Isochrone Tokyo / / No Comments Tokyo has one of the most comprehensive public transit systems in the world. Curtis Fenner has built an isochrone map that allows you to see where you can travel in the city by train in a given time.The purpose of the map is to help people make crucial decisions about where to live by visualizing real-world commute times. It effectively achieves this by not only showing the reach of the entire Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Isochrone, Tokyo
Fall is Warmer Now / / No Comments Meteorological fall started on September 1, but if you live in the contiguous U.S., you may not have noticed the typical crisp, cool air. That’s because the season has been steadily warming for decades. Since 1970, average fall temperatures have risen in every single county in the country.On average, fall temperatures are now a remarkable 2.8°F warmer than they were in the early 1970s. This Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Fall, Warmer
Adding a Web Debugger to BoxLang (First Version) / / No Comments This one’s been sitting in my "to do" blog queue for sometime now and I figured the beginning of spooky season (September 1 – don’t we all start celebrating Halloween then?) was a good excuse to finally kick this out the door. Many, many years ago I learned to love one of the simpler features of ColdFusion, the debugging output. This is a feature ColdFusion has probably had for near twenty or so plus years and while it’s not the same as a "full" debugging service (which also exists), or the powerhouse Fusion Reactor, it’s an incredibly simple way to look at what’s going on in your web application. It works by first enabling it (something... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Adding, BoxLang, Debugger, first, version
The New Geologic Map of the United States / / No Comments The United States Geological Survey has released a new geologic map of the United States that lets you click anywhere in the country to see the rocks, sediments, and geologic units under your feet, along with their age and material type.The Cooperative National Geological Map was created by combining around 100 state and regional maps into one seamless, nationwide view of U.S. geology. Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Geologic, States, United
Building a Web Based Comic Book Reader / / No Comments Ok, so I know I’ve been spending way too much time lately talking about comic books, but I’ve been reading them for roughly 80% of my life now so they’re just a natural part of my life. Now, my best friend Todd Sharp told me this crazy lie that he’s never read a comic book before, but surely that’s a lie. Surely. Earlier this week, I took a look at parsing electronic comic books and sending them to GenAI as a way to get summaries of stories. That was a fun experiment and it actually worked quite well. I thought I’d take a stab at trying a similar approach with Chrome’s Built-in AI support as well when I discovered that… wait… I don’t... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: based, book, building, Comic, Reader
Play GeoGuessr Against an AI / / No Comments GeoGPT is now one of my favorite geo-guessing games. GeoGPT follows the usual GeoGuessr inspired format: you’re dropped into a random street-level image, and your task is to figure out where in the world you are. But here’s the twist – rather than competing against other humans, you’re up against an AI, which makes its own guesses alongside yours. The closest guess to the true location wins Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Against, GeoGuessr, Play
Connecting Comic Books to Generative AI / / No Comments I’ve blogged quite a few times about electronic comic books (most recently earlier this month when I demonstrated a comic book reader built in BoxLang). I’ve been reading comics pretty much my entire life and enjoy building development projects that work with the various file types associated with comics. As a reminder, these typically fall into two categories: cbr – A RAR file of scanned images cbz – A zip file of scanned images This week I was wondering – given that GenAI tools are pretty good at understanding images – how well could a GenAI system take a set of images, in order, and understand the context of the story behind them. I decided to give it... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Books, Comic, Connecting, Generative
Letters Found on the Moon / / No Comments This isn’t a tale about Lunar correspondence, but of letters shaped from the craters and shadows of the Moon. Alphabet Moon uses imagery of Lunar contours and ridges to shape a typeface out of unfamiliar terrain. Each letter is drawn not with ink but with the valleys, peaks, and scars of the lunar surface, transforming geological history into the letters of the alphabet.Enter your name – or any Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Found, Letters, Moon