Audio & video
My experiments with creating a digital avatar
From photos of my office to a convincing digital version of me: the images, voice clones, local failures and paid video tests that led me to Aurora.
The full storyThings I built.
Things I learned.
I’m a marketer who builds things. These are the projects, experiments and wrong turns that taught me something useful.
FROM THE WORK
The project stories.
By Tyler Casey
Building & APIs
Building GreenOS: what went wrong with my evidence corpus
The seven-minute research run, source-checking mistakes and broken restore that shaped how I am building a traceable cannabis research corpus.
The full story
Building & APIs
A green build is not a finished product
I tested the code, then found the wrong version, a weak demo and a confusing checkout. What my own product releases taught me about finishing the whole journey.
The full story
Building & APIs
How I keep an 8 GB Mac useful for building
What happened when my 8 GB Mac ran out of space: Fedora builds, a service migration, an unused VM and a storage guard that leaves live work alone.
The full story
Work & productivity
How I made my Second Brain useful with qmd
Local search for my Obsidian notes, the stale instructions it uncovered, and the work that made previous decisions useful to me and my coding agents.
The full story
Audio & video
How I turned a dead record label into an archive and my old songs into a radio station
Fracture Recordings stopped in 2016. I gave the label a digital archive and my Boski tracks and mixes a radio station, with a few very ordinary web problems along the way.
The full story
AI & digital tools
How I built two publishing pipelines without making both sites the same
Swarm Signal and MCPH share a process, but serve very different readers. The broken audio handoff, stale pages and writing fixes that taught me where to draw the line.
The full story
Audio & video
Why I built a separate project library with Immich
A separate home for my work photos and videos, and the awkward bits of building it: empty imports, missing albums, broken source files and a database recovery.
The full story
Audio & video
Why I built three self-hosted libraries instead of one
Navidrome for my music, Audiobookshelf for listening and Calibre-Web Automated for ebooks. The setup, the messy metadata and the mistakes that shaped it.
The full storyTHE REFERENCE SHELF
Tools, costs and useful distinctions.
The details behind the listings, from free-plan limits to the full cost of a subscription.
Building & APIs
ZCode, OpenCode and Codex: the app, the model and the bill
The coding tools around the models, how access is paid for, and what a stuck ZCode task taught me about where an AI workflow can fail.
Full guideBuilding & APIs
Bolt vs Lovable: building, hosting and taking the code with you
Bolt can import an existing repository; Lovable starts its GitHub connection with an export. Code editing, hosting and the practical differences.
Full guideWork & productivity
Fathom vs Granola: a recording to revisit, or notes to work from?
The difference between Fathom’s recordings and Granola’s enhanced notes, including bot-free capture and the free plans’ history limits.
Full guideBenefits & bundles
When an included subscription actually saves money
An included software benefit can replace a bill, or just add another login. The difference is in the cost that disappears and the membership behind it.
Full guideAI & digital tools
AI subscription prices: what the headline number leaves out
A worked explanation of introductory prices, annual payments, credit allowances and the cost of getting something usable out of an AI tool.
Full guideWork & productivity
When is an annual AI subscription worth it?
The break-even calculation for monthly versus annual billing, with a worked example and the assumptions that change the answer.
Full guideBuying advice
Cheap AI access: accounts, team seats and API bundles explained
The same model name can sit behind very different products. What a direct subscription, a team seat, a shared login and an API app actually provide.
Full guideAudio & video
Can a free AI plan cover paid client work?
ElevenLabs’ commercial licence, Synthesia’s avatar and download rules, and Gamma’s exports explain why free access isn’t the whole answer.
Full guideBuying advice
What a Sideperk source check actually means
How I separate personal experience from product research, explain free software and paid plans, and handle old listings and corrections.
Full guideAI & digital tools
AI build credits: daily limits, temporary grants and running costs
Why a free building allowance can run out before the month ends, and how temporary grants affect the cost of keeping an app running.
Full guideStartup access
Startup credits: which route applies, and what the award covers
How AWS, Google Cloud and Notion distinguish startup applicants, plus the difference between cloud credit and a bill that disappears.
Full guide