Homelab, developer tooling and gear, written up by someone who actually ran the thing.https://smartinupcreations.com/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/acer-chromebook-315-kompanio-540/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/acer-chromebook-315-kompanio-540/First impressions of the Acer Chromebook 315 with the MediaTek Kompanio 540, 4GB of memory and 64GB of storage. What runs in a browser now, where the Play Store helps, and the two limits worth knowing.Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/openai-codex-micro-keyboard-take/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/openai-codex-micro-keyboard-take/OpenAI's first hardware is a $230 macro pad for driving Codex agents, built with Work Louder. I didn't buy it, so this isn't a review. It's the honest read of someone who runs coding agents all day and has bought too many mechanical keyboards.Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/youtube-triage-optimizing-the-wrong-thing/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/youtube-triage-optimizing-the-wrong-thing/I built a tool to diagnose and fix my underperforming YouTube videos, then had OpenAI's Codex tear the design apart. Most of what I built was solving the wrong problem.Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/running-a-wow-private-server-client-on-apple-silicon/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/running-a-wow-private-server-client-on-apple-silicon/I tried to log into my homelab World of Warcraft private server from an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro. The client is a 32-bit game from 2010, and that turned into a three-layer translation problem. Here's what broke, why, and why I'm moving this to a spare x86 laptop instead.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/tailscale-remote-homelab-speed-test/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/tailscale-remote-homelab-speed-test/Three speed tests, one accidental exit node, and a lesson about why SMB is the wrong tool for remote file transfers.Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/design-pass-sherwin-travels/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/design-pass-sherwin-travels/I used AI-assisted design tools to tighten up my family travel blog. The useful part was not the tooling itself. It was seeing what changed, what made the site feel more ownable, and what still needed human judgment.Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/homelab-nas-replication-3-whats-next/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/homelab-nas-replication-3-whats-next/After a slow first sync and a clear bottleneck on the destination, I had three real options for what to do next. Here's how I thought through them.Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/ai-seo-scoring-gemma-vs-claude/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/ai-seo-scoring-gemma-vs-claude/I compared Gemma 4 and Claude Haiku as SEO scorers on the same travel posts. A 26-point gap exposed what AI content audits miss.Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/synology-snapshot-replication-2-diagnosis/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/synology-snapshot-replication-2-diagnosis/I started the first 11 TB sync at 62 MB/s and went to dinner. The next day, things did not look right. Here's the diagnosis and the real bottleneck.Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/synology-snapshot-replication-1-build/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/synology-snapshot-replication-1-build/After more than a year with no real backup of my 7×14 TB Synology, I added a second 8-bay DS1815+ and pointed Snapshot Replication at it. Here's the build.Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/hp-omnibook-x-snapdragon/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/hp-omnibook-x-snapdragon/HP OmniBook X 14 with Snapdragon X Plus reviewed after real daily use. Covers thermals, battery life, ARM software compatibility with Adobe and Office, and whether the trade-offs are actually worth it.Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/the-leak-that-built-the-hook/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/the-leak-that-built-the-hook/Claude Code leaked a token fragment into my chat output during a routine operation, so I built a two-hook safety layer that redacts Bash output before it reaches the model.Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/northd-pharmacy-redesign/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/northd-pharmacy-redesign/North D Pharmacy in San Bernardino had a broken map, no hours, and a 16-second average visit. Here's the before-and-after breakdown.Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/pixel-fold-refurbished/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/pixel-fold-refurbished/I picked up a refurbished Pixel Fold for $350 — a phone that launched at $1,799. Here's what I found after using it as my daily driver.Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://smartinupcreations.com/blog/sony-zv-e10/https://smartinupcreations.com/blog/sony-zv-e10/I borrowed a ZV-E10 for a few weeks to see if the flip-out screen and vlogger features are worth giving up IBIS and the viewfinder.Wed, 08 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT