Blog Posts in List - Paginate and Start With Second Post

I'm building a site in which the designer shows a hero blog post on the first page of the blog post list. After realizing that start cannot be used with 'paginate'=>true in perch_blog_custom, I rolled my own solution. Just wanted to drop this here in case it helps someone else, as I saw some other Perchers in the forum with similar situations.

// get current page
if (perch_get('page')) {
    $curpage = perch_get('page');
} else {
    $curpage = 1;
}

// hero post - shows on first page only
if ($curpage == 1) {
    perch_blog_custom([
        'count'=>1,
        'sort'=>'postDateTime',
        'sort-order'=>'DESC',
        'template'=>'hero_post.html',
        'start'=>1,
        'paginate'=>false,
  ]);
}

// posts in list, starting with post 2
$count = 4;
$start = ((($curpage - 1) * $count) + 2);

perch_blog_custom([
    'count'=>$count,
    'sort'=>'postDateTime',
    'sort-order'=>'DESC',
    'template'=>'post_in_list.html',
    'start'=>$start,
    'paginate'=>false,
]);

// begin paging div
?> <div class="paging"> <?php

// check if previous page exists
$prev = perch_blog_custom([
    'count'=>1,
    'sort'=>'postDateTime',
    'sort-order'=>'DESC',
    'start'=>((($curpage - 2) * $count) + 2),
    'paginate'=>false,
    'skip-template' => true,
]);
if (!empty(array_filter($prev))) { ?> <a href="/news?page=<?php echo ($curpage - 1); ?>">Previous</a> <?php }

// check if next page exists
$next = perch_blog_custom([
    'count'=>1,
    'sort'=>'postDateTime',
    'sort-order'=>'DESC',
    'start'=>(($curpage * $count) + 2),
    'paginate'=>false,
    'skip-template' => true,
]);
if (!empty(array_filter($next))) { ?> <a href="/news?page=<?php echo ($curpage + 1); ?>">Next</a> <?php }

// end paging div
?> </div>