I prefer Jiffy soil pellets over the towel method. My most recent grow I couldn't find any soil pellets at Lowes so I emptied out a tea bag, filled it with soil, and that worked just fine. But yeah, many use the towel method, easier to see duds that way. Although after buying 25 seeds from Nirvana I had no duds, 1 took a while to germ though.
Love the stealth setup as well. But you gotta get rid of that light leak if you really need to be stealthy.
And don't underestimate the smell of the plant, getting rid of light leak will also force the air through your filter, which I hope works well for you.
I recommend hitting up your local hardware store for some weather stripping, I used that to get rid of my most annoying bits of light leak on the edges.