I regularly teach middle school age children coding skills with Python using the ‘turtle’ module. It’s a great way to introduce students to computer programming in a very enjoyable manner. The children love the turtle graphics that they can create and it also introduces them to mathematics topics like variability, recursion and logic. When I … Read more
Are you looking for a locally hosted open source GPT that protects your privacy while allowing to leverage the latest AI models? Then you need to download Jan. Jan is easy to install on Linux, macOS and Windows and has excellent documentation to guide that process. Jan is a ChatGPT alternative that runs 100% offline … Read more
Are you a scientist, developer or just a tinkerer like me? Are you fascinated with the power of AI to generate and clone human voice to include in your work. OpenAudio might be what you are looking for. Leveraging the power of Pinokio it’s easy to download and install OpenAudio on your computer. In this … Read more
I have many documents created with Microsoft Office for assignments written for graduate school courses years ago. How can I easily convert those dozens of documents to a different format without using an online application? This is an excellent example of the power of open source. Five years ago I took a course at a … Read more
Joplin has become my default note taking app. I use it for everything whether short notes on what to pickup at the store to saving articles I inted to read later with the web clipper. I have an iPhone, a laptop and a desktop and I depending where I find myself on any given day … Read more
Recently I have been tasked with assisting a local medical office with finding a new way to securely store medical images. The office needed a robust replacement for an aging Windows computer that was soon to be out of date. I considered a number of solutions among them TrueNAS, OwnCloud, Nextcloud and a Samba share. … Read more
In the last blog post I wrote about the new Lenovo V 15 laptop I purchased and installed Fedora KDE Plasma 42. One of the annoying problems I have had in the last day since setting this laptop up is the lack of access to a right button click using just the touchpad. I had … Read more
LibreOffice is a free and open-source office productivity suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It originated as a fork of OpenOffice.org in 2010. I have been using LibreOffice Writer, Impress, and Calc almost since its inception. It was an easy move from OpenOffice.org. I readily recommend LibreOffice to all those who ask for my … Read more
Writing blog posts that share my experiences with Linux and open-source software often requires screenshots of accomplishing a task or an expected outcome. Over time, I have used a number of such programs in Windows, macOS, and Linux. Most recently, using Fedora 42 KDE Plasma has introduced me to Spectacle. It can capture images of … Read more
A few weeks ago, someone at the faith community I attend asked for my help logging into their computer. I suspected it might have been hacked, so I created a Windows 11 boot disk to rescue the computer. The device was a four-year-old Dell Latitude 5320, which was running Windows 11 but not very efficiently. … Read more
