Rovani's Sandbox

Rovani's Sandbox

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Sandbox Side Projects

Some of the side projects that I have started as a way to experiment with new (to me) frameworks, languages, and other tech.

Marathon Training Chart

  • Last update June 2026

An 18-week training load chart for the 2026 Chicago Marathon, rendered as hand-built SVG (no charting library) directly on this site. It plots daily mileage — warm-up, main workout, cool-down, and Tuesday two-a-days — against cumulative weekly volume, color-coded by day of the week and annotated with each week's training phase (build, cutback, peak, taper). Built as an experiment in drawing a data visualization from scratch with React and TailwindCSS instead of reaching for a chart library.

Media Tracker

  • Last update February 2026

A simple tracker for keeping tabs on what I'm watching, have watched, and want to watch. The data is stored as a CSV file in the content repository and rendered as an interactive, filterable table. It tracks the title, year, status, service, and who I'm watching with. Built as a way to experiment with client-side filtering and sorting on a statically generated page.

Hero Wars: Alliance Helper

Since the acquisition by Shopify of the Remix project, I wanted to really dive into the framework as a way to learn React and be better informed on how it could be used within a Shopify storefront. As I was pondering what the project should be based around, I picked up the mobile game Hero Wars: Alliance to idly pass time. There were many data-based questions I had (how much of resource A do I need to be stockpiling? what's my win/loss ratio against various opponents and teams? what missions should I focus on raiding for maximizing resources?), so I thought I'd build a tool to help compile the information and provide me with insights.

It's still a work in progress (as of August 2025). The lessons I have learned about React, Remix (now React Router v7), Tailwind, Supabase, and shadcn/ui components has been very informative and exciting to tinker with.

This project has also been a fantastic playground for working with Claude Code.

Update (March 2026): After about eighteen months, I've stopped playing Hero Wars: Alliance — the short version is a new city-builder mode called REALM, and the full accounting is in Hero Wars Built Something I Never Asked For — And I am Done Playing. The helper is still online, but with the game no longer part of my daily rhythm, it's no longer actively maintained.

HS Mercs Helper

For a hot minute, I was really into the Mercenaries mode of Hearthstone. I was frustrated with the game's inability to peak at the different levels of skills and items, and I wanted the ability to track what was in my collection from outside of the game. At the time, I was first learning how to create Vue 3 projects using the Composition API, Tailwind CSS, and FontAwesome. I also included experiments with Pinia data store and Vite build tool.

I fell off from playing the game in early 2022 and my interest in the project faded with it.