chuck.
Build story
Making Budding Adventure, a game for my child
Tripo gave me the idea of putting my child into a game. Broken rigs, rejected faces and five seconds of running led from a Blender trailer to a playable world of our own.
CHUCK’S PRACTICAL TECH JOURNALSmall projects, built one useful step at a time.
Start with something I actually built.
Second-hand gear, software made with AI, and the detours along the way.
Build story
Running a 125B local model on a used, 2017-generation V100
Strata gave me another reason to try the V100 attached to my second-hand laptop. Getting it installed, finding an old background program and testing my everyday work made the old setup worth keeping.
Notes from the work
Field diary
Field diary
Today I stopped calling this a blog
Once the articles were written, I wanted a place for the work between them: small discoveries, unfinished experiments and the next thing to try.
Field diary
Field diary
The green terminal looked right. I couldn't find where to type.
Once Alex had the Matrix look, I began removing the borders, logs and notifications that got in the way.
Field diary
Field diary
Alex replied, but in the wrong conversation
Text chat could already retrieve information. A voice task went to another conversation, so I had to check where the work was landing.
Takeaway
Takeaway
Detect the source language. Keep the target I chose.
Automatic detection should save a repeated choice while leaving the translation direction in my hands.
Field diary
Field diary
The translation took seconds. Loading the model took longer.
Timing the stages separately showed where most of the wait was going.
Field diary
Field diary
I closed LM Studio. My monitor kept waking it up.
The tool checking whether LM Studio was running was also starting it.
Build story
A used laptop, a V100, and a queue for my local AI
A second-hand laptop and an external V100 let me try local transcription, translation and document work. As the tools multiplied, I needed a monitor, a queue and some say in what ran next.
Takeaway
Takeaway
Let the queue run. Let me move the urgent job.
Once several tools shared the local model, I wanted control over which job came next.
Build story
The 100-yuan phone I use to put AI to work
I bought a used P240 to make work calls feel familiar again. Connecting it to Codex at home became a project of buttons, audio, callbacks—and making my own assistant at forty.
Takeaway
Takeaway
Finish one small task before buying the next piece of hardware
The laptop, enclosure and V100 came in stages. Trying the equipment I had helped me decide what to spend on next.
Takeaway
Takeaway
Open the part I use most
When even I couldn't tell which menu to click, I asked for transcription to be the opening page.
Takeaway
Takeaway
When it says done, I open the result
A transcript missing several minutes changed how I read progress bars. The same habit helped later with Alex.
Field diary
Field diary
The transcript was finished. Five minutes of speech were missing.
Listening to the recording again showed that the blank stretches contained speech the software had failed to transcribe.
Field diary
Field diary
A small transcription app with a 2 GB download
Once it worked on my computer, I looked at the first step for someone else: downloading it.
Field diary
Field diary
I needed more room to fix the transcript
The settings filled most of the window. The transcript I needed to edit had only a few lines of space.
Build story
Build story
After years of online transcription, I built a local app
I wanted recordings to stay on my computer: drag in a file, separate speakers, edit names and export to Word. Then a five-minute gap in a long recording changed what I expected from “complete.”