Alex "Gus" Gustafson

  • Better Alfred Hotkeys with Karabiner

    One of the better decisions in my work was pushing as many of my workflows as possible through Alfred. My brain is now configured that if I ever think “I need to do…” it just immediately opens Alfred and muscle memory takes over from there.

    Tonight I downloaded Karabiner and this is definitely going to level up my Alfred game again. The first immediate boost was mapping the nearly-useless Caps Lock key to a “hyper” key, equal to Shift+Ctrl+Option+Command.

    All my Alfred stuff is now available at CapsLock+F, keeping my left hand on the home row. My frequently-used Clipboard viewer is now at CapsLock+C, a comfortable shift.

    And now I’m waaaay less likely for any of my Alfred commands to interfere with keyboard shortcuts! Had that been happening to me? Yes it had. But no more!

    I’m going to think through some other useful mappings (like maybe prefixing some TextExpander snippets with a weirder combo) later but even this first change is proving useful. h/t Wes Bos on Syntax

    Featured Image from Caleb Woods

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  • Another Day, Another Deadlift

    Today

    Second trip to the new gym. Deadlifts and overhead presses plus walks there and back.

    Made some decent choices about food – the only irresponsible thing being a trip to Dairy Del in the evening.

    Grocery shop, dishes, laundry folding, straightening up the house all as a matter of course.

    Tons of time with Grace today since it’s the weekend and Ber had an event to attend. She’s getting a lot better at playing with toys of her own accord. We haven’t even be trying to potty train and she apparently figured out how to do that on her own to our pleasant surprise.

    Podcasts

    The last episode of Cortex, Minimum Viable, was so freaking good. Made even better today when listening to ATP. I audibly snorted at the reference to fanny packs.

    Reading

    Been re-reading a bunch of classic MMM articles recently. Also a lot of re-visiting Apprenticeship Patterns as I think I’m at somewhat of a milestone in position at Makespace and needed to remind myself what road I’m on. I finally got started on Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators and I’m not far into it but really did enjoy the section on Ada Lovelace.

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  • Back at the Gym

    UofL has a small gym about a 15 minute walk from my house. We’ve meant to join it ever since we found out just how much cheaper it is than the Y. We finally joined on Monday night.

    Tonight was my first workout there and I had a blast. The walk itself is just enough time for warmup and to think through what I want to get done. Since this was my first time working out there I first walked around the place, just to feel more comfortable. Once I was ready to lift, I stuck my old favorites: squats and deadlifts. They’re never not good for you. More variety will come soon.

    Walk back home was the perfect cool down and I was ready for my weekly “decompress” night.

     

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  • Library Haul

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  • CSS Grid Course from Wes Bos

    I’m turning into a bit of a Wes Bos fanboy. He’s about my age, but been in the game much longer than I. His development career seems to match a lot of what I’m trying to make mine: advanced WordPress and full stack JS.

    But most recently I’ve enjoyed his (free) CSS Grid course. The more I do with CSS Grid the more I like it and this course really shows off what it does well.

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  • 6 Months at Makespace

    And they finally put me on the website.

    To be fair we’ve been so swamped with client work this whole time I have no idea who would’ve had time for the photo editing or page updates anyway. But it’s nice for people to know I don’t just make up my job.

    Also, check out that head of office security!

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  • Stealing From Cortex: Year Theme

    The latest episode of Cortex was so so good. Myke and Grey have discussed in previous years that neither is fond of New Year’s Resolutions and tend not to have personal goal setting in the strict sense. But Grey liked the idea of having yearly “themes” and Myke stole the idea from him. Now the thought technology is understood enough it deserves its own episode for 2018.

    Cortex #62: 2018 Yearly Themes

    It was so good I’ve decided to steal the idea. I’m working on creating a year theme for myself. Several ideas come to mind but it’s all a bit of a jumble. Maybe by the end of the year I’ll know what it was, and next year I’ll better know what 2019 should be.

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  • Feeling Fat and Looking Back

    We paid for a gym membership all 12 months of 2017. Turns out I only went during the first six months of that:

    • January: 10 visits
    • February: 13 visits
    • March: 12 visits
    • April: 1 visit
    • May: 4 visits
    • June: 6 visits

    There may have been a couple more in that last half of the year that I didn’t record in my workouts note. But I know I didn’t go once from October to December and it doesn’t sound like me to workout and not record it.

    It’s a trope to be thinking about this kind of thing in January, but I’m getting too fat again and who cares what month it is.

    46 workouts isn’t really a high number. Plenty of people work out for 40+ hours a month and that’s all I did all year. One real workout a week is 52, so even that would be better than what I did last year.

    I’ve also been stress-eating a lot and eating sugar way more than usual. It’s systemically a bad time for me and my body.

    Looking into changes but right now I more just feel sorry for myself.

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  • Nerd Recovery

    Most weekends are pretty dull. We keep them that way. We prioritise sleep, go to the grocery store, and if there’s anything special it’s usually D&D with our friends. This is life because 2-year-olds like nothing more than to ruin plans so it’s usually easier to not make them and put on hours and hours of Disney movies.

    This weekend though some nice geekery came together.

    BME and NES

    After a pancake breakfast on Saturday, I decided the family needed an outing. We were out of dog food and while the snow storm hadn’t been too bad it was cold enough I knew we would mostly stay inside if we didn’t force ourselves out. We went down Preston Highway to Feeder’s Supply, but on the way stopped at Book and Music Exchange to browse.

    Grace had a great time chasing us down the aisles, and picking up movies them back. For her pleasantness we got her a copy of The Lion King.

    I purchased an A/C adapter for the NES system that’s been sitting idly in our entertainment center for a long time, and a couple games. Proud to announce the system is up and running! I’ve not tested all of the old games yet but I only had a little time Sunday morning to play.

    Stranger Things 2

    After such a big morning, Grace took a long afternoon nap. Amber and I took it as our opportunity to catch up on Stranger Things 2. We still have one episode remaining, but I’ve really enjoyed the series. Especially El being so resourceful.

    Star Wars: The Last Jedi

    It was getting to the point I was nervous I might not get out to see this movie in theaters. That just can’t happen with a Star Wars movie. Amber’s mom accepted a plea to babysit and we got to see the matineé today.

    Holy cow did I love the movie. I don’t have the energy to write a review and I’m too late for that party anyway, but Ber and I have spent most of conversations the rest of the day about it.

    Why This Is Worth Writing

    Do things that make you happy. It’s okay to let yourself do thing that make you happy. I don’t feel this way most Sunday nights, but I feel pretty great right now. A bit of nerd recovery is totally reasonable.

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  • Happiness (For 4 Hours)

    WordCamp Cincinnati 2017 is happening this weekend: November 11th and 12th. I’m excited to attend all day Saturday, but most importantly for four hours that afternoon I’ll be volunteering in the Happiness Bar.

    At the Happiness Bar, volunteers are available to help you troubleshoot any issues you’ve run into on your WordPress sites. Helping folks at these events is one of my favorite ways of contributing to the WordPress community.

    Cinci has a pretty a big event, so if you’re brand new to WordPress you’ll want to attend the WordPress 101 track offered all day Saturday first. But if you’ve already got a site and up and running (or almost up and running) then Happiness Bar is for you!

    Hope to see you there if you’re in the area. If not, you can also find a WordCamp near you at central.wordcamp.org/schedule/.

    Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

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