Useful tech notes from the workbench.
Developer-brained writing on websites, home infrastructure, AI workflow, creator gear, and the practical mess between idea and working system.
A Design Pass on Sherwin Travels
I used Sherwin Travels as the test case for an AI-assisted design pass. Not because it was broken, but because it wasn't quite there. The useful part wasn't the tooling. It was seeing what changed and what still needed a human call.
Infrastructure
NAS builds, backups, hosting, and the unglamorous systems that keep projects alive.
02AI workflow
Practical notes from using agents, hooks, scoring tools, and content systems in real work.
03Web systems
Small-business rebuilds, static sites, analytics, and the choices behind cleaner pages.
04Creator gear
Cameras, laptops, phones, monitors, and home-office decisions after actual use.
Featured reads with pictures, context, and a reason to click.
Short path into the archive.
The list stays plain on purpose: quick scan, clear categories, no decorative card wall.
Browse all postsHow I set up NAS-to-NAS backup at home (Part 3: What I'm doing about it)
The destination NAS's CPU is the wall. Drives have headroom, the network has headroom, the source is bored. The Atom in the DS1815+ is why an 11 TB initial replication is going to take days, with three more shares behind it. Here's how I thought through the options.
Gemma vs Claude for SEO Scoring: What the 26-Point Gap Reveals
Same posts, same prompt, two AI models, a 26-point gap. I built dual AI scoring into Cerebro to compare Gemma 4 and Claude Haiku side by side, and the disagreement says more about modern SEO than most checklists do.
Synology NAS-to-NAS backup with Snapshot Replication, Part 2: What went wrong
An overnight death I couldn't immediately explain, CPU pegged on a single core, drives bored. The bottleneck on a 12-year-old Atom NAS turned out to be more interesting than the symptom.
Synology NAS-to-NAS backup with Snapshot Replication, Part 1: The build
Going from zero backup of 45 TB to twice-weekly Snapshot Replication between two Synology NASes — the hardware, the decisions, and the one wizard quirk nobody warns you about.
HP OmniBook X 14 Review: Snapdragon X Plus in Real-World Use
I went looking for the power brick when I pulled the OmniBook X out of the box. There isn't one. That small detail tells you most of what you need to know about how the Snapdragon X Plus changes the laptop experience.
Web projects should explain the problem before showing the polish.
Bring the messy version. I can work from there.
Website rebuilds, workflow cleanup, content systems, and plain-English help connecting the parts that keep slowing you down.
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