The Map of Global Friendship / / No Comments Social Connectedness Index Map St. Louis, Missouri and Bosnia and Herzegovina are separated by more than 5,000 miles. Yet Facebook friendship data reveals that the two places share remarkably strong social ties. An unusually large number of people in St. Louis have Facebook friends in Bosnia and Herzegovina.The explanation lies in the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Tens of thousands of Bosnian Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Friendship, global
Links For You (8/2/26) / / No Comments Happy August folks. Louisiana is celebrating the approach of Fall by gradually increasing the temperatures to roughly that of the surface of the sun. Last night we saw the new Spider-Man, which was really good, although not as fantastic as "No Way Home". The point of these posts is for me to share content from other folks, but I’ll remind folks of my Youtube channel. This past week I shared a few new videos demonstrating some cool stuff with Cursor so if you’ve not checked them out yet, give me a quick watch and let me know what you think! Web browsing on your gaming console First up is a great post by Vale detailing the capabilities and history of web browsers on game consoles.... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 8/2/26, links
German Döner, English Curry & American Pizza / / No Comments German Döner Kebab restaurants have started popping up all over London. For some reason, the idea of a German kebab still strikes me as slightly incongruous – a bit like a Swiss curry or a French taco. However, according to a recent analysis of OpenStreetMap food venues, there are far more döner kebab restaurants in Germany than there are in Turkey. In fact, 51% of the world’s döner shops are Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: American, Curry, Döner, English, German, Pizza
Updating my Watch Site for Algolia Support / / No Comments Alright, so I was supposed to share this a bit quicker, but life, work, etc, kept me busy. I’ve had this particular change up for a few days but I’m just now getting around to blogging about it. What changes? Adding Algolia’s MCP to my Cursor environment Using Algolia’s MCP (what worked, what did not) Adding Algolia content as a scheduled service with Netlify Adding a basic search front end to I Watch Watches Before going on, be sure you’ve read the last piece where I talked about agentic development in general, and specifically how I built the site. If you don’t have a log, did it happen? I’ve been doing some work with different profiles and my Cursor... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Algolia, Site, Support, Updating, Watch
The Most Optimal Road Trip Maps / / No Comments In 1954, a landmark paper in computer science famously solved the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) by proving the exact, shortest route to visit all 48 contiguous state capitals plus Washington D.C. The underlying puzzle is deceptively simple: given a list of destinations, what is the shortest possible route that visits each location once before returning to the start? That breakthrough Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: maps, most, Optimal, road, Trip
Building Agentically and Celebrating Watches / / No Comments I’ve shared past experiences with vibe coding and it’s been a fascinating way to experiment and build on a small scale, but while it works well for POCs and other small utilities (I won’t say ‘toys’ as I’ve built useful, if small, things now multiple times), it isn’t really a "process" and not one that would work over a project with a longer time frame. This is where "Agentic Development" comes in. It’s not always referred to as such and it’s a huge topic, but let me give you my opinion on it and then demonstrate how I used it to build my newest project, I Watch Watches. Agentic Development in a Nutshell Vibe coding is... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Agentically, building, Celebrating, Watches
Free Map Tiles for Everyone / / No Comments Free Map Tiles Providers:OpenFreeMapVersaTilesMaptoolkit.orgOne of the biggest barriers to building web maps has always been the cost and complexity of map tiles. Services such as Google Maps and Mapbox offer excellent infrastructure, but commercial pricing can quickly become prohibitive as projects grow. Self-hosting OpenStreetMap vector tiles is an alternative, but maintaining a global tile Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: everyone, free, Tiles
The 5 Best 3D Subway Maps / / No Comments Shinjuku Station has a well-earned reputation as one of the world’s largest and most bewildering transport hubs. The Shinjuku Station Indoor interactive 3D map tackles that complexity by turning the station’s official indoor mapping data into a clean, schematic three-dimensional blueprint. This map strips everything back to the essential geometry of corridors, platforms and rooms, making Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: best, maps, Subway