Ai and Automation and ... Exercise?

AI can't walk for me. Nor can automation (at least not yet, although Electromyostimulation is a topic of recent interest, and interestingly enough I had some of that when I was in rehab after shoulder surgery in December of 2024). So why do I talk of AI and automation in the same breath as exercise? Because I'm automating the reporting of my exercise. You may recall from my last post (Ripples, Resolutions, and Walking Shoes) that I was reporting my exercise journey daily on Facebook all year, and even had a full results sheet available for anyone to view. Well, I'm not reporting it daily this year. Nor am I manually updating a google sheet every day. 

What I am doing, though, is kinda cool:

I've built an automated reporting system that will link my Withings Scanwatch daily step count with Strava workout records (why Strava? it has a good API available that I can link into for automating the reporting, whereas MapMyWalk was not quite as open about it). I had Copilot build an automation tool using Google Apps Script to fetch the data from Withings and Strava daily (around 3 AM) and populate the data into a Google Sheet. Copilot also built formulas in the sheet pages to 1) summarize all the data; and 2) pull together a "public feed" of the summarized data. That's the backbone that automagically pulls all my fitness data (steps and workouts, anyway; at some point I might add weight data - not "full weight" but trends, although I haven't had much in the way of "trends" so far from my year of walking).

Then I had Copilot build a "Fitness Tracking Web Page" that will pull the data from the public feed and display it (along with "average" and "best" in the summaries) on a public facing webpage (nicer to view than a raw spreadsheet view). And with that in mind, I give you: 

You can go view the full web page here. It should display the most recently acquired fitness data from my fitness journey (if you can call it that; I have a LONG way to go!). I can't confirm whether the 30/60/365 day ticks work, as it only has 7 days' worth of data so far. But it seems to be working for those 7 days' data, including summaries, totals, averages, and bests. And it all happens without my having to lift a finger (at least not any more, since everything is now built and - hopefully - running smoothly while I'm sleeping).

All in all, I'm enjoying my foray into AI, automation, and AI coding. This is yet another example of AI handling things for me under my direction without my having to manually code up everything. Productivity increases, procrastination decreases, and boredom subsides (somewhat). I've also been busy ripping DVDs to my "Media Library" with the automated Powershell scripts that initially Copilot and then Gemini wrote for me. It's a pretty robust system now, with minimal manual intervention required (mostly on stubborn discs that the Gemini API can't identify and/or which the command line version of MakeMKV can't seem to rip properly, but the GUI version can). The jury is still out on whether I'll end up using JellyFin or Plex as the client on my Sony TV (Google TV platform) for streaming these DVDs (do you have experience with one or both? what's your favorite? let me know in the comments below).

I'm getting closer to finishing Episode 2 ("The Invention") of "The Pancake Delivery Frog" - I think I have most of the video generated (using Google's Flow/Veo3), just need to get it all edited into a succinct final product and then uploaded to YouTube. I should probably start just doing voice-overs for the final videos, as that's one area where AI video struggles - it can match and recreate characters fairly well, but the voices change from video to video, it seems. Alas, Episode 2 will retain whatever voicings were created by the Veo3 "neurons" as I don't want to try to work on voice-over yet. But I'll let you know when it's ready to go (in the meantime, go listen to "The Pancake Delivery Frog Theme Song" or watch "Episode 1: The Mayor").

And let me know what AI is doing for you! (And I still wonder sometimes if I should switch out my Withings Scanwatch for something that does 24/7 heart rate recording, since I was diagnosed with afib, and the scanwatch is nice for not having to recharge daily, but doesn't do continuous HR monitoring unless I initiate it for an exercise session.)