This is not shared to showcase my skills 😄 But to remind myself (maybe others 🤷‍♂️) that sketching/drawing doesn’t have to be a big deal.

When I make a mental list of things to buy (aka shopping list) I usually write it down if it is more than 2 items (else I’m bound to forget something)

Usually, I write it down as a text (doesn’t everyone ? 🤔)

But today, I thought in images. At first, I wasn’t sure whether I could draw quick sketch for the each item, but it was easy.

I had not planned what to draw today. So I decided to use this time for practice.

Here is the reference

Few things I noticed today.

Having a digital canvas has advantages of being able to zoom in. This came in handy when coloring the hair and t-shirt.

While at normal scale (no zoom) I have to fill a tiny portion so as not to worry. But I lose precision. I am unable color without leaving tiny white/uncolored marks.

This is another one from the same YouTube video I referenced earlier for the Church

This time, I wanted to try watercolors in true urban sketching style (Although this isn’t an Urban sketch 😄)

Hence, Tayasui Sketches.

I chose Water Color Paper to start.

Rather than drawing directly as suggested in the video, I did 3 steps.

First, I drew a rough sketch using Pencil tool. On a water color paper, it gave me a grainy texture. Cool! (I chose a little thicker size)

I came back to tldraw for this one.

But first, here is the inspiration for this sketch :

The video shows how to draw directly using the ink. tldraw was kinds closest to that feel.

There is only one tool for drawing. Call it pen, brush whatever. There is no fancy fountain pen, technical pen, certainly no pencil. No layers.

While tldraw honours prssue sensitivity to an extent, that is about it. There are 4 stroke sizes. I used small for most of the drawing. Used Medium for filing up the trees/grass with green color.

After my last sketch, I kept searching for simple sketching/infinite canvas program, and came across an app simple called “Whiteboard”

The UX is a bit different, but not too difficult. This might be my second favourite after ExcalidrawZ

The sketch is really simple (it is meant to be) The sketch is based on this video by Eva Lotta 🙏

I probably did this under a minute.

But I learnt how to make the stick person look “down”. It is pretty simple. If I draw the eyes a little lower that normal, then it appears as if the person is looking down. Drawing small line instead of just dot helps (I think) While it appears simple, it took me two tries to get it right. (Wisdom came later 😄)

TL;DR

Stuck with “No pubspec.yaml found” when building Flutter APKs in a multi-root VSCode workspace? Fix it in 3 steps:

• perfect workspace naming,
• cwd overrides,
• emulator-ready URLs.

The Problem

• Top-level folder with 2 separate Git repos:
  • flutter_app/ (Flutter)
  • fastapi_backend/ (Python)
• Flutter .vscode/tasks.json ignored in parent.
• Tasks fail: “Must be run from root of Flutter project” or “No pubspec.yaml found”.

It has been almost two months since I was meaning to try omarchy I could not “move” to it, since I was in the middle of a project.

Since then, I have moved to Macbook Pro for development.

I was testing the waters, lurking on reddit etc.

Recently, Omarchy made huge progress. When I first came across it, it was already 2.x Now it is 3.1.x

One of the “features” of 3.x was better support for (Intel) Macbooks.

The machine I got has macOS Sonoma. This is from 2023 - almost 2 years old. There was Sequoia - in 2024 and now there is Tahoe - in 2025

I wanted to upgrade to the latest.

But quick check on the internet suggested that I may be better off staying on Sequoia. Tahoe seems unstable ¯_(ツ)_/¯

So I decided to make USB bootable for Sequoia. When installing via the app store, it directly starts the install (I think) So I decided to stick to the terminal (a good thing too IMO)

I had been meaning to upgrade my early-2015 MBP for quite some time.

Then I got one from office, so did not need to upgrade.

then something or the other kept coming up.

Few months ago, I visited a shop to get battery replaced for my MBP

The service was good.

The shopkeeper also told me that he has some used MBP for sale.

Usually these come from corporate customers (I think) and are in good condition.

As I wrote earlier I’m doing Flutter Development on a Windows 10 machine.

The configuration of this machine is as follows :

• Intel i7-6600U @ 2.60GHz
• 16GB RAM
• 224 GB SSD
• AMD Radeon R7 M360 (2GB)

So on paper this looks impressive.

But it feels so sluggish.

But “feels” is very subjective. (My other machine is 10-year-old-MBP) So I decided to gather actual timing.

• Starting Visual Studio Code took > 1 minutes 51 seconds (After which I gave up) Gemini Assist was still not done loading. ¹ But even without it, it took > 1 minute
• Starting Android Emulator took : 1 minute 40 seconds
  • UI showed up after 7 seconds
  • Pixel is starting message after 1 minute 14 seconds
  • and Then I see System UI is not responding (I choose Wait ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )
• Starting Android Emulator (cold boot) took : 3 minutes 28 seconds
  • UI showed up after 43 seconds
  • Pixel is starting message after 1 minute 59 seconds
  • and Then I see System UI is not responding (I choose Wait ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )

In the mean time, VS Code reports