Month: January 2026

Do something, anything, for someone else

by Dana Lewis

I’ve had a quote in the signature of my email for oh, something like 20 years. It says “Doing something for someone else is better than anything you could do for yourself.”

I discovered this a few months after I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It sucked, I was miserable, even though I was figuring things out, because my 14 year old brain was very preoccupied with worrying that everyone would think (know) that I was different. I don’t know why that bothered me so much, except for the fact that I’m human and this is a very human thing. This is part of why I didn’t want an insulin pump, because I didn’t want people to look at me and know I had type 1 diabetes. (I grew up in Alabama: stigma against people with diabetes was strong then and honestly still is strong today.) But eventually I decided to drop that concern because I hated having to wake up every Saturday and Sunday morning to eat 60 grams of carbohydrates and do insulin shots. Waking up to eat felt stupid. So I got an insulin pump, and somewhat accepted that people would know that I have type 1 diabetes. And because of that, I decided to start volunteering in diabetes-related things, no longer worrying that people would “know” that I had diabetes. And it turns out…focusing on that, and other people, did so much more for me than anything I had been doing in the first months of living with type 1 diabetes.

I have retained this awareness and mental model ever since. Any time I start feeling overwhelming emotions, often related to or triggered by new health challenges (yay, immune systems that keep on giving new challenges) and feeling alone, I turn to a plethora of activities centered around 1) getting out and moving through space and 2) trying to do things for other people.

It works. It is very, very effective. Sometimes it’s only a momentary solution, but that brief respite in my mental suffering, so to speak, is enough to help break the cycle. I also then realize that if I find myself falling back into the same pattern, then instead of having brain cycles about that, I should instead use that brain cycle to PLAN to do my next thing, with/for other people.

I have observed lately that in these times (over say, the last 10 or so years), it seems like a lot of people would benefit from these types of strategies but maybe don’t realize they’re having these experiences and that they could intervene and break some of these recurring mental patterns. Maybe they don’t know what to do, so that’s the point of this post: a random assortment of things I’ve done over the years when I’ve hit these spots. Some of these activities I do over and over again and some are newly discovered that I’ve recently started. Some of them will feel silly to you or not a good fit for you – that’s to be expected. The kinds of things I am able to do and like to do are wildly different from what might be interesting and in your wheelhouse. But, consider this the ice breaker for you brainstorming YOUR list rather than staring at a blank page not knowing where to start – I predict looking at this list will spur a range of reactions from “ugh, that’s silly” or “I can’t do that/that doesn’t work for me” to “I could do that”.

And, why should you do this? Maybe you don’t perceive yourself to run into these situations, but…maybe you do. More and more often I am startled when, in professional contexts, someone will offer a happy holiday type wish or a “how was your X break” comment and the response is an Eeyore-style “everything is terrible ::gestures at the world::”.

From the outside, I personally have struggled with what to say in response to these (specifically talking about professional contexts). I recognize that the person saying this has a lot of feelings and feelings are valid. Yet. This is often rude and unprofessional. Why? Because you are projecting a lot of that negativity into professional spaces, which is not always the space for discussing those feelings & the situations that are contributing to them. It’s “drive-by dooming” which is contagious (negative feelings spreading) and unproductive. (I was actually struggling to figure out how to articulate why these situations were bothering me until Ken Jennings did a post thread about it – his point was about drive-by dooming on social media, but I see this pattern happen in professional contexts which has been bothering me and I think this framing applies here, too.) I still don’t know what to say, in the moment, in response to these, because I think people might be easily offended in the moment by trying to gently push back and say I hear your feelings but this isn’t a good place right now / this is not appropriate for this. (And honestly: I have observed this pattern for 6+ years so it is not political in one direction or the other, it is pretty common.)

Since I haven’t figured out what to productively say in the moment that won’t hurt relationships – while recognizing that saying nothing is inadvertently hurting relationships, too, by not helping people see when they are ‘infecting’ other people with drive-by dooming – that’s the point of this post. Maybe it will help someone recognize a reflexive pattern of doing this and give them some ideas for other avenues to address these feelings and/or break some of the cycle of these feelings.

First and foremost – go for a walk/roll/ride (however you move through space). If you’re in your pajamas, fine. No one cares. (Bonus: if it’s at night, no one can see what you’re wearing! So if it’s dark out, that’s even more reason to grab a flashlight or a headlamp and go for a walk/roll/ride.). Maybe it’s a 60 second walk around your yard or down the street and back. It doesn’t have to be far/long/etc but the point is to feel the air moving on your face and to physically move you through space. I figured this out at the start of the pandemic, that physically moving myself out of my environment into an outdoor space and “away” from the physical space where I was having those emotions really helped. Did I still have those emotions? Sure. But it became at least infinitesimally easier to work through them or feel like I was able to “step away” from them slightly. It doesn’t have to be fast, and if the weather isn’t wonderful it doesn’t even have to be outside – go to a different room in your house, even, that isn’t your usual place to sit or lay down, to get some physical separation from your ‘usual’ spots. Bonus points if it is somewhere you can open your window and get fresh air (if you’re not in a bad outdoor air situation).

Second, find something or start thinking of something that you can do for someone else. It can be tiny, it can be for someone inside your house, it can be for someone you don’t know. Even the planning to do something can be powerful, even if it’s not something you can do right away (but do follow through on that). It can be related to the things contributing to your feelings, but you have to actually do things to take action – not just sit with the feelings. And, it can be things that prevent you from seeing things that give you feelings.

What do I mean? If you find yourself ruminating over the state of your country and politics, for example, consider whether this is actually useful to you to do so. Do you NEED to be up to date several times a day on what is going on and what everyone is saying about what is going on? Really? (Unless you’re a social media manager and this is your job, or you work in politics…you maybe actually don’t?). Consider putting a timer on your social media and/or news apps to help you see if you are compulsively checking these apps or news sources. If you do need to see them for another reason, consider muting words and accounts heavily. Turn off auto-play of video content so you’re not distracted by something you didn’t come into the app to see. Curate your feed by unfollowing (which you can often do separately than ‘unfriending’) or muting accounts that you don’t need to see right now. Yes, even if it’s someone you know including a friend or family member. If they are online drive-by dooming everywhere, you absolutely do not have to see that and know what they’re doing/saying and take on THEIR feelings and contribute to your own sense of dooming.

Some digital strategies to consider:

  • Mute/block/unfollow
  • (You can mute words and accounts forever or for things like 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days)
  • Put a timer on apps to limit, or at least help you gauge awareness of how long you are using them
  • Grayscale your phone or icons
  • Remove apps from phone
  • Try a different platform (i.e. pinterest style) where it’s easier to curate a feed and/or a new platform because you can start from scratch intentionally creating a feed

Outside of phones/social media/ digital stuff, though, think about doing other things:

  • Sign up to volunteer at your food bank
  • Join a buy nothing/purchase zero type group and find an “ask” you can meet. Post a few things you’d like to give away.
  • Find a few books you no longer want and look up/look for your nearest “Little Free Library” and go take your books there.
  • Don’t have any books you can stand to give away? Go to a used bookstore and get a few, read them, and then donate them.
  • Live in an apartment building? See someone’s package not delivered to their doorstep (i.e. left incorrectly in the lobby)? Go carry it to their doorstep for them. Bonus: this helps you move through space!
  • Make/cook/bake/create a batch of something and give it to someone else. (If you need ideas and you’ve never made fudge before, try this microwave fudge recipe. Nom. Or make something you love and give some to someone else to try.)
  • It doesn’t have to be home baked. This year at Christmas I was feeling the un-cheer of not having big holiday plans. One of the things I did was look through my boxes of gluten free cookies and realize I have a lot of great treats from other countries (shout out to my friends in New Zealand, Australia, UK, etc) that most people don’t get to try. Also sometimes it’s hard because I feel like I have to eat the whole thing when I open it and I feel guilty if I don’t because they’re special! So two birds with one stone: I opened 4 different kinds of cookies and made a variety holiday cookie plate of GF cookies and went out one night and drove around listening to holiday music and surprised a couple of my friends/their kids by delivering a GF cookie plate. Some of the families have someone who is GF, others aren’t GF. They maybe didn’t care about the cookies but that wasn’t the point. The point was the gesture which they DID appreciate, and I got to feel the holiday spirit (and have a few cookies myself that week without feeling pressured to eat the whole package once open). If you know someone with a food allergy or is GF (celiac or otherwise), this is an AWESOME thing to receive because it’s rare for us to get a “variety” versus getting a whole batch of the same thing (which is ALSO great, but this is slightly different kind of great). But the other point is: these were packaged cookies! I didn’t make them! And I didn’t get fancy plates or anything: I put them on paper plates and put them in clear gallon ziplock bags. And that was fine.
  • Use AI and start a new project and have it help you learn to do something new. This could be something like building your first app or website, anything digital that you maybe thought you couldn’t possibly figure out how to do. These tools have come a long way and it’s a lot more feasible now to tackle just about any project! I went from never having developed mobile apps to developing an iOS app, another one, my first-ever Android app (with stops and starts along the way until the models got good enough to help me through it), all kinds of research and data science steps, and more. Even if you tried a year or two ago and it didn’t work – try again. The models are much, much better, and you should even think about trying again after 3 months because things are changing that much! (And AI can help with non-digital projects, too, it’s helped me think step by step on some of my first paintings that I wouldn’t have known where to start without it.)

The other thing I ended up doing a lot of this season was painting rocks. This started because I walk outside almost every day and several times over the past few years I will randomly spot painted rocks that people leave on the trail to find and move around and trade. I love seeing them. Last year someone did a few holiday ones, and this year I found myself thinking “I wish someone would do that again!”. Oh wait. Maybe *I* should do that?! After all, I have paints. I could get rocks and paint them. They probably wouldn’t be very good, but they don’t have to be. So I started looking up ideas (which is how I rediscovered Pinterest for the first time in 6 years) and found a few designs I thought I could maybe handle doing. And I started painting and realized that it would be fun to surprise people with and give them painted rocks and suggest THEY go leave them somewhere in their neighborhood/trail/wherever to make them smile. I ended up giving my first batch away without having any to put on my trail. So I made some more but they also turned into gifts. They’re not amazing (my hand muscles make it very challenging to paint straight lines for example) but a mix of practice, picking designs that tolerate mistakes, and separating how the rock actually looks (does it look like X?) rather than critiquing how I didn’t perfectly mimic the reference design, means that I’ve continued to paint rocks. I love doing this because 1) it’s fun to surprise people, 2) it gets me into a “flow” state while painting, 3) anytime I get into a negative feeling cycle I can now use the process of planning and picking out my next designs or starting my next batch of rocks (e.g. doing the base coat of paint that has to dry first) as an outlet, and 4) it encourages people to go out and put them out which is good for them (makes them happy) and will make someone else smile the way I get thrilled when I see painted rocks out in the world.

Examples of painted rocks including a fox peeking out from behind a snowbank next to a winter tree; a blue aurora reflected on a lake with trees; three cats doing christmas carols; a grinch; cats decorating a christmas tree; and a winter scene with sheep in a snowy field.Maybe painting isn’t your thing (it wasn’t my thing until I tried it this year!), but the point is to find something that you could learn to do or use something you can do and tie it into doing things for other people. It will feel better than having the cycles of negative feelings where you feel like you can’t do anything. And maybe you can’t do anything about the situation that causes the negative feelings, but maybe you could. And if not, doing something else to distract yourself or inject more positive feelings into your life could be a great strategy to try.

Doing something for someone else is sometimes better than anything you could do for yourself. A blog by Dana M. Lewis on DIYPS.orgThink “motion is lotion” and by doing something, anything, it will give you momentum so then you can do something else, including tackling bigger issues or problems or needs that you have.

(PS – if you have a favorite thing that you fall back to doing when you find yourself tipping into these patterns, please comment below – I’m always looking for things to add to *my* list to be able to do!)

Baseline Pilot – a leading indicator for biometric data and tool for reducing infection spread

by Dana Lewis

What if you could stop the spread of infection once it arrives at your house? This is easier to do now than ever before in the era of wearables like smart watches and smart rings that gather biometric data every day and help you learn what your baseline is, making it easier to spot when your data starts to deviate from baseline. This data often is the first indicator that you have an infection, even before you develop symptoms sometimes.

But, you need to know your baseline in order to be able to tell that your data is trending away from that. And despite the fact that these new devices making it easier to have the data, they actually make it surprisingly challenging to *quickly* get the new data on a daily basis, and the software they have programmed to catch trends usually only catches *lagging* trends of changes from baseline. That’s not fast enough (on either of those metrics) for me.

(The other situation that prompted this is companies changing who gets access to which form of data and beginning to paywall long-time customers out of previous data they had access to. Ahem, looking at you, Oura.)

Anyway, based on past experiences (Scott getting RSV at Thanksgiving 2024 followed by another virus at Christmas 2024) we have some rich data on how certain metrics like heart rate (RH), heart rate variability (HRV), and respiratory rate (RR) can together give a much earlier indication that an infection might be brewing, and take action as a result. (Through a lot of hard work detailed here, I did not get either of those two infections that Scott got.) But we realized from those experiences that the lagging indicators and the barriers in the way of easily seeing the data on a daily basis made this harder to do.

Part of the problem is Apple and their design of “Vitals” in Apple Health. They have a “Vitals” feature that shows you ‘vital’ health metrics in terms of what is typical for you, so you can see if you fall in the range of normal or on the higher or lower end. Cool, this is roughly useful for that purpose, even though their alerts feature usually lag the actual meaningful changes by several days (usually by the time you are fully obviously symptomatic). But you can’t reliably get the data to show up inside the Vitals section, even if the raw data is there in Apple Health that day! Refreshing or opening or closing doesn’t reliably force it into that view. Annoying, especially because the data is already there inside of Apple Health.

This friction is what finally prompted me to try to design something: if the data is there inside Apple Health and Apple won’t reliably show it, maybe I could create an app that could show this data, relative to baseline, and do so more reliably and quickly than the “Vitals” feature?

Turns out yes, yes you can, and I did this with BaselinePilot.

BaselinePilot is an iOS app that pulls in the HealthKit data automatically when you open it, and shows you that day’s data. If you have a wearable that pushes any of these variables (heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, temperature, blood oxygen) into Apple Health, then that data gets pulled into BaselinePilot. If you don’t have those variables, they don’t show up. For example, I have wearables that push everything but body temp into Apple Health. (I have it on a different device but I don’t allow that device to write to Health). Whereas Scott has all of those variables pushed to Health, so his pulls in and displays all 5 metrics compared to the 4 that I have.

What’s the point of BaselinePilot? Well, instead of having to open Apple Health and click and view every one of those individual metrics to see the raw data and compare it to previous data (and do it across every metric, since Vitals won’t reliably show it), now at a glance I can see all of these variables raw data *and* the standard deviation from my baseline. It has color coding for how big the difference is and settings to flag when there is a single metric that is very far off my baseline or multiple variables that are moderately off the baseline, to help me make sure I pay attention to those. It’s also easy to see the last few days or scroll and continue to see the last while, and I can also pull in historical data in batches and build as much history as I want (e.g. hundreds of days to years: whatever amount of data I have stored in Apple Health).

So for me alone, it’s valuable as a quick glance “fetch my data and make sure nothing is wonky that I need to pay attention to or tell someone about”. But the other valuable part is the partner sharing feature I built in.

With partner sharing, I can tap a button (it shows up as a reminder after your data is synced) and text a file over to Scott (or vice versa). Opening the file in iMessage shows a “open in BaselinePilot” button at the bottom, and it immediately opens the app and syncs the data. You can assign a display name to your person and thus see their data, too, in the same format as yours. You can hide or delete this person or re-show them at any time. This is useful for if you are going on a long vacation and sharing a house with family members, for example, and so you want to share/see your data when you’re going to be in physical proximity but then don’t need to see them after that – you can hide them from view until that use case pops up again.

Screenshots of BaselinePilot, showing 72 days of simulated data for the user (not actually my data) and the display with a simulated partner called "Joe".
Simulated data and simulated partner data displayed in BaselinePilot.

Ideally, I’d love to automate this data syncing with partners (who agree) over Bluetooth, so you don’t have to tap to share the file on a regular basis. But, that won’t work with the current design of phones and the ability to background sync automatically without opening the app, so I’ve stopped working on Bluetooth-based solutions given the technical/policy constraints in the phone ecosystems right now. Eventually, this could also work cross-platform where someone could generate the same style file off of their Android-based BaselinePilot and be able to share back and forth, but Scott and I both use iPhones so right now this is an iOS app. (Like BookPilot, I built this for myself/our use case and didn’t intend to distribute it; but if this sounds like something you’d use let me know and I could push BaselinePilot to the app store for other people to use.)

BaselinePilot: a leading indicator for biometric data and tool for reducing infection spread. A blog post by Dana M. Lewis on DIYPS.orgAll of this data is local to the app and not being shared via a server or anywhere else. It makes it quick and easy to see this data and easier to spot changes from your normal, for whatever normal is for you. It makes it easy to share with a designated person who you might be interacting with regularly in person or living with, to make it easier to facilitate interventions as needed with major deviations. In general, I am a big fan of being able to see my data and the deviations from baseline for all kinds of reasons. It helps me understand my recovery status from big endurance activities and see when I’ve returned to baseline from that, too. Plus the spotting of infections earlier and preventing spread, so fewer people get sick during infection season. There’s all kinds of reasons someone might use this, either to quickly see their own data (the Vitals access problem) or being able to share it with someone else, and I love how it’s becoming easier and easier to whip up custom software to solve these data access or display ‘problems’ rather than just stewing about how the standard design is blocking us from solving these issues!

What else have I built that you might like to check out? I just built “BookPilot”, a tool to help you filter book recommendations by authors you’ve already read, based on the list of books you’ve already read from your library data. If you use iOS, check out Carb Pilot to help get AI-generated estimates (or enter manual data, if you know it) to track carbs or protein etc and only see which macronutrients you want to see. If you have EPI (exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, also called PEI), check out “PERT Pilot” either on iOS or Android to help you track your pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy.

BookPilot: What Should I Read Next?

by Dana Lewis

Book hangovers are the worst. By book hangover, I mean that feeling you get at the end of a book when you come up for air and don’t know what you’re going to read next. In general, or because you have to ‘world switch’ from one type of book or one genre or one era to another (my most common cause), or because you don’t have any books picked out to read next.

I get this feeling, a lot, because I read a lot (hundreds of books per year). I also listen to a lot of audiobooks when I’m out doing long distance activities that take several hours (e.g. ultrarunning, hiking, or cross country skiing). So while I read 5x more books than I listen to audiobooks, I still consume several audiobooks per month, too, but I’m picky about what I like to read versus what I like for audiobook content. I regularly and periodically peruse catalog additions to my various* libraries’ digital collections under genres I like to read and under audiobook categories, putting things on hold so I always have a pipeline of things ready to read or listen to. But, this relies on me periodically doing so, and sometimes the influx of new things to read based on those effort dries up and I have fewer books on hand than I would like, especially when I know I’m going to be reading more (e.g. I have some downtime from not feeling well and will be reading more than normal or when I’m traveling/on vacation).

It occurred to me the other day that it would be nice to be able to automatically check authors I have read for new books and to be able to put those books on hold. The problem is that I read a lot. I have dozens if not hundreds of authors I like, and while I remember a few to check, I don’t have a good way to do this systematically. My brain finally put 2 and 2 together this week when it occurred to me that if Libby (the e-book/reading app now used by most of my libraries) allowed me to export my data, I could systematically list and look up authors and check for recent/new additions to their catalog. Ooooh.

Like most things now, there are usually ways to export or access all sorts of data whenever you’re ready to use it. Libby actually now makes it easy in the app to do this, without having to request or log in to the web portal or do any obnoxious behaviors. Tap Shelf>Timeline>look at “Actions” button in the top right. It gives you not one but THREE ways to export your data, wahoo! If I have the data, what could I do with it?

(TL;DR the rest of this: in less than a day, I built a tool that I call BookPilot which allows me to take the Libby data, parse it for the books & authors I have read, check those authors for every book they’ve ever written, then display it for me. BookPilot solves the ‘what should I read next?’ problem by systematically finding all unread books from authors I have already read. I can then easily mark off books I’ve read elsewhere (e.g. read before my Libby history started or in physical format), kick out books I know I don’t want to read, and otherwise have an awesome list of books ready to go the next time I want to spend some time checking out books and/or putting more things on hold! It works really well and that’s just on the authors I’ve already read – I plan to also add recommendations for new authors that match my favorite authors, genres, etc. There is a web dashboard where you can view and interact with the recommendations as well as the ability to work with this data via the command line.)

The whole goal was to help fuel my book pipeline and to be able to recommend books that are highly probable that I want to read, based on my past reads, but to automatically filter by what I’ve already read. (That’s a problem with asking chatbots or using other tools: it’ll show you ‘books like this’ but when you read hundreds per year, you don’t remember the covers or names of all the books you’ve read so you spend a lot of time re-checking things you’ve in fact already read.)

I started by taking the Libby data export (you can get it as CSV, json, or html) and having Cursor write a script to pull the book title and author for everything I’ve read in my export. This is about 800 books and ~350 or so authors from the last 2.75 years (when I switched from Overdrive to Libby and it started recording my history; before I wasn’t having it log my reads). It then takes every single author on the list, queries the Open Library API to find the author’s Open Library ID, then fetches all their works (up to 100 books per author at a time) using the author’s works endpoint; it then supplements this data with Google Books API queries. All API responses are cached locally to avoid rate limits, and requests include built-in rate limiting delays between calls. It stores all books by each author with metadata: title, ISBN, publication date, series information, categories/genres, format availability. It then cross-references catalog books with my reading history to mark read/unread status, attempts to filter out duplicates and non-English versions (e.g. “Anne of Green Gables” and “Anne of Green Gables (German Edition)” versus Anne of Green Gables in the actual german language title and also “Anne of Green Gables / Anne of Avonlea (Box Set)” etc). It takes a while if you have hundreds of authors but the script is set up so you can start/stop it and it will pick up where you left off. The next time you check, it will check and only add books that are more recently published (customizable thresholds, of course) so future catalog checks will be quick to look for recent additions.

Then I have a dashboard that sorts and shows me all these books, ordered by series (when series info is available) so I can see a) series I have not read from authors I have already read and b) any books in a series that I have partially read; I can also sort by author’s name or highest count of the books I haven’t read, e.g. maybe I’ve read one book from an author but they have another 30 books to consider!

(On first pass, I still need to go through and mark books that I have read from >=3 years ago digitally and/or in physical form. But a quick look has already shown that this system works great and I’ve already been able to instantly add a bunch of books to my to-read list and holds already!)

I added a thumbs up feature which automatically ports a book to my “books to read” tab, which answers my “what should I read next?” question. If I thumbs down a book, it goes away from the dashboard. I can also tag “already read” (also disappears it), “not in English” (e.g. my filters missed that this is a non-English version on the first pass) or “duplicate” for duplicate titles that have somehow crept into the listing.

I have separate recommendation lists for authors I’ve listened to (audiobooks) versus authors I’ve read (ebooks), so I can also have a good queue to fill for similar audiobook content.

I have a ton (hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of ebooks) to review, based on my ~800 books read in the last <3 years, from 350+ distinct authors. It’s delightfully overwhelming to have this many recommendations! There is nothing worse than a book hangover combined with having nothing in the reading queue and having to fight the book hangover and having to simultaneously search for what’s available and what you want to read next. (It’s like feeling hangry…book hangover hangry?) This system now means I won’t have that combination problem again: I will always have books lined up to read and if not I can quickly and more easily identify off this list from my known authors where they’ve added books or they have additional series or I can (eventually) find series from the same “era”/”genre”/”world” to continue reading and pick up where my brain left off.

Book Pilot series recommendation of books you have not read from authors you have already read Book Pilot dashboard recommendation of books you have not read from authors you have already read.

Eventually, I’m going to add some recommendations for new authors that ‘match’ my most-read authors in different categories. But I don’t have to, yet, because I have so many high-ROI options based on my current author list! And the next time I drop in an updated Libby export, it will add the new authors I’ve read *and* automatically remove books from my “books to read” list that appear in my reading history.

BookPilot: answering 'what should I read next' by filtering what I have already read. A blog post from Dana M. Lewis on DIYPS.orgI haven’t open-sourced BookPilot yet, but I can – if this sounds like something you’d like to use, let me know and I can put it on Github for others to use. (You’d be able to download it and run it on the command line and/or in your browser like a website, and drop your export of Libby data into the folder for it to use). (And did I use AI to help build this? Yes. Could you one-shot a duplicate of this yourself? Maybe, or otherwise yes you could in several hours replicate this on your own. In fact, it would be a great project to try yourself – then you could design the interface YOU prefer and make it look exactly how you want and optimize for the features you care about!) Update: I have heard from several folks already that they might be interested, so I have on my list to tidy this up a bit and push it to Github! If you want me to ping you once it goes up, drop a comment below or email me or ping me on Twitter or BlueSky.

* Pro tip: if you live in Washington state, most county libraries have “reciprocal” agreements if their counties offer services to each other. This means that because I lived in Seattle and have a SPL card and a King County (KCLS) card, I can also get Pierce County, Sno-Isle, etc etc etc…. It’s mainly digital collection access, but this is amazing because you can have all of these library cards added to your Libby account and when you want to go get a book, you can check ALL of your catalogs. Sometimes a book is on most of these systems and I can get on the hold list for the one with the shortest wait time. Other times, it’s only in ONE catalog and I wouldn’t have been able to get it without these reciprocal county cards because it wasn’t in SPL or KCLS (my primary local libraries)! And even when books are not in any collection yet you can add a smart tag and be notified automatically whenever something IS added to *any* of your libraries. It’s amazing. Not sure if other states or areas have these types of setups but you should look to see if you can access other catalogs/get cards, and if you live in Washington and love to read, definitely do this!

What else have I built that you might like to check out? If you use iOS, check out Carb Pilot to help get AI-generated estimates (or enter manual data, if you know it) to track carbs or protein etc and only see which macronutrients you want to see. If you have EPI (exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, also called PEI), check out “PERT Pilot” either on iOS or Android to help you track your pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy.