I really like plants. Not as much as birds, but they're definitely better than fish.

I wonder if I saw this chandelier back in 2019?

QuizzaMe tonight confirmed my memory of it skewing slightly older than other pub quizes.

Alex and I brought along a nearly 69 year old to help, and we did manage to finish 14th out of about 30 tables, so that was a win.

At one point, the question was name this song, and some 50s guitar ballad played for five seconds, followed by 5 answers to choose from. I'd never heard of any of the artists.

The answer was revealed. They play the rest of the song.
Sounds like the whole room is now singing along.

I check my step count a few times a day on my phone. It's habit. My brain is a big fan of number-slowly-goes-up. It's why I enjoy cricket and journaling, and why I don't like the stock market.

Last week I was distracted during one of my step-checking moments and when I saw a prompt from Samsung Health I assumed it was the app once again requesting permissions for my health data. It was not, it was another update that ended up squeezing AI generated crap along with more marketing into an app that I just use to tell me how many steps I've done.

Now, due to some giant "tip" that appears on the main screen I couldn't even see my daily steps without scrolling down.

This was the catalyst I needed to delve into Android development. Something I attempted once back in 2013. Thirteen years later the tools were evolved enough I figured that I could replace Samsung Health in a couple of days. And so I set upon my own AI Generated crap side project that I ran via AI while I waited for the AI on my main side project to run.

It did take a few more hours than I expected to develop my Samsung Health alternative. Two reasons for this:

First, I had to undertake some foundational development setup tasks like installing Android Studio to run an emulator and provide the SDK, and configure some OAuth tokens in Google Cloud.

Once that was done, and I got reading the step sensor working right, the majority of effort was describing the requirements. What I actually should have done second was just provide screenshots of what I needed from Samsung Health and let the AI do the rest.

So it took about eight hours of my time over a week, and now I have my simple step and app tracker.

Roll Over for the alternative option.

It even has a few nice features, like auto detecting sleep based on my longest overnight period without steps. It compresses the non-stepping periods on the intervals chart to make the key information bigger. And my favourite feature is that if you hit the step target, you can upload a photo to commemorate your walking. And if you scroll back through your step history, the background for those days is the photo for that day. This will be fun for revisiting holiday step charts in future.

Overall, once I understood the architecture of session management, local storage, UI and sensor access, adding features to the app became super easy. With skills the AI can even build the app, deploy it to the emulator, seed it with test data and validate the logs.

It was a lot easier than it was in 2013.

Three months ago I saw my dentist for my biannual criticism of my brushing technique, specifically the firmness with which I was brushing my gums.

This year, along with the usual admonishment, I received a word of advice:

“Try holding the brush with just three fingers.”

That night I tried this life hack and found it was indeed more challenging to brush with only three fingers.

But I realised she never actually told me which three fingers I was supposed to use.

So for the past three months I’ve been trying to work this out, experimenting with different combinations of fingers every time I brush.

This training program, along with my high-protein diet, has led to all my fingers now possessing significantly more tactile strength than they did three months ago. Perhaps 33% more.

By my next check-up I’m probably going to be told to drop down to two fingers.

Aiming for one-finger brushing by 2027 for the healthiest gums.

My first impressions of Whitehaven were not awe at the spectacular landscape, nor sighs of contentment at the tropical paradise so far from home. No - I needed to pee after being rushed off the big boat and then onto the small boat for a 30 minute jolt along the cove.

This was partly my fault, as I'd prioritised lining up for cookies instead of using the head, and partly the fault of all the people in the line who weren't on the full day tour who were disobeying instructions and getting cookies ahead of me.

Our tour guide, who was operating on the opposite of island time, marched us from one side of the cove to the other. I took in the white sand under the blue skies, and regretted drinking that free bottle of water after that extra large coffee.

Eventually the tour took us to some lookouts and a set of long drops. There was quite a queue. The coves of Whitehaven were like Normandy, the boats dropping off the tourists as the helicopters passed by over head.

The long drops, so thoughtfully placed kilometres of land and sea away from civilisation, were being widely panned by the crowd of people before me.

There were 18 heads (and 4 toilets) in front of me (I counted due to cookie greed), and everyone seemed disgusted by the problem they were about to directly contribute to.

I returned to the lookouts and enjoyed the vantage with more patience. It was a beautiful place and the weather was great. The third most photographed location in Australia, apparently. I have some doubts. Unless you're going by the percentages of people visiting. Then, probably yes.

Following our landing boat taking us back to Whitehaven south, we swam briefly in the crystal clear water before enjoying copious meats and salad to follow up the cookies.

The cruise team had a great business idea keeping people on the island for the afternoon sun, while selling cans of beer at a premium from a big cooler.

Instead we undertook one of our favourite activities together - long walks on the beach.

Whitehaven stretches over 7 kilometres of pure white, silica sand.

The further we walked, the more peaceful it became. The tour operators and their flocks were content to linger at the south end with the boats and the beers and the other long drops and the giant size Connect Four.

Whitehaven's silica sand is famous for its exhilarating properties. After 12 kilometres of walking, my soles were feeling pretty smooth.

Eventually we were all alone, or close enough to it. Blue sky. Blue water. White sand. No internet reception.