Using Val Town and Gemini for Sports Ball Stuff / / No Comments This is trivial as heck as the kids say, but I really want to explore Val Town more this year and I thought of a great, and simple use for it. Both my wife and I are big Saints fans (this is their year, honest) and attend most of the games. If they’re not playing at home, we’re absolutely watching it on TV. We both really enjoy watching football, but honestly, not enough to watch ESPN and follow the news. I thought – why not simply get a summary of NFL news from the past week and build an automation of it? I had this running in less than ten minutes with Val Town. First, the code makes use of Google’s Node SDK for working with Gemini. I setup my environment variable first... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Ball, Gemini, Sports, Stuff, Town, using
The Interstellar Travel Planner / / No Comments Have you ever woken up aboard an interstellar spacecraft with no idea how long it will take to get home to Earth? Then you need the Interstellar Map.This impressive browser-based visualization combines a 3D map of nearby stars with a relativistic travel-time calculator, allowing you to explore the practical consequences of planned journeys across interstellar space. The map plots thousands of Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Interstellar, planner, travel
Animated video backgrounds via a Web Component and ColorThief / / No Comments Earlier this year, the epic ColorThief library had a pretty significant update. I blogged about a simple demo I built with it but I was fascinated by one particular demo on their site. The "observe" function in ColorThief lets you monitor a video source and grab the colors at a particular frame. Their demo uses this to create a lovely shadow background of the video. I believe some TVs have this feature as well, and honestly I’d worry that would get annoying, but the ColorThief demo was pretty cool, so I thought I’d try to build it with a web component. The idea would be – take any basic video element and wrap it like so: <video-bgshadow> <video controls width="250">... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Animated, backgrounds, ColorThief, Component, video
Historical GeoGuesssr / / No Comments WenWare is a fun, time-travel twist on GeoGuessr. The hook? You aren’t just guessing your location – you’re guessing the date.The game drops you into AI-generated panoramas of famous historical events, asking you to identify both the “where” and the “when.”Sounds simple enough, right? In practice, however, the game’s success feels tied to the modern era. While the Modern period features Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: GeoGuesssr, Historical
Another Game: My Little Mortal Combat / / No Comments Hello awesome readers! I’m happy to announce my latest web game, My Little Mortal Combat, a mashup of two epic franchises, My Little Pony and Mortal Kombat. This began as an idea, just the name, that I recorded in Microsoft To Do in September of 2019. Yes, almost seven years ago. It sat there, at the bottom of my ‘idea’ list, until about a month ago when in the shower (not joking), it popped up in my head along with the basic mechanics of how the game would play. Right now the game is just missing one feature (I’d rather not talk about until I figure out how I’m going to do it) but definitely needs some balancing work. I enjoy playing games without knowing the details... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Another, Combat, Game, Little, Mortal
Links For You (4/26/26) / / No Comments I was supposed to post this last week (I try to keep to a schedule of every two weeks), but I didn’t get around to it because… nope, that’s it. That’s the reason. Because. And that’s good enough, amiright!?!? The heat is slowly cranking up here in Louisiana and I’m dreading the full on summer, but things do slow down a bit when the kids aren’t in school and that’s something I greatly appreciate. Before getting into this weeks links, I was reminded a few weeks back that my wife actually reads my posts so… hi baby, I love you. Super useful web components FTW – <form-saver> First up is a really simple and really useful web component,... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 4/26/26, links
The World is Your Canvas / / No Comments Pixtera is a brand new browser-based collaborative pixel art map that turns the whole world into a shared canvas. Built on MapLibre and OpenStreetMap data, it lets users zoom into real locations and start drawing directly onto the map in pixel form.New players begin with 100 free pixels in their energy store, which can be placed on the map one by one. Used pixels gradually regenerate at a Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: canvas, World
Where Europe Is Emptying / / No Comments CORRECTIV’s latest story map, Where Europe’s Population is Shrinking, is a superb example of how large-scale spatial data and clear visual design can come together to tell a nuanced geographic story. In this case, the story is one of Europe’s rural depopulation and how emigration and demographic decline have reshaped entire regions since the end of the Cold War.The map draws on newly harmonised Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Emptying, Europe