How the senja got built.

The brief, as received

The signature technique

The hero is a single scene with one master input: T, time of day, 0 to 1. Dragging the sun along its arc recomputes everything downstream — the sky gradient interpolates through six keyframes, interior warmth fades up, stars gate in, the moon crossfades over the sun, and at T ≥ 0.66 the neon sign ignites. Not with a fade — with a real fluorescent-tube stutter, because the brief said the neon has flickered since 1989 and we take our fiction seriously:

/* the neon startup — a hand-timed ignition sequence, from index.html */
function neonOn(){
  if(neon.s!=='off')return;
  neon.s='igniting';
  if(reduced){setN(1);neon.s='on';return;}
  const seq=[[60,1],[70,0],[45,1],[130,0],[50,1],
             [70,0],[35,1],[240,.75],[60,0],[90,1]];
  let i=0;
  (function step(){
    if(neon.s!=='igniting')return;
    if(i>=seq.length){setN(1);neon.s='on';schedAmb();return;}
    setN(seq[i][1]);neon.t=setTimeout(step,seq[i][0]);i++;
  })();
}

Each pair is [milliseconds, tube opacity]. After ignition, an ambient timer dims the tube at random every 6–15 seconds. Reduced-motion visitors get the sign already lit — the page is complete without the theatre.

The steam is a 2D canvas layer: particles spawn at the two kopi cups' real screen positions, ride a slow sine wind, and bend toward the cursor like someone walked past. The system runs 260 warm-up steps before the first paint, so the first frame already has steam in the air. The whole scene — shophouse, skyline, marble table, cat — is inline SVG. Zero images.

What the critique passes caught

Each pass: screenshot the live page on desktop and mobile, read the shots like a hostile art director, fix everything, then add one deliberate upgrade.