As you may know about me, I like to make things in what little free time I have. Often that is music, but lately it’s been apps. Since I also like collecting vinyl records, I have been making apps that fill gaps or fix annoyances along those lines.
For a while now I’ve had this small, recurring desire: I put on a record, it sound so good in the moment, and I want to tell somebody. Not broadcast it. Just tell one or two people who’d actually care that the pressing sounds incredible, or that nobody ever mentions side B and they really should.
There’s nowhere to really do that, so I started thinking about how to solve that.
Facebook groups are mostly repetitive memes and complaining people, and whatever you share is buried or removed by overzealous mods. The hashtag thing everywhere else (Bluesky, Mastodon) is a bunch of collectors posting #nowspinning into the ether, not really to each other. The gatekeeping on Reddit vinyl subs is just too ridiculous to bother with (not to mention that whole site is just a bot-filled, AI training ground these days).
It’s a small social site for people who collect vinyl. You connect your Discogs collection (no retyping your whole library, thank god), post whatever you’re playing, add a note if you feel like it, and it lands in a centralized feed with everybody else’s posts. People can like it, leave a comment, or tell you you’re wrong about liking Record Store Day releases. That last part is the entire reason it exists: the conversation. Bluesky and hashtags never gave me that.
Example social share card
The feature I like the most, and the reason I kept at this one instead of shelving it like half my side projects: every spin you post turns into its own share card. Share the link anywhere that does previews, like Bluesky or Discord or a group text, and it pulls in the cover art, the artist, the year, your note, in a nifty feature card that links to your post. No screenshots or cropping necessary. Sharing a record finally looks like something instead of a naked URL or shitty photograph of your turntable.
When you see something in the feed you want, every spin points right back to its Discogs page, so adding it to your Wantlist is about one tap. That creates a fun way to find records you didn’t know you wanted.
But wait, there’s more
It’s completely free, and I intend to keep it that way. No ads, no selling anybody’s data, and no premium tier sitting in the wings waiting to charge you for the parts that matter. I built it because I wanted it to exist, and I’d take a small room full of actual record collectors over a growth strategy any day.
It’s brand new, so right now it lives or dies on whether people show up. If you’re into vinyl, come mess around with it. Hook up your Discogs, post what’s on the turntable, and tell me what sucks or what’s missing. I’m listening.
My annual physical in early March came back with some numbers that weren’t exactly alarming, but weren’t nothing, either. Glucose at 102 when normal tops out at 99. LDL cholesterol at 133. Total cholesterol at 205, just over the 200 threshold my doctor uses as a soft line in the sand.
Me and the fluffball
Her take was something like “it’s not a crisis yet, but let’s keep an eye on it for next year.” Which is a perfectly reasonable position for a doctor to take, and a perfectly reasonable position for a patient to ignore while continuing to eat, fast food, chips and Goobers.
This time, I didn’t ignore it.
I’m not sure exactly what the difference was this time, though I am pretty certain it has something to do with the recent passing of my father, and my ensuing conscious and subconscious thoughts about mortality.
I’ve had high-ish numbers before and told myself I’d do something and then didn’t. I developed the fat tire around my belly years ago, and always wanted to do something about it, but never did. Maybe it was a combination of factors. Maybe I was just ready. Whatever the reason, I decided to actually sit down and think through what I was eating, figure out what the problems were, and build something I could follow without losing my mind.
I had tried dieting before, counting calories, getting in shape, accomplishing some successes here and there, but nothing that ever stuck and nothing that really dove into the core set of problems.
I turned to Claude for help. I know some people are going to roll their eyes at that, and I get it. But I went in with a very specific request: I don’t want to count calories, I still want to enjoy a cold beer (or two) or a cocktail (or two) on the weekends, and I want meals that actually feel like meals.
I needed a framework that addressed the actual problems while leaving enough room to live like a normal person.
Introducing The FULL Diet
What came out of that conversation with Claude is what I’ve been calling the FULL diet. It is an acronym because I apparently cannot resist a good acronym, and it is a reminder of what this diet is all about:
F is for Fiber.
U is for Unprocessed foods.
L is Lean (or Low) fats.
L is Low sugar.
Fiber, Unprocessed, Lean fats, Low sugar. FULL.
The elevator pitch is: low refined carbs, low added sugar, high protein, high fiber, healthy fats. Just swapping the junk out for things that actually do something useful. There’s no calorie counting, no macro tracking app, no points system. Just four things to keep in mind when I am standing in a grocery aisle trying to decide between two crackers.
Tequila on the rocks still clears the bar (my new go-to cocktail is a Ranch Water). Dry wine does too. The framework is clear about what the actual villains are, and a beer with my wife on a Friday isn’t one of them.
The four things I decided to actually eliminate were refined carbs, added sugar, saturated fats, and heavily processed anything. Those four categories cover most of the damage.
Specifically, white flour, anything with an “-ose” early in the ingredient list, fatty red meat and processed meat, anything with an ingredient list that goes on for three lines. If it’s got all of those things working against it, I will not be partaking.
The practical changes weren’t actually that hard once I figured out the swaps. Chips became fruit, nuts, or lentil crisps. White rice became basmati, which has a lower glycemic index, or riced cauliflower when I wanted to go further. Regular pasta became Chickapea chickpea-lentil pasta, which has 13 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber and honestly tastes fine. Earth Balance instead of butter. Unsweetened almond milk.
I was used to a rotating cast of Girl Scout cookies, M&Ms and other things I don’t need to publicly itemize. I learned that Barebelle and Quest protein bars have a great variety of flavors that satisfy my sweet tooth cravings.
How AI Helps
I really didn’t want to have to get bogged down in calorie counting and diet apps on my phone to track my weight. Those things failed to stick in the past because they were a huge pain in the ass . Once I built out the FULL framework using Claude, I was able to quickly assess whether or not things fit my diet.
It’s as easy as taking a picture of an ingredients list on the side of a box of crackers and uploading it to Claude, or even snapping a photo of a menu or sending Claude the URL to the menu on a restaurant’s website. Claude recommends what I should eat, any substitutions I should request, and gives me options that fit the diet and are enjoyable.
It makes it really, really easy.
Success
I started at 189 pounds at the physical in March (I have been as high as 204 lbs in recent years). By mid-April, about six weeks in, I was at 178. By late April I was at 175.8. That’s 13.2 pounds in roughly seven weeks, which was not something I was expecting. I wasn’t starving myself, and I wasn’t eating tiny portions. I was just eating different things. Good things.
The tire around my belly became noticeably smaller. I felt great about that!
A few things surprised me. The dessert cravings went away around week three. They were actually gone. That was strange to notice. I’d eaten something sweet basically every night for as long as I could remember, and then one day I just didn’t want it. I don’t fully understand the why, but I’ll take it.
The other thing I didn’t expect was that my tennis elbow improved. I had been dealing with that for about six months, tried most of the standard treatments, and it had been stubbornly present regardless. Within a few weeks of changing how I was eating, it got noticeably better. The working theory is reduced systemic inflammation from cutting sugar and processed food. I can’t prove that’s what happened, but the timing is hard to ignore.
My general achiness in the mornings improved, too.
Digestion improved significantly too, which makes sense given how much fiber I added, but it’s worth saying. TMI, perhaps, but being regular is a great feeling.
To Summarize
As I write this post today, I have dropped 23 pounds and I’m at a cool 166.6. I plan to keep going and just see what happens and see where I level off, but for now, the scale keeps declining and I keep losing pant sizes. I’m feeling healthy and looking leaner than I’ve looked in many, many years. The fat tire is deflating.
My next bloodwork/physical is in March 2027. That’ll be the actual test of whether the LDL and glucose numbers came down, which was the whole point. I feel better, I have dropped a pant size (or more), and I am having to buy new clothes (a good problem to have). The data will either confirm that the food changes are doing what I think they’re doing, or they won’t.
I was getting really annoyed by posts in /r/politics that pointed to The Daily Beast, whose articles are almost always click-bait with little substance to them. Since I already use uBlock Origin in my browser, I sought after a way to fix this.
Adding this snippet to my custom filters in uBlock removes any post that links to a given URL in a given subreddit, on either the “old” Reddit or “new” Reddit layout:
You will need to use that method if you don’t want to see the posts in your home feed or /r/All or anywhere else they might surface outside of /r/politics.
This obviously only works on desktop Reddit, not in the app.
