Weekend Wrap: Celebrating Milestones, Creating Modern Radio

Each weekend, I like to pause, reflect, and look back on the past week. This isn't meant to be a deep dive or sweeping life philosophy—just a collection of things that caught my attention, made me think, brought me joy, or stayed with me in some way.

What I Noticed

Of course I read this article this week. It only makes sense. Because this was the week in which I completed half a century on this earth, my age has been on my mind.

Prior to my actual birthday, it had been weighing heavily on my mind that I was turning 50. However, as the time approached, something changed inside me. I began to be more grateful for the fact that I was turning 50. It just so happened that I then happened to read this article and understand that having a better, healthier view on my own aging would do me a lot of good.

So I'm trying to have a better attitude about my age. I'm trying to be more grateful for the opportunities that I both have had and the opportunities that I anticipate I will still have.

What Helped

This was also the week in which I celebrated 28 years with my wife. It's sort of crazy to me to realize we've been together now for a number of years longer than we weren't.

And that's the key. What helped this week, what helped the week before, and what will help in the weeks to come are the good people that I have around me. I am surrounded by wonderful people, people that I care for, people who I truly believe care for me. And I could not be more grateful for that.

What I’m Enjoying

Listening to a podcast this week, I discovered the app Coax. Now Coax does something kind of cool. It looks at a Plex library and then uses the videos in there to create pseudo-live television stations. It allows you to just turn it on, and something will be playing, and something will follow.

And they're sort of in a theme.

Then I had an idea. Wouldn't it be cool if there was something similar, but like a radio station? So I sat down and decided to use my last couple of days with access to the Fable model in Claude to see if it could come up with something.

Over the course of the weekend, we ended up building a pretty dang cool app. And it isn't just on the iPhone, but it also works on the iPad. And there is a Mac native version with menu bar controls and everything. There's a watch remote, and there's even an Apple TV app.

It looks at your Plex library, finds the music, and then uses the tags associated with those files to create radio stations. Those radio stations should be unique to each person's library. And then it just plays like the radio.

You tune to a different station, and it will be either a specific genre, decade, or even mood. And then it starts playing. Mid-song, no skip button. Just like you were listening to the radio.

And it is allowing me to discover music that I hadn't listened to in a long time. But more than that is the satisfaction of knowing that this is something that does exactly what I wanted it to do. It's been exciting and interesting, and I'm really in love with this app.

What I’m Practicing

Another big thing I've been working on this week is getting back into a groove. I haven't done as well as I hoped to at the start of the weeks but I've done okay, and most importantly, it has been good to get back into a schedule, get back on track, and get back to doing the things that I know I need to.

One Thing to Improve

A lot of this really is just about getting back on track. That's what I'm working on. Doing better at that, finding a groove, reestablishing good habits, and being the person that I envisioned for myself.

Wrapping Up

Summer is always an odd time. There's so much going on, so many things pulling us in different directions. It feels difficult to find that groove. But all we can do is try.

And hopefully that's what we're all doing. Trying to be a little bit better.