Whose Plaque is it Anyway? / / No Comments For over 20 years I’ve wondered what the text on this plaque in East London actually says. This morning I finally decided to explore a few memorial interactive maps to see if I could discover why this bridge over Bow Creek has a plaque, and what the text on the plaque actually says. I thought it might also be a good opportunity to provide a little round-up of the growing number of memorial Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Anyway, Plaque, Whose
How to Fix: Windows WASD Keys Reversed with Arrow Keys / / No Comments This past weekend I had the opportunity to be what every father wants, if only for a moment: the “cool dad”. My wife was out of town and my youngest son wanted to play PUBG. I caved in, taught him the basic FPS key binds, and he was having a great time. While he was fragging out, he pressed a bunch of random keys and ended up changing movement buttons. Suddenly the traditional WASD movement keys were useless and the arrow keys triggered movement. Of course, this was a degradation of player experience. After struggling to figure out what my son did, I found the solution. To restore the WASD keys as movement keys, press the FN+W key combination. You’ll switch back to... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Arrow, Keys, Reversed, WASD, Windows
Weather or Not / / No Comments Do you dream of the perfect vacation weather? Sunshine on the beach, crisp mountain air, or vibrant fall foliage? Imagine a tool that helps you find the ideal destination for your desired climate, anywhere in the country and for any month of the year. This is the promise of Weather or Not, a new interactive map that leverages average weather data to recommend the best time to travel Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Weather
Six Free Alternatives to GeoGuessr / / No Comments I am a huge fan of GeoGuessr, but unfortunately without becoming a paid subscriber it is now a very limited game. I don’t blame GeoGuessr for developing its subscription model. The Google Maps API isn’t cheap and I’m sure Google sends GeoGuesssr huge invoices every month. However that does mean there is a huge potential market for a free Street View game. A market that OpenGuessr now hopes to Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Alternatives, free, GeoGuessr
Automating Movie Recommendations with Generative AI and Pipedream / / No Comments For the past few months or so, I’ve started tracking my movie watching with Letterboxd. I’m not doing a lot of reviews, mostly just logging, but I find it neat to look back and remind myself of what I’ve watched recently. You can see my profile if you’re curious, or check out my "Now" page as well. I thought it might be interesting to see if I could use my Letterboxd data along with Google Gemini as a way to suggest the next movie I should watch. I was able to build a quick workflow using the incredible Pipedream in a few minutes. Let me share with you how I did that. What does it do? # At a high level, my workflow does the following: It runs, automatically,... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Automating, Generative, Movie, Pipedream, Recommendations
Mapping a Global Coral Bleaching Event / / No Comments Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that the ‘world is currently experiencing a global coral bleaching event’. The Earth has experienced 10 consecutive months of global heat records, and in the last year the average global temperature has exceeded pre-industrial levels by 1.58C. These unprecedented sudden rises in air surface temperatures are Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Bleaching, Coral, Event, global, Mapping
Slim City / / No Comments For a number of years I’ve had the idea of creating an incremental game which involves slowly creating a city map by adding different map elements over time. This week I decided to try and put that idea into action. The result is Slim City, an idle game which requires you to click on building footprints on an interactive map to build and create a map of a city neighborhood.In Slim City the more Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: City, Slim
JSON Results with Google Gemini Generative AI API Calls / / No Comments Forgive the somewhat alliterative title there, but today’s post covers something that’s been on my mind since I started playing with Google Gemini, specifically, how to get the results of your API calls in JSON. To be clear, the REST API returns a result in JSON, but I’m talking about the content of the result itself. Before I continue, a quick shot out to Allen Firstenberg who has been helping me off and on with Google Gemini stuff. Anything I get wrong though is entirely my fault. 😜 Ok, so before I go on, let’s look at a typical result. Take a prompt like so: "What is the nature of light". Pass this to Gemini via the API, and the result you get, once you... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Calls, Gemini, Generative, Google, JSON, results