What I build and what I learn doing it
Short notes on the apps I build (LingoSnap, Navixer and others), plus Angular and UX/UI craft.
Building a Weather Platform That Doesn't Blow Its API Budget
Forecasts are a free commodity. The value is doing something proactive with them — without burning your paid-API budget. A case study of a full-stack TypeScript monorepo.
Serving Thousands of Users With One Paid API Call per Location
A paid weather API bills per call. A naive cache still kills you when 500 people in one city open the app the same second. The fix: two-layer single-flight.
Doing Official Weather Alerts Right: CAP, Attribution, and Extensibility
Government alerts are free and public — but "just display them" is a trap: different sources, severity scales, mandatory attribution, expiry, local time zones.
A Readable Hourly Weather Chart: Chart.js, 4 Series, 7 Days
An icon says "rain today." A chart says "rain 2–4pm, then wind picks up." How to fit 4 series and 168 hours into one readable Chart.js graph.
A Smooth Precipitation Radar: Leaflet, Frame Crossfade, and Lazy Init
The radar is the most "live" part of the app — and the heaviest on performance and privacy. How to animate it smoothly, load it only when seen, and handle third-party tiles.
Why I Wrote My Own SSG Instead of Reaching for Astro
For a three-page site in 20 languages, Astro or Next is overkill. A few hundred lines of esbuild and tsx do the same — and I understand every line.
Free Data as the Backbone, Paid API Only for the Peak
Open-Meteo covers most of the forecast for free. Paid OpenWeather is only touched for a few instant values — and if it drops, the app keeps running.