Big Thoughts for a Saturday Afternoon

My son and I went to an estate sale where he picked up a Radio Shack digital Rolodex for $2. It had a big "SECRET" button, and I told him it was for stuff only he could see. It blew his mind. He loves to read and write but also values his privacy, so when I had to tell him the 36-year-old data organizer no longer worked, he was disappointed.

I have an old Acer Aspire One — small screen, 1GB of RAM. I upgraded the storage to an SSD years ago but never did anything else with it. I decided to pick the project back up, get Linux on it, and find some password-protected diary app to replace that broken toy.

I ended up putting Debian Edu 12 on it, but it was sluggish. Puppy, antiX, and DSL were just too hard for him to use — we've kept our kids away from screens since birth and I don't want his first real computer to be a giant pain. He's used iPads and such but only rarely. He still plays MacPaint on one.

I opened Claude Code and had it shell into the laptop to slim it down, freeing up space and RAM. I tried a few diary apps but they were either too complicated or didn't fit on the 1024x600 screen.

So I worked with Claude Code to build a simple password-protected diary app in GTK and Python, in about two hours on a Saturday. It's called Big Thoughts and it's available for any other parents who want it.