It was incredibly refreshing to read an honest story, warts and all, written by a human. And equally infuriating to read a comment about it written by AI.
There are many tells aren't there? There was clearly hard human work and experimentation here, but it's a shame the OP let AI do chunks of the writing. Once you see it, it's much harder to take the post seriously.
"Google has made it really easy to create api credentials for own use, just follow these few steps..." As someone who's been through that particular gauntlet a few times recently, I got a chuckle from the sarcasm.
I second this -- I just found the Ben Eater series a month or so ago and put together his computer clock over the holidays. It really helps you understand clock cycles, logic chips, etc, and is a good foundation for the 6502 kit you build later in the course. And learning Assembly before BASIC is the right learning path IMO, if only to understand how CPU registers work at the electron level.
Similar in nature is Farthest North: The Incredible Three-Year Voyage to the Frozen Latitudes of the North. Fridjtof Nansen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen) led the expedition.