
    back to hacking
    D’awww
    Multi-layered fields. They stayed up about a day before a frog took out the southeast portal. The other half stayed up longer!
    The western view on the scanner
    The eastern view on the scanner

    In Louisville and interested in Ingress? Comment here, we can meetup and I can help get you started with the game. It’s something I enjoy.

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  • Game Review: Urbion

    One of my least favorite things is when game reviewers spend all their time on rules. I tried to avoid that and instead wanted to share why I like this card game. Hope you enjoy the short video.

    Cameo from Bagheera, too!

    Find out more about Urbion on Boardgamegeek

    We bought Urbion at Funagain Games in Eugene, Oregon.

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  • Providence Park

    Providence Park is the home of the Portland Timbers, a Major League Soccer team. But we actually attended a game for the Portland Timbers 2 (lovingly called ‘T2’,) the first game they’ve played in Providence Park. T2 is the USL team under the Timbers, which puts them in the same league as our new hometown team, Louisville City FC. The T2 and LouCity won’t play each other unless they both make the championship game, but we figured we needed to scout them out just in case.

    We got great seats and the park is really beautiful. We could actually hear the players shouting on the field and not miss a thing. The T2 lost to the Orange County Blues, but it was still fun.

    Before the game we also did this really fun Ingress mission.

    Capture Providence Park ingress intel mapMost missions are travelling along a path, hacking the portals and visiting waypoints. This mission you had to actually capture or upgrade all the portals along the way. But when we visited, all but the southern portal were heavily linked and modded. Amber and I spent nearly all of our weapons capturing the portals in the name of this mission.

    We were so excited to get the southern portal, Multnomah Athletic Club, because it was blue. All we had to do was upgrade it! No fighting! And the mission would be ours! But the problem was, it was high enough level already there was nothing for Amber to upgrade. I wouldn’t let this stand. So I used a Jarvis virus to turn it green — and we went back to XMPs. We took it down again and we both completed the mission.

    Our reward
    Our reward

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  • Portland Rose Garden and Portland Japanese Garden

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  • Our Last Day in Eugene

    One of the spots on all the ‘lists’ of travelling to Eugene was the Fifth Street Public Market. Since we’re not really shoppers, we figured it be fun to see but it wasn’t a priority. We were able to fit in on our last day in Eugene and got some gifts for folks back home.

    Fifth Street Public Market
    “The best things in life are yours
    Urban farming example
    Chickens in the urban farm
    Swifty is inside on the fountain, looking for Henny Penney
    Henny Penney sits on the tower outside
    The story of Swifty

    We walked through the Saturday market as well, but didn’t take pictures because of all the crowd. Ended up eating lunch at The Barn Light, where they correctly keep the bourbons on one side of the line, and the Tennessee whiskey on the other. (They asked me to post it to Instagram, but twitter will have to do.)

    https://twitter.com/alexjgustafson/status/596751213925924865

    We got all of our stuff together, made sure we were all set at the train station, then heading to Cornucopia on 5th st to watch the Kentucky Derby.

    https://twitter.com/alexjgustafson/status/594598024501854208

    I was rooting for Ocho Ocho Ocho, who came in 14th place. From the first post position, he wasn’t a likely contender. But I knew I would be excitedly yelling at the TV in the bar, and knew I’d make maximum vocal impact if Ocho Ocho Ocho won.

    Kind of a close call to watch the race and not miss boarding our train. But we made it.

    https://twitter.com/alexjgustafson/status/594636455886000128

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