Outside of covering games, I also build things. Here’s a look at a few projects I’ve put together, mixing AI-assisted development with hands-on technical work.
Video Game Collection Tracker
What it is: A web app for cataloging and tracking a personal video game collection — built to keep tabs on what I own, what platform it’s on, and what’s still on the wishlist, without relying on a spreadsheet.
How it was built:
- Used Gemini to flesh out and plan the initial prompt before feeding it into Base44
- Used Base44, a no-code AI app builder, to generate the app from that prompt, giving specific instructions on functionality and appearance
- Used Gemini again to refine and fix individual sections of the app through several rounds of iteration
Status: Live online now; a working Android version is coming soon.
TCG Collection Tracker
What it is: A companion app for tracking a trading card game collection — similar goal to the video game tracker, adapted for TCG-specific details like sets, cards, and condition.
How it was built:
- Used Claude to think through and plan what the app should do and look like, going through several revisions before landing on a final prompt
- Used Base44 to build the app, then used Base44’s own AI suggestions to tweak and extend functionality
Status: Live online now; a working Android version is coming soon.
Home Lab
What it is: A self-hosted home server setup for media management and network services — built and maintained as an ongoing project rather than a single deliverable.
What’s running:
- Media server: Jellyfin, deployed via Docker/docker-compose
- Content management: Radarr and Sonarr handling acquisition, with Jellyseerr layered on top as a unified request front-end so requests don’t require jumping between tools
- Networking: Nginx Proxy Manager as a reverse proxy; Pi-hole for network-wide DNS filtering — both containerized
- Monitoring: Netdata tracking CPU, RAM, disk, temperature, and network stats in real time
- Dashboard: Homepage, giving a single unified view of all running services
How it was built: Every service runs in its own Docker container, researched, configured, and troubleshot using AI chat assistants (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT) and YouTube videos as guides along the way — from initial setup through debugging integration issues between services.
Status: Actively maintained and expanding — next additions planned include Lidarr for music and a system-wide dashboard refresh.
