The personal site of Ala'
Engineer.
Reader.
Writer.
I build things on .NET by day and take books apart by night. This is where the notes land — engineering write-ups, book reviews, and a toolbox of small apps.
Latest writing
All postsJun 21, 2026
Cookie-free analytics with ASP.NET Core middleware
You don’t need a tracking script to know your audience. Country-level visit stats with MaxMind GeoLite2, a SHA-256 hash, and forty lines of middleware.
Jun 2, 2026
Blazor Server in production: what nobody tells you
Circuit lifetimes, reconnection UX, and the SignalR bill. Notes from running Blazor Server under real traffic for a year.
May 14, 2026
EF Core migrations without fear
A calm, repeatable workflow for schema changes: idempotent scripts, a staging gate, and the one flag that saves you at 2am.
Apr 27, 2026
Reading like an engineer: my note-taking system
How every book on this site gets distilled into key takeaways — a three-pass method that survives contact with a busy week.
