Mapping SpaceTime

I recently stumbled upon Time Map, an interactive map which attempts to show points of interest around a location by walking time. Enter a location into the Time Map and a venue category (eg pizza restaurants) and the map will display a series of concentric circles around your location, each of which represents a minute of walking time. All the nearby points of interest are overlaid on top Maps Mania… more →
Posted in: Interactive Maps

Automating Blog Post Headers with Firefly Services

Yesterday I introduced you to Adobe’s new offering, Firefly Services, and demonstrated a simple example of how to generate images from prompt using the REST APIs. Today I thought I’d share one of the little demos I’ve made with the API, and one specifically built to help out with my blog – generating headers. My usual process for headers is to go to the Firefly website, enter a prompt, let it load, and then promptly change it to landscape and re-generate my prompt again. I always feel bad that the initial, square, images are essentially trashed. It occurred to me I could build a Node.js utility to generate the images at the exact right size and even quickly display them.... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

Spam APIs in 2024

I enjoy building API demos so I generally keep an eye out for interesting APIs to play with. A few weeks ago it occurred to me that I had not seen anyone talking about or sharing information about Spam APIs. I may be showing my age a bit, but it feels like spam was a much larger issue back in the early days. It was something you always heard about and worried about but not so much anymore. Much like nuclear war. I did a bit of digging and it turns out Chris Coyler had similar thoughts 4 years ago: "Spam Detection APIs". I thought I’d check out a few myself and share the results. Here, in no particular order, are the APIs I tried. Test Data # Before I looked into any APIs, I gathered... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

The Future for Trees

Like many people a few years ago I realized that not only is climate change happening but that human beings as a species are doing next to nothing to prevent its escalation. I do believe that the worst excesses of climate change are still preventable. I just see very little evidence that we are making the changes necessary to stop global heating, or even slow our ever increasing rush towards Maps Mania… more →
Posted in: Interactive Maps

Using PDF Content with Google Gemini

Back in February Google announced Gemini 1.5, their latest, most powerful language model, and while access has been open via AI Studio, API access has only been available in the past few days. I thought I’d try out the new model and specifically make use of the larger context window to do prompts on PDF documents. I discussed something similar earlier this year(("Using AI and PDF Services to Automate Document Summaries")[https://www.raymondcamden.com/2024/01/08/using-ai-and-pdf-services-to-automate-document-summaries]) which made use of Diffbot, so I thought it would be interesting to build a similar experience with the Gemini API. At a high level, it’s not too difficult: Begin... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

The Sea Trade Monitor

PortWatch is a new platform which monitors disruptions to global maritime trade. The platform uses real-time data on ship traffic and maritime trade to provide an alert system on trade disruptions likely to impact shipping trade routes. Recent attacks by Houthi rebels on ships traversing the Red Sea have helped to highlight how marine trade is vulnerable to geopolitical instability.. Maps Mania… more →
Posted in: Interactive Maps

Three Cool (to me) Node.js Features

I’ve been using Node.js on the regular now for probably over a decade, but one thing I’ve never done well is keep up to date with its features and new additions. In general, my brain just thinks "use javascript" and that’s all. The last time I really cared about what precisely was supported was when I was using fetch in client-side JavaScript and it wasn’t supported natively in Node. Luckily I could just use node-fetch and be done with it. That being said, I recognize I’ve not done a great job of keeping track of updates to Node itself so I try to notice it when folks mention it. Over the past week or so I’ve encountered not one, not two, but three... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

I’m So Old: Web Edition

Time can be a funny thing. I still remember discovering HTML, CSS, and JavaScript coding. I still remember my first college programming course. I still remember my first day at my first coding job, then my first day at my second coding job, and then my first day at Mozilla. I still remember my first day coding for MetaMask. This year marks my 20th year as a professional software engineer and it’s happened in the blink of an eye. Every once in a while I will make an old programming reference to a much younger engineer and then realize they have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m so old… Webpage layouts were being done with <table>s and this new “CSS float”... more →
Posted in: JavaScript
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