AutoSave with VSCode / / No Comments Visual Studio Code has taken the crown of most used text editor, at least in JavaScript spheres. VSCode is fast, feature-filled, and supports thousands of plugins to boost productivity. Developers can also tweak hundreds of settings to enrich functionality. One such feature is the autoSave feature. A few months ago I changed my editor setup to autosave code as I type. Every app works that way, code editors should too. I recently had to disable it briefly. Feels so backwards to explicitly press Save via cmd+s. Here is how you can change VS Code to auto save: pic.twitter.com/qmjUBXNX35 — Christoph Nakazawa (@cpojer) October 18, 2023 To autoSave files with VS Code, you can add the... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: AutoSave, VSCode
Mapping the Growth of America / / No Comments This animated map shows the growth of built-up areas in San Francisco from 1860-1930. It visualizes the rapid growth of the city following the California gold rush in the second half of the 19th Century.This animated GIF was made using the interactive map Historical Built-Up Areas, 1810 – 2015. This amazing map uses data from the HISDAC-US: Historical Settlement Data Compilation for the United Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: America, Growth, Mapping
Using Google PaLM to Gather Sentiment Analysis on a Forum / / No Comments I’ve really been enjoying working with Google’s PaLM 2 AI API and this week I used it to build a pretty interesting demo I think. What if we could use the generative AI features of PaLM to determine the ‘sentiment’ or general health of a forum? I was able to do so and I think the results are pretty interesting. I’ll remind my readers I’m still fairly new to this, so please reach out if you’ve got suggestions on how to do this better, or found any big mistakes in my implementation. Ok, let’s get started! Sentiment Analysis # In my first post on Google’s PaLM API, I talked about how their "MakerSuite" was a really cool web-based UI... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Analysis, Forum, Gather, Google, palm, Sentiment, using
The 2023 Polish Election / / No Comments Sunday’s Parliamentary Election in Poland saw the far-right PIS party win the most seats (194 seats) in the new parliament. However the opposition parties, consisting of the Civic Coalition (157 seats), Third Way (65 seats), and The Left (26 seats) achieved a combined share of 54% of the vote and are expected to now form a coalition government.Thanks to the growing trend among newspapers to Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: 2023, election, Polish
Texting Email Summaries using Google PaLM AI and Twilio / / No Comments Yesterday I shared my initial impressions of working with Google’s PaLM 2 AI API. If you didn’t read that article, the tldr is that it’s incredibly easy to work with and I was able to get some Node.js code running in minutes. Exactly the kind of experience you want new developers to have with your product. Based on how easy it was to do that, I thought about building a real prototype of how the service could be used. What It Does # My simple prototype is based on the idea of handling an influx of emails. Imagine a support address or other important email address used for a company. If there is a lot of email coming in, or if the emails that do come in are critically important,... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: email, Google, palm, Summaries, Texting, Twilio, using
Intelligent Directions / / No Comments Fuzzy Maps is a new interactive map which uses AI to provide intelligent walking, cycling or driving directions. Unlike directions in Google Maps you can ask Fuzzy Maps to provide you with directions which include custom conditions or requirements.Fuzzy Maps provides a number of example searches that you might want to use, such as: Bike directions to a nearby history museum, avoid going over Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: directions, Intelligent
Automating Mastodon Postings with ColdFusion / / No Comments I’ve had a lot of fun building Mastodon bots (see my list of super-important business critical bots as an example), typically using the Pipedream platform, and more recently, Cloudflare Workers. The Mastodon API is kinda stupid easy and with "The Other Network" going to hell in a handbasket, I don’t see myself building bots anywhere else. Just yesterday I came home from the Adobe ColdFusion Summit and I thought it would be fun to see how easy it would be to build a Mastodon bot in ColdFusion. Here’s what I was able to do in roughly ten minutes. First, don’t forget that to add automation to a Mastodon account, you need to go into your preferences, select the "Development"... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Automating, ColdFusion, Mastodon, Postings
The Ring of Rain / / No Comments X-Rain is an interactive map which visualizes the average amount of rainfall around the globe. The precipitation data used on the map is derived from historical satellite observations. This remote sensed data is not as accurate as data recorded by rain gauges but it is able to provide a more global view of precipitation levels as it is not limited to only those locations with rain gauges.The Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: rain, Ring