Links For You (11/30/24)

Hello folks – I’m a week or so behind on my schedule for these posts, but the last few weeks have been incredibly hectic. I had 5 or so (I’ve lost track honestly) online presentations and one in-person event at connect.tech, and of course, this week was Thanksgiving. I’m also behind on scheduling for my <Code><Br> show, which I hope to fix up later today. I wish I could look forward to things get less busy, but the next few weeks will be busy as well! I’ve got two upcoming presentations on Gen AI coming up! Ok, enough whining, let me share some links! Avoid Amazon’s Echo Show In theory you can stop reading at the title, Please don’t buy an... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

Drowning in Plastic

There are five large ocean garbage patches. Most people have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but there are also the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and South Pacific garbage patches.These garbage patches form due to ocean currents called gyres, which trap floating debris in circulating patterns. Over time, waste such as plastic bottles, fishing nets, and microplastics Maps Mania… more →
Posted in: Interactive Maps

Using Generative AI to Parse Web Pages into Data

A few months back, I took a look at using JSON-LD to turn a recipe web page into pure data: Scraping Recipes Using Node.js, Pipedream, and JSON-LD. This relied on a recipe actually using JSON-LD in the header to describe itself, which is pretty common for SEO purposes. Still, I was curious as to how well generative AI could solve this problem. In theory, this could be a good ‘backup’ in cases where a site wasn’t using JSON-LD and a general exploration of ‘parsing’ a web page into data. I’ll be using Google Gemini again, but in theory, this demo would work in other services as well. Here’s what I found. Converting a Web Page into Structured Data In order... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

Using Your Favicon for Monitoring Long Processes

A week or so ago, I was doing some tests on Google Colab and noticed something interesting. The notebook I was using was one that took one to two minutes to process. Before I’d start the process, the favicon looked like so: After kicking off the workflow, the favicon changed like so: To be honest, I had not noticed it earlier, but I only fairly recently started using a somewhat ‘slow’ notebook so it’s possible I just didn’t need it before. Realizing how it’s being used now, I thought it was an excellent user experience feature and looked into how to use it in my own applications. Changing the Favicon Ok, so this part is stupid easy. Assuming you’ve... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

Giant Dancing Virtual Geoglyphs

@duncan77mccabe Strava art animation through the streets of Toronto! This took me 121 runs from January to October 2024. #strava #running #toronto #purplehat #active #run #Canada #motivation #madden25 #ncaa #purple #hat #sofitukker #sofi #tukker ♬ original sound – Duncan McCabe Accountant and avid runner Duncan McCabe has invented a new form of art – virtual animated geoglyphs. Using the Maps Mania… more →
Posted in: Interactive Maps

Bluesky Mapping

Update: I got busy and created a second map. Social Media Locations (comment below with suggestions for a better name). This map allows you to search for real-time Bluesky mentions of locations around the world. To start a search you just need to click on a map label for a country, state, city, town or neighborhood. Once you click on a place name messages will (often very slowly) begin to Maps Mania… more →
Posted in: Interactive Maps

Intl is your Superhero

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the Mid-Michigan ColdFusion Users Group on the topic of Intl, the web platforms internationalization spec. I gave this presentation again this week at connect.tech as well. I greatly enjoyed working on this deck as I’ve been using Intl for a while, but had not had the opportunity to look into every nook and cranny. The slide deck may be found here https://github.com/cfjedimaster/intl-is-your-superhero/ and viewed online at https://cfjedimaster.github.io/intl-is-your-superhero/decks/main/. The demos are all up on CodePen within one collection, which you can peruse here: https://codepen.io/collection/oEKOwR And then finally, if you love hearing... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

Counting Words with Intl.Segmenter

Yesterday, I gave my presentation on Intl, the browser’s built-in support for internationalization. I’ve been using this for a while now, but while researching the spec for my presentation, I ran into multiple cool aspects of it I wasn’t aware of. One feature I thought was particularly interesting was the Segementer object. MDN’s description is nice and succinct: The Intl.Segmenter object enables locale-sensitive text segmentation, enabling you to get meaningful items (graphemes, words or sentences) from a string. In particular, I thought the ability to get words would be an interesting use case. In the past, I’ve either done a lame split on " ", or used... more →
Posted in: JavaScript
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