Projects
How my projects came about and what the mistakes I made along the way taught me.
The app is here, the reels are new. What I'm up against now
Within a few days Algebra got a phone app, a Premium subscription and reels in a completely new style. Building all of that was easier than getting someone to use it, and this post is about that second part.
An iPhone app without a Mac, installed from Linux for free
Algebra now runs on my iPhone and iPad, with downloaded exam papers available offline. To install a test version without owning a Mac or paying for an Apple developer account, I combined cloud builds with tools running on Linux.
Tasks, a formula sheet and drawings that would not add up
Two differently written answers can mean the same number, and a neat diagram can contradict the question. Building the exercise bank taught me to catch these errors and check the maths as carefully as the website itself.
Seven months looking for a way to make videos
From February to September I tried Google's video generator, PowerPoint slides, animation written in code and several narrator voices before arriving at what you see on the site today. More ideas fell by the wayside than survived.
Games built on exam questions, or an investigation you have to calculate your way through
In one game a student answers questions; in another they investigate a mystery that cannot be solved without maths. That is how the arcade and school detective stories came about, with calculations that need to hold up as well as the plot.
Panel Biznesu: where the idea came from and why it looks like a presentation
The idea came out of my own frustration, because every change to a text ended with digging through code. It took me half a year to settle what a tool for a business owner should look like. It ended up laid out like PowerPoint.
You cannot learn planning from a lecture
A conversation with my fiancée gave me the idea of using Planer in student classes. The exercise could also support a study comparing decision quality and mental workload when planning independently and with AI assistance.
Everything you do not see on the page: domains, email, servers and tests
A website needs more than the pages people see in their browser. My projects taught me to connect domains, set up email, run servers and check applications without clicking through everything by hand each time.
A price list in a file, Premium and my first payment gateway
I wanted to sell lesson time and ended up managing prices, access and payment confirmations. The most useful lesson came from a payment the provider marked as complete while Algebra was still waiting for the money.
Planer Operacyjny: a tool I started building for myself
In February it was still just a map I used at work. A few months later I had a calendar, jobs and a tool for finding slots for crews. Planer grew alongside the needs I noticed in my daily work.
A mascot that was supposed to move: from sprites and Rive to video with a transparent background
I wanted cartoon Adam to respond to what was happening on the page. Getting him to move took hand-built animations, sheets of poses and video clips whose backgrounds had to be removed without taking half the character with them.
Duostrings: offers, emails and one mistake I will not repeat
Duostrings is the website of a music duo that I built from scratch. It is where I first prepared offers and sent them from an address on my own domain. Along the way I also made a mistake: I sent offers by email without knowing that doing so without the recipient's consent is not allowed.
A tablet songbook I rewrote several times
It started with a single HTML file before Zaduszki Literackie and ended up as an app with auto-scroll at the song's tempo, transposition, setlists and offline use. Along the way I made several tablet songbooks, each for a slightly different kind of playing.
Small after-hours projects: planners, English and an online music game
A goal planner, a household budget, English flashcards and an online music game started for different reasons, but each taught me something. Some of those lessons later helped with Algebra and the lesson whiteboard.
Algebra from scratch: from Flask templates to React and TypeScript
The calendar worked, but the classroom, exercises and student panel were becoming harder to develop within the old structure. I rebuilt the existing features in React and TypeScript first, then started improving them.
The mechanic who had no website, or where the idea for Panel Biznesu came from
While looking for a mechanic, I found a workshop I could learn little about without calling. It made me look more closely at how small businesses present themselves online and what I would need in their position.
Bookings that disappeared with every deployment
For several weeks Algebra kept losing bookings and settings, and I kept looking for the bug in the code. The culprit turned out to be the server's disk, which started from scratch every time I uploaded a new version of the site. Before I found the right solution, I even kept the data in Google Sheets.
The first Algebra: Flask, templates and the PHP I quickly gave up on
The first Algebra had a few pages and a lesson booking calendar. Getting it online meant changing hosting providers, briefly moving from Python to PHP and learning why an application that worked on my computer could fail after deployment.
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