Central Pacific Update

Exploring the islands, working on my fitness, improving my cooking, and building projects with AI.

Check out the full post on my site

I’m coming up on my third year living in Hawaiʻi, and it’s been such a unique and energizing time in my life. Lately, I’ve been exploring the islands, working on my fitness, improving my cooking, and building several projects with AI.

Orchestra performance and script-reading for the show Lost

Hawaii Life

I’m still really enjoying living in Honolulu. I’ve met a lot of interesting people and the overall vibe is noticeably more positive than anywhere else I’ve lived. It took some time to get used to strangers introducing themselves and striking up conversations, but the general friendliness and openness is one of my favorite parts of being here.

We’ve made it to Maui, the Big Island, and Kauai, and each is unique and amazing in its own way. Oʻahu is a great jumping-off point since we can get to any of the other islands in less than an hour.

I’ve been spending a lot of time outside and on the water. Open-water swimming has been my favorite recent activity. Oʻahu has great spots where you can swim long stretches along the beach and see coral formations and all kinds of sea life. I almost always see giant green sea turtles when I go out. I loved swimming, growing up in Florida, so it’s been great to reconnect with that.

Paddleboarding has been another highlight. We have inflatable boards, so it’s easy to put them in the car and head to fantastic paddling spots around the islands like the Anahola River, Mokoliʻi Island, and the Kāneʻohe Sandbar.

Paddleboarding to Mokoliʻi Island

I tried hydrofoiling for the first time which was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. It’s a board with a large hydrofoil and an electric motor controlled by a handheld remote. As you pick up speed, the board lifts and “floats” above the water. The glide feels unreal and, unexpectedly, it was pretty quick to get the hang of.

Before moving, I made a “Hawaiʻi Bucket List” with hundreds of items. At this point I’ve checked off a lot, but I keep finding new places and things to do. It seems like there’s always an event going on. One standout day included a bird-conservation meetup in the morning, the Waikīkī Spam Jam festival in the afternoon, and an orchestra performance for the show Lost with a script-reading by some of the actors at night. On another day we stumbled upon a neighborhood fish fry while exploring the Kaimuki neighborhood.

Kaimuki Neighborhood Fish Fry

Overall it’s been wonderful spending a lot of time outside, meeting interesting people, and trying some new things!

Fitness

Improving my health and fitness has been my biggest goal, specifically gaining muscle and losing fat. For a few years, I’ve been tracking body fat, muscle mass, and visceral fat with DEXA scans. I find them far more useful than a scale alone since they give an extremely accurate measurement. There have been some ups and downs, but overall I’ve added 14 pounds of muscle while maintaining the same body-fat level, which I’m pretty happy with. Closely watching the scans for years taught me two important lessons: muscle growth is incredibly slow (I average about 0.5 pounds per month when consistent), and fat gain can happen surprisingly fast.

Dexa scan results

Understanding my actual historical rate of progress has helped me set realistic expectations and stay motivated. At my current pace, it will take about three more years to reach my goal of being lean at 185 pounds. It feels like a long time, but I’ve changed my mentality to making my routines highly sustainable rather than forcing short-term results and burning out. The overall routine includes strength training 3x per week, very short HIIT 2x per week, and moderate cardio 3x per week.

For the rest of the year, I’m focusing on improving my lower body mobility issues that have been limiting my squat progress. I’m following daily mobility routines based on YouTube videos and ChatGPT research.

Cooking

Cooking has become one of my most rewarding hobbies. I have an ambitious goal of making meals that are healthy, tasty, varied, and time-efficient. After years of optimizing my process, I’ve reached a point where I usually prefer my own cooking to eating out, and it doesn’t take an excessive amount of time to prepare.

One of the things I like most about cooking is that I can completely customize the recipes to my taste and use the highest quality ingredients possible. For example, in my sandwich recipe, after much trial and error, I’m particular about every ingredient: the type of flour, oil, mayo, vinegar, etc. I’ve learned a lot of tricks to make my overall meal prep more efficient and tasty, like making dough in bulk ahead of time and using it over multiple days, then baking it just in time so it’s warm and fresh. My favorite thing to cook is homemade pizza, especially these poofy Neapolitan-ish personal pizzas.

Poofy Neapolitan-ish personal pizza

I feel healthier, I genuinely enjoy the food I make, and I’m saving a lot of money, so this is a hobby I plan to keep investing in for a long time.

AI coding

My biggest technical interest lately has been using AI to write code. I’ve been coding with AI for a while using tools like Cursor, but there have been a lot of advancements this year. My new workflow involves directing AI to write code for me. Now, my role is mostly reviewing and iterating. This new type of coding is powered by a breakthrough called “agents,” where instead of chatting back and forth with an AI one message at a time, you give the AI a task and it runs on its own and performs actions until the task is done.

AI Coding is definitely a new skill that requires practice. To get the most out of AI coding, you need to provide very clear instructions, proper context like documentation, and external tools such as shell commands and web browsers. For experienced coders, AI is a massive productivity multiplier. For non-coders, while it’s not quite ready to build substantial apps without coding knowledge, it’s getting closer every day. Right now, my favorite tool is Claude Code, but others like OpenAI’s Codex and Google’s Gemini are catching up quickly.

Claude Code, a terminal AI coding tool.

I’m turning my high-level development processes into something AI agents can execute.

For example, I tell the agent to build a feature, and it runs for 10-15 minutes while it:

• Explores my codebase to gather context

• Searches the internet for references and documentation

• Writes the code

• Creates tests

• Opens a browser to interact with the app as a user would

Now I focus more on specifying requirements, validating outputs, and designing the overall workflow than some of the low-level coding details. I’m incredibly optimistic about agentic coding. It’s already transforming the software industry, and I expect these “agentic” tools to expand beyond coding into fields like education, medicine, and law.

Developers always get the best tools first, but “AI Copilots” will be everywhere soon.

Projects

My main goal now is to keep launching products, both using AI to create them and incorporating AI into the products themselves. I’ve released several projects so far and have lots of prototypes and ideas in the pipeline. Starting with simple products, I’m now beginning to build some more ambitious ones.

Here’s a few of the projects I’ve released so far:

ConvoCards

A digital conversation card game featuring question packs on topics ranging from relationships to family dynamics to deep philosophical dives. The feedback for this one has been wonderful and I love hearing how you’ve been using this at family gatherings and even in the classroom!

Go here to check out ConvoCards

Convocards Screenshot

Pizzaplan

The ultimate pizza-making tool, combining food science with artisan techniques for perfect homemade pizza. This came from my pizza-making hobby, and the app distills extensive research from forums, scientific papers, YouTube channels, and books, plus my own experiments.

It has a step-by-step wizard that considers your pizza style preferences, climate conditions, and schedule to generate a minute-by-minute plan. Unlike static recipes, it calculates timings and ingredient quantities based on your environmental temperature and humidity so you get perfect results every time.

Go here to check out Pizzaplan

Pizzaplan Screenshot

Cuckootimer

Take regular breaks and be mindful of time with a 3D animated cuckoo clock. A minimal macOS menu bar app with a 3D cuckoo clock that appears at set time intervals. Everyone’s had those “where did the day go?” moments, so I made this to be more aware of time passing and avoid getting too hyperfocused on my projects.

Go here to check out Cuckootimer

Cuckootimer productivity app

Overall it’s been a great year exploring, exercising, cooking, and making apps with AI. Stay tuned to follow along with my upcoming projects!