---
title: "Hi, I'm Alex."
url: "https://alex.zappa.dev"
description: "I am writing about my experiences as a naval navel-gazer and builder of things."
---

# Hi, I'm [Alex](/about/).

Dad. Husband. Proud servant of two cats. By day, I craft web experiences. By night, I craft more web experiences. Weekends? Bold of you to assume I stop.

I run [FreshJuice](https://freshjuice.dev/), a dev studio for teams who want fast, modern web. All juice, no pulp. 🍊

I've spent 15+ years building for companies like [Iru](https://www.iru.com), [Orange Marketing](https://orangemarketing.com/), [Kandji](https://www.kandji.io/), [Trovata](https://www.trovata.io/), and [DataFox](https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/datafox/). When I'm not coding, I'm probably traveling, playing video games, or being bossed around by cats.

![Random image](https://picsum.photos/seed/default/240/240/)[What is this?](/blog/the-best-free-image-placeholder-for-quick-and-easy-content-mockups/)

## Recent Posts

August 22, 2026

### [The models were never the magic](/blog/models-were-never-the-magic/)

Mathias Biilmann says the price of intelligence finally matters. I went one step further: the model stopped mattering entirely. The difference was always in the harness.

August 14, 2026

### [I walked away from WaveBox and JetBrains in the same month](/blog/tool-migration-wavebox-jetbrains/)

Ten years of WaveBox, JetBrains paid through 2028, and why I switched to Zen and Zed anyway.

August 12, 2026

### [Claude Code signs every commit you make. Here's how to stop it.](/blog/claude-code-coauthored-commits/)

Anthropic's AI assistant stamps 'Co-authored-by: Claude' onto every commit by default. It's legally meaningless, it's opt-out rather than opt-in, and it's not there for you. Here's how to turn it off.

June 23, 2026

### [Astro 7 dropped the day after I finished my Astro 6 migration](/blog/astro7-update/)

The universe has a sense of humor. I published my migration story, went to sleep, and woke up to Astro 7. Here's what broke, what I fixed, and why I'm not even mad.

## Featured Posts

December 28, 2025

### [2025 year in review: a year of building, learning, and gratitude](/blog/year-in-review-2025/)

Reflecting on a year filled with code, open-source contributions, and the amazing people who made it all worthwhile.

December 1, 2024

### [webChronicle: your personal Wayback Machine](/blog/webchronicle/)

A web archiving tool that allows you to capture and explore snapshots of webpages over time. Like the Wayback Machine, but as your own personal Time Machine.

November 29, 2021

### [My favorite CSS hacks](/blog/my-favorite-css-hacks/)

Discover CSS hacks and shortcuts, including using box-sizing, selection pseudo-class, caret color for input elements, displaying links when an element has no text value, fitting images to content, detecting dark system mode, hiding images on mobile, using CSS vendor prefixes for different browsers, and utilizing Autoprefixer. Learn these tips and improve your CSS coding skills.