another year, woohoo!

It's a brand new year, I'm still alive and feeling fine :-)

On the other hand, there will be more scans. I'm getting in early with pre-scan worrying. Low key worrying but it's definitely there. The main symptom of my worry, is hypochondria...

I've had one or two very mild headaches. Could this be a fresh tumour? More likely it's running in summer, heat and mild dehydration.

I've noticed that one part of my scalp is warmer than the rest. Is my brain starting to boil? Probably not. More likely, it's just something I've never noticed before.

Sometimes I feel unsteady, want to just sit or lie down. Could this be an early sign of another collapse? More likely, it's because I stay awake several hours after midnight, then get up a couple of hours later... still very tired. More on that later.

What I have is hypochondria. Every little ache and pain and odd feeling... could be fresh cancer... or so I think. Pure pre-scan worry.

But what if it's not? What if my mild indigestion is really cancer gone wild? Oh no! I'm doomed!

Two possibilities: cancer is back and I'm doomed, or it's not. If it's cancer then the scans will tell, meanwhile there's nothing I can do. If it's *not* cancer then, well, there's nothing I *need* to do. Either way, the scans will tell, and there's nothing to do till then.

So I do nothing, nothing desperate. Just the normal things: wear a hat in the sun, drink plenty after running, get a bit more sleep. And for goodness sake, try not to worry :-)

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One way to stop worrying is to keep myself busy. Read a lot of books, as usual. Play World of Warcraft. Go running worth Deb. Today, for example, was a trail run, 10km in Walyunga. And I'm continuing to write a phone app...

I'm about to get nerdy. Feel free to read or ignore, I'll write it anyway because I want to get it off my chest.

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I'm using a "swype" keyboard. It's fun, it's fast, it's likely to introduce some very word typos (That, for example, is meant to be, very *weird* typos). So far, this Samsung keyboard seems better than the Google one I tried a year ago. But I'll try to be extra careful with proofreading.

Second, I'm typing this post in a different blogger app. What I'm seeing (as I type) is very small font and no way to change it. I'll be interested to see what it looks like after posting...

Now even more nerdy. If it makes no sense, that's no surprise. I'm about to describe things which I just don't understand...

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I'm writing a phone app. After a couple of years occasional effort I have a working app but the coding language has reached its technical limits. It's a language for students, powerful, simple to use, limited.

So I have changed languages, to Kotlin. Kotlin? It's a language by Google, for writing phone apps. It's similar to Java but -- according to Google experts -- better. There are lots of online tutorials.

I read a book for beginners, it showed me how to define data. What to *do* with that data? Very little information. Nothing at all on displaying on a screen.

I'm also following a tutorial on creating Android screens, really very good. With very little explanation on the essential "background" coding rules. I can create screens, actually doing something is a lot harder. I created a screen which would ask my name and respond (on another screen) with, Hello [name]. That took me several days, perhaps ten days elapsed.

I found a sample program to display a phone's current latitude and longitude, it worked. I copied the code into my own program then spent two days getting it to compile. Then another three days getting it to work again. My problems are with the basic structure of a kotlin program.

Kotlin is a very similar to Java. There are tutorials for Java programmers to convert to kotlin. One reason I chose kotlin is because I know nothing at all about Java -- so whatever language I choose, I will be staying from scratch. Nor do I know C++, which may also be similar... Ah well. It's a challenge :-)

Writing my app in kotlin is like running the Cradle Mountain Trail Run: I want to do it, it's a long term goal, I may never succeed. My app, though, I really want to finish.

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So I now have three items in my bucket list. One, to run over Cradle Mountain. Two, to write my app in Kotlin. And three (less formal) I have decided that I want to live long enough to see our grandchildren graduate from uni. And since the granddaughter was born just a month ago... that third item is just as far away as the other two.

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Time for bed. Time to work on a fix for feeling tired and unsteady. Time to get some sleep :-)