The Live Music Mapping Project / / No Comments The combination of the Covid epidemic, inner-city gentrification and austerity has had a hugely negative impact on live music venues and the live music networks of many cities. The Live Music Mapping Project has been launched to help overcome these challenges by creating detailed maps of the local live ecosystem in individual cities. Currently the project has released interactive maps for seven Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: live, Mapping, Music, project
Adding Music Previews to My Now Page / / No Comments About two months or so ago I added a Now page to my site. It shows my current reading list, my last watched movies, my Untappd beer check-ins, and my most recent Spotify tracks. You can see that part here: When I built it, I used a Pipedream workflow to wrap calls to Spotify’s API. My Pipedream workflow gets my most recent tracks, slims down the data quite a bit, and returns just what I need. I use some client-side code to hit that endpoint and then render it out on the Now page. (I also use a bit of caching with LocalStorage such that the endpoint is only hit every ten minutes.) Currently, when rendering each track, I link to its URL and Spotify users can listen to the track completely.... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Adding, Music, Page, previews
The Live Amtrak Train Map / / No Comments Trains.fyi is a live interactive map which shows the real-time locations of passenger trains in the U.S. and Canada. The map uses colored markers to show the near real-time positions of trains from a number of different train companies in North America. The arrow on the markers show a train’s direction of travel and the colors indicate the transit operators of individual trains. If you click on Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Amtrak, live, train
How to Play Grand Poo World 3 / / No Comments The underground world of creating and streaming Super Mario World-based ROM hacks continues to gain popularity. This popularity is a tribute to the creativity of gamers and the quality of the original 30 year old video game’s mechanics. Over the past decade, incredible ROM hacks like Grand Poo World 1 and 2, Invictus, and Dram World have brought joy (and horror) to the Mario community. Sure, Nintendo released Mario Maker and Mario Maker 2, but I love SMW Central patches because they allow all of us to create, much like open source. The most anticipated hack in years, Grand Poo World 3, was just released and is taking the Super Mario World community by storm. You cannot, however, just download... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Grand, Play, World
Using IndexedDB with Alpine.js / / No Comments A lot of my "x with Alpine" blog posts end up being, well, nothing special. That’s a good thing I suppose as it really helps highlight how simple Alpine.js is. (Note, I go back and forth between including the ".js" when referring to Alpine. I should be more consistent I suppose. On one hand, Alpine.js is the formal name, but Alpine just feels simpler.) That being said, the impetus for this post was to get something basic done before I built something a bit more complex. So if you wish to TLDR – it just works, visit my CodePen for the full source, and come back for the next post. If you’re still curious, keep on reading. IndexedDB – Vanilla or Library?... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Alpine.js, IndexedDB, using
The World’s Largest Snow Dome / / No Comments This morning I discovered MapTheClouds, which features a whole host of impressive interactive map visuals. I’m sure a lot of the maps featured on MapTheClouds are very useful but as ever I’m drawn to the fun, experimental maps, to the maps that apparently serve no other purpose than they were fun to create and are even more fun to play with.Here are a few links to my personal favorites, but check Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Dome, Largest, snow, world's
Where Your Food Comes / / No Comments When you begin to prepare your Thanksgiving dinner you may wonder about where all that food comes from. Well a new interactive map from CU Boulder and The Plotline, can help show you where. The Food Twin shows you where food is grown and consumed in America and how crops travel from producers to consumers.Click on your county on the map and you will see colored dots flowing into your county Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Comes, food
Introducing the Sunderland Collection / / No Comments The Sunderland Collection of antique maps has been digitized in full and can now be explored in detail on the new virtual platform Oculi Mundi (Eyes of the World). The Sunderland Collection was started by Dr Neil Sunderland in the 1990s. The collection now consists of around 130 vintage globes, maps and atlases which date back to as early as the 13th century. The new Oculi Mundi platform takes Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: collection, Introducing, Sunderland