My kids were using Zorin OS 17 on their very old Pentium laptop with 4GB of memory.

I understand that it is already an older version of Zorin. But it had started to feel very sluggish.

Kids use it mainly for browsing, but opening the browser itself takes really long.

But that is after they already wait - what feels like a long time - to see the login prompt ¹ after powering up the machine.

This is one of those options you don’t know exists till you need it (or sometimes you don’t know even when you need it because you were too afraid to ask lazy to search)

When I started using mac almost a decade ago, I used the built-in screen capture shortcut. It works very well.

Initially I only knew about capturing the entire screen. I would then crop it to the desired area.

Then I learnt that I can select the screen area at the time of capture itself.

Neat!

If I want to add some markup - I would do that separately, after the image is captured.

I grew up reading this Indian comic book named after this character. The comic was originally in Hindi. Eventually, they also made an animated series based on this comic (Also available on YouTube)

Chacha Chaudhary is an intelligent old man. He solves everyday problems with his wit. He also has a sidekick called Sabu (muscular humanoid alien from Jupiter - Don’t ask!)

There was a line oft repeated in the comics :

It is always good to “reduce your bills”. So when I found out, that Codex CLI works with local models ¹ (via Ollama) I immediately tried it. ²

After installing Codex CLI, I was exploring its features, and noticed it has tons of plugins.

I was intrigued to know Google Calendar plugin works with Codex CLI It has things like daily brief which seemed interesting. ³

But my joy was short-lived.

As I followed the steps, it asked me to Install on ChatGPT first.

Yet another main characters from Star Trek Lower Decks

D’Vana Tendi Brad is another Junior officer aboard USS Ceritos. She is Orion - the race which was once considered space pirates. (In the cross over episode, Boimler and Mariner had to convince Capt, Pike that Orions can be scientists too)

This time I tried yet another drawing program called Infinite Painter.

This is closer to Tayasui Sketches (which I loved on macOS - on Android it was misbehaving, and severely restricted) It has all the tools required for sketching/drawing/painting.

As I promised (said?) last time, this time I drew one of the main characters from Star Trek Lower Decks.

Brad Boimler is a Junior officer aboard USS Cerritos. While each of the characters have their own story arc, the series is antithesis to the live action star trek.

This time wanted to try another drawing program called ibisPaint X It has a lot of functionality but seemed complex compared to HiPaint. On the plus side, it has a lot of brushes (which I have not explored yet, except the Sketch Pencil and Calligraphy Pen)

If you are Star Trek (Lower Decks) fan, then this is :

Rawda - an Areore male.

The Areore were an ornithoid humanoid species.

For others, this is bird like species with humanoid features.

Look at the muscular arms, six packs, and hands like wingtips.

I had watched this episode long ago, and liked it very much.

The episode does not feature any of the regular characters. Instead, the main character is Peanut Hamper - an exocomp stuck in a pre-warp civilization, where everyone can fly ¹

Every now and then, I use private (or temporary) chat mode when asking something to AI.

Not because I am asking something sensitive ¹ but because it is a one-off query, and I do not want to pollute my chat history.

It may sound stupid, but …

Sometimes - most times - the default search engine DDG uses its AI to find the answer rather than just searching.

It is helpful.

Most times, I look at the answer, and done.