After talking about it a few months ago my copy of the game finally arrived. @MimicSquid and I met up in San Francisco today and finally got to play Hide&Seek. It was a good time and it was neat to have a better sense of how the game plays instead of just watching it on Nebula. We're planning on playing again in the not too distant future, so if anyone would like to join in on the next one, please let one of us know (we both thought that it would play better with at least three players).

Not quite sure if this is a ~tech question, or a ~sport question, or a ~health question. But at least it's a question!

I have a Garmin watch, and so does my wife. They track our activities. We would like to compete in challenges, but Garmin's challenge options are quite limited. Through Garmin, you can compete for the number of steps, or distances ran or swam and such, but those don't really work very well for us.

I was wondering, are there any apps that work on both iOS and Android, sync with Garmin Connect (either directly or through Apple Health / Google Health Connect), have a sensible privacy policy, and offer some or all of the following types of challenges, which I think would be more interesting:

• Total time exercised (either any exercise type, or specific sports)
• Time spent in "vigorous" exercise
• Time spent in "zone 2" exercise (or another zone)
• Active calories burned (either total, or percentage of your resting calories)
• Number of exercise sessions
• Number of consecutive exercise days, i.e who can maintain the longest streak (allowing rest days)

Does anything like that exist?

I also have a bonus question:

Garmin has Expeditions, which track the distance you have walked or run, and once you reach your Expedition goal (say, "walk the distance of the Appalachian Trail"), it tells you that you have reached your goal and gives you a badge. I like the basic idea, but the implementation is quite bland.

Are there any Expedition type apps where the app not only tracks the number of steps against the total needed, but actually shows on a map where you'd be currently going if you actually were walking the Appalachian Trail or something, and gives you notifications when you reach some interesting points along the way, with pictures and a little bit of information about the place? Now, that would be something!

Are you stuck in a reading rut? Can’t decide what to read next? Overwhelmed by choice? Join me in my reading challenge!

The challenge is simple - read the alphabet. Start by choosing an author whose surname begins with A, next book the surname begins with B and so on through the whole alphabet.

I did this a few years ago after having a baby, and in my sleep-deprived haze couldn’t make decisions easily. The library was too overwhelming and I needed to narrow down my options somehow!

I have additional rules for myself, like I try to prioritise female and POC writers as I find myself tending to read a lot of white men, but it isn’t a hard and fast rule for me - first and foremost it has to be a book I’m keen to read.

I propose organising the comments like this: top line comments will be the letter, replies to that will be the book you chose, plus a short summary or review (even just a rating out of 5 will do) to help others find books they might like, and then people can discuss the individual books under those comments if they like. This keeps everything in one post for people not interested to ignore, and hopefully builds up a nice reference of all sorts of books in one place.

Happy reading!

Edit: I guess there’s a limit on quick comments to avoid spam so we’ve just got the first few letters for now. I’ll come back to complete the alphabet when I can :)