An Image Dialog Web Component / / No Comments A lot of the talk (well, on Mastodon at least) lately concerning web components has been on "HTML Web Components". The idea is that web components can progressively enhance "regular" HTML in the DOM instead of completely blowing it away with the Shadow DOM. (You can find a deeper discussion of this in Jim Nielsen’s blog post.) This is something that’s been on my mind for a while now as well and I’ve kept my eyes open for opportunities to build web components that enhance, not replace, content. With that in mind, I built a really simple component that does something fun. We’ve all seen sites that use JavaScript to provide a thumbnail and detail view... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Component, Dialog, Image
Google Gemini and AI Studio Launch / / No Comments While it feels like just yesterday I first blogged about Google’s PaLM APIs and MakerSuite, it was actually over two months ago, and of course, GenAI offerings are iterating and improving at lightning speed. In the past week, Google has announced Gemini, their new generative AI model. Naturally, I was curious about the API aspect of this and took a quick look. MakerSuite rebranded as AI Studio # First off, the web UI (which I reviewed back in my first post) has been renamed to the generic and boring, but probably more enterprise and appropriate, AI Studio. Along with that, when creating new prompts, it will default to use Gemini models. (You can still select PaLM if you want.) Another change…... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Gemini, Google, launch, Studio
Racial Profiling in Redlining Maps / / No Comments The University of Richmond has released a large update to its amazing Mapping Inequality project. This update includes introductions to the redlining maps produced for around 80 cities, written by scholars and historians and the addition of around 100 new cities to the project.Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal black homeowners were discriminated against by redlining maps. These Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: maps, Profiling, Racial, Redlining
Discover Your Neighborhood Tree Score / / No Comments The Woodland Trust has released a new interactive map which reveals the amount of tree canopy cover available in thousands of UK neighborhoods. Using the map you can discover the ‘tree equity score’ of Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you click on your neighborhood on the Tree Equity Score UK map you can discover its ‘tree equity score’, Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Discover, neighborhood, score, Tree
The Twelve (Generative) Days of Christmas / / No Comments I tend to have a lot of silly ideas. Not useful ideas. Not good ideas. Silly ideas. Randomly yesterday I was thinking about the Twelve Days of Christmas song. If you aren’t familiar with it, it starts off with a gift for one day, then repeats and adds a second day, and so on and so on. The gifts are: partridge in a pear treetwo turtle dovesthree French hensfour calling birdsfive gold ringssix geese a-layingseven swans a-swimmingeight maids a-milkingnine ladies dancingten lords a-leapingeleven pipers pipingtwelve drummers drumming I thought – what if I took each of these phrases and dropped them into an AI image generator? I did, and the results were… kinda fun. Before I show... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Christmas, Days, Generative, Twelve
Is Light Pollution Getting Better? / / No Comments David J. Lorenz’s Light Pollution Atlas 2006, 2016, 2020 includes global light pollution layers for three different years. It also includes a layer which shows where light pollution around the world has become better or worse during 2014-2020.This 2014-2020 light pollution trend layer shows that light pollution in most of the UK and France and in the eastern U.S. significantly reduced from Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: better, Getting, Light, Pollution
Awesome Netlify Updates / / No Comments For about two months now I’ve had on my queue to write about some of the incredibly cool updates Netlify has released but I just didn’t have the time. I’ve been hosting this blog on Netlify for a few years now and have been incredibly happy with the platform, but the updates the past two months have been both surprising and just really freaking cool. Here’s a quick look at what impressed me. As a quick aside, this isn’t necessarily everything announced recently and you can take a look yourself at their blog for more changes. Caching Improvements # This is an area I haven’t really done much in – both on my site or elsewhere. I generally let Netlify worry... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: awesome, Netlify, updates
Global Heating / / No Comments In 2023 the Earth’s global temperature was 1.05°C warmer than normal. This is extremely alarming as we are quickly approaching what many environmental scientists believe will be the tipping point for global heating. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels as a critical threshold. Beyond this point, the risks Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: global, Heating