february 2026

i bought a waterpik 🦷 and built a website 🌤️

Hello and welcome 🙇

dentist

I went to the dentist for a tooth cleaning this month and it sucked.

My gums ended up bleeding (which is why I don’t go in the first place) and after complaining to the hygienist, she said

This is an indication that your gums are irritated

to which I replied

I think my gums are irritated because you keep picking at them

which led to a long and rambling lecture about how gums work. Since I had various implements in my open mouth, I mostly responded with “ahhh”.

Despite the interaction, I did learn something - plaque can actually make its way under your gums.

I was under the impression that my gums were perfectly sealed against the teeth, like a waterproof seam or something.

This turns out not to be true.

There’s actually a V-shaped crevice between the gums and the teeth into which plaque can slide down. And apparently, brushing your teeth twice a day doesn’t prevent this from happening.

All that to say, the hygienist scared me enough to buy a wireless waterpik that I use in the shower. It’s actually very convenient.

And yet, as with most health-related things, it leaves me wondering:

• How did we manage back when we were all farming and didn’t have dentists?

building websites

I spent a bunch of my free time in February building websites. With AI mostly. The sites so far are:

• sunlight app - src

• body-annotator - src

• newsletter-analytics - src

Today’s models are smart enough to build a website pretty effectively - with a few conditions:

1. you must have a specific enough idea. If not, the model’s going to lead you down the maximalist path.

2. it has to be reasonably simple - you're not gonna build Facebook in a day.

Also, I don’t expect to understand the code it produces. I just use the website and talk to it if something is wrong. It’s essentially a more declarative way to program.

Let me explain the sites in a bit more detail:

sunlight app

I wanted a way to remember when it was sunny outside, so I made this:

Pretty self-explanatory - it tells you how many hours of sunlight there are in each day (with a seven day forecast). I mostly use it on my phone.

It’s nice to remind myself which days were sunny in the past since I usually do something fun on those days.

And, if the week has been full of grey, then it might be why I’m feeling grey.

body annotator

I talked about this idea in a past newsletter.

I require an app that allows you to annotate a 3D model of your body and export it. Doesn’t need to be a scan of you specifically, just a generic body will do.

Ideally, I can select a point or a specific muscle/tendon/bone on the body and say “sharp pain when I put pressure here” or something similar.

I made this (you’re welcome past Kahvi).

After showing this to my parents (who are both doctors), I updated the logic to make sure the notes expire after a week.

Turns out that visually reminding yourself of a past injury might have a negative psychological effect (and maybe slows healing?).

The notes are still stored, they are just hidden by default and displayed under the “expired” status.

Anyway, it's been handy for me to:

• figure out if an injury is recurring or new

• give my physio specific dates

Disclaimer: The notes won't sync across devices (everything lives in the browser). That said, the data is easy to import/export.

newsletter-analytics

This one was mentioned in last month’s newsletter. It's the site that supports the newsletter stats I talked about last month.

In fact, the whole process of scraping my newsletters from the internet and analyzing them was built with AI.

This project is also a great example of where the AI can fall short. In this case, it means producing nonsensical graphs:

This one is just completely blank:

Anyways, I’ve had fun building.

misc

• Victoria people - the cinnamon ice cream at Better Acres is delicious

• I’ve started wearing collared shirts more 🤵‍♂️

• Ashley and I are playing It Takes Two (and our TV died)

• I enjoyed the announcers in this men’s ice skating clip:

• Here’s a good complement to the AI hype cycle (src)

• along with this tweet

That’s all! See you next month!