Testing OCR with Chrome Built-in AI / / No Comments Sorry for the lack of posting this month. I’m on the way back home from speaking at CodeStock so I’ve been on the road a bit, and work has been incredibly busy (which is good!) so my usual blog cadence has slipped a bit. Luckily I had a great question in my session on Chrome’s Built-in AI which led to a bit of investigating last night. The question involved how well Chrome’s AI could do OCR on an image. I had a demo in my presentation showing using AI to describe an image and another to generate a list of tags, but not one specifically for OCR. Here’s what I found. Oh, before I get into the code – remember that as of the time I’m writing this, the Prompt... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Builtin, Chrome, Testing
Legible Rude Places Map / / No Comments This morning I was browsing Gary Gale’s Vaguely Rude Places map and realised that thanks to my deteriorating eye-sight I could no longer read all the hilariously rude place-names around the world. Instead of simply diving into my browser settings and magnifying the page I decided it would be far more satisfying to create my own map. Luckily for me Gary has provided links to easily download the Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Legible, Places, Rude
The World in Motion / / No Comments This animated map displays worldwide air temperatures over the past week. It illustrates how temperatures shift daily, warming progressively from east to west as the Sun rises and sets across the globe.You might also be able to spot other patterns, such as the effects of jet streams, periods of intense summer heat, and sharp temperature drops during winter when polar air moves southward.Recently Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Motion, World
Links For You (4/5/26) / / No Comments Happy "Three Days Before My Birthday Day"! Oh – yeah, and happy Easter too, but I’m personally a bit more excited about turning 53 as I’ve decided that’s when I’m going to grow up and act like a mature adult. Probably. Maybe. We’ll see. Now, if you, my lovely and incredibly intelligent reader, are feeling generous and you’ve gotten some good knowledge (or entertainment) from this blog, I’ll use today’s Links For You post to remind you of my Amazon Wishlist. Or even cheaper, leave me a comment below saying HBD – that’s just as good. 😉 Everything old is new again… First up is a blog post on an old topic but one... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 4/5/26, links
ASCII Mapping of Live Data / / No Comments There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing the world reduced to text. The new ASCII OSM Viewer leans fully into that aesthetic, turning modern web mapping into something that looks like it belongs on a terminal from the 1980s.Built by Lionel Lim, this browser-based experiment takes data from OpenStreetMap and renders it entirely using ASCII characters. The result is a playful but Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: ASCII, data, live, Mapping
You’ve gained a new achievement / / No Comments For the past month or so I’ve been obsessed with a book series that’s apparently been popular and I just didn’t realize – Dungeon Crawler Carl. Without giving too much away, it’s basically about a person, and his glorious cat, who get caught up in a real world RPG. I’m currently on book 3 (of 8) and am enjoying every page of it. It’s incredibly funny and cool at the same time. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend picking up the first book and giving it a shot. I don’t think you’ll regret it. As I mentioned, the book series involves a man (and his cat, the cat is crucial) experiencing a real-world RPG and like a RPG,... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: achievement, gained, You've
Sentient Street View / / No Comments Sentient Street ViewSince Google first launched Street View in 2007, its mission has been simple: to provide a window into every corner of the globe – from the peaks of Mont Blanc to the depths of the Great Barrier Reef.Throughout that journey, Pegman has been your faithful, silent guide – a cursor with a purpose, but no voice of his own.But looking toward the future of mapping, Google began to Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Sentient, Street, View
The IRL Streaming Map / / No Comments lucent.earth is a ‘real-time visualization of global live streams and radio stations’. Which makes it sound a bit more exciting than it really is. Mapping live video streams is hardly an original concept. However, now we’ve entered the ‘influencer age’ – defined by 24-hour real-time oversharing – perhaps the time for lucent.earth has finally come. lucent.earth is essentially a 3D globe Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Streaming