Using the Gemini File API for Prompts with Media / / No Comments Using media in your prompts (what’s called ‘multimodal’) with the Gemini API is fairly simple in small cases. You can encode your input with base64 and pass it along with your prompt. While this works well, it’s got limitations that may be quickly hit – most specifically a file size limit of 20 megs. A few months ago, I shared a demo of using your device’s camera to detect cat breeds. With today’s cameras taking incredibly detailed pictures, I hit that limit right away and had to write some code to resize the image to a smaller size. Luckily, the Gemini API has a better way of handling that, the File API. The File API # This API provides a separate method... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: file, Gemini, Media, Prompts, using
Creating Visualizations in Postman / / No Comments Earlier this week, I blogged about a cool Postman feature where you could use scripting to take the result of one API call and use it as a variable that is then used by a second call. For APIs that first require you to exchange credentials for an access token, this is a super useful way to make that process easier. Today I’m following up on that with another useful application of scripting – visualizations. Once again, I’ve got my coworker Ben to thank for showing me this. Let me show you an example. When working with Firefly Services and the text to image API, you get a nice JSON response back containing information about the results as well as links to your images. Here’s... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: creating, Postman, Visualizations
Guess This City – Daily Challenge / / No Comments Unveil the World with ‘Guess This City’: A New Daily Map-Based GameGet ready to embark on a new global adventure from the comfort of your home with the launch of ‘Guess This City,’ a new daily map-based game. Every day brings a new test of your geographical knowledge and deduction skills as you are challenged to identify hidden cities by revealing parts of a map, one click at a time.Discover Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: challenge, City, Daily, Guess, this
Dynamically Creating Variables in Postman / / No Comments This may come as a shock to you, but sometimes, I don’t read the documentation for the tools I use. Sometimes, I don’t even look at all the various menu items and UI stuff for the tools I use. I know I’m probably the only one who does that and I apologize for letting down my faithful readers. I’ve used Postman for probably over ten years now. I don’t use it terribly often as I can normally whip up a quick API demo in Node in minutes, but I’ll use Postman from time to time. As you can probably guess by how I started this post, my use of Postman was very rudimentary. Heck, I’ve only recently realized the benefit of organizing requests via various collections... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: creating, Dynamically, Postman, variables
Spreading Love & Peace in Nutopia / / No Comments Nutopia is a conceptual country which was created by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1973 as a form of artistic expression and social commentary. Nutopia was created to be a utopian country with no land, no borders, and no passports, symbolizing an idea of peace and global citizenship.The country of Nutopia has a white flag, symbolizing its surrender to peace, and its national anthem is a few Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Love, Nutopia, Peace, Spreading
Segregation in the U.S. / / No Comments Stanford University’s Segregation Explorer visualizes the levels of segregation between schools and school districts in the United States. Developed by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, this new interactive map shows the levels of segregation across various regions, including states, metropolitan areas, school districts, and neighborhoods.The new map includes Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Segregation, U.S.
Testing Google’s New Gemini Flash Model / / No Comments I’m currently at Google I/O waiting for the next session to start and decided to take a quick look at the latest Gemini model to be released, Flash 1.5. As the name implies, this is a ‘speedier’ model built to return responses quicker than other models, with the tradeoff that the results may not be as good. Like most things in life, there’s going to be tradeoffs. Gemini’s Pro 1.5 model will definitely be slower but will return better results. When and how you choose is… well that’s a good question, right? I decided to build a tool so I could play with this myself. The idea is to let me enter a prompt and have it run both Flash and Pro models and see both... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Flash, Gemini, Google's, Model, Testing
Welcome To Your New Gardening Zone / / No Comments In November of last year the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) updated the US plant hardiness map based on the latest weather data (1991–2020). The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is a tool which is designed to help gardeners determine which plants are most likely to thrive in their location. The USDA map is divided into 13 zones based on average coldest temperatures. Zone 1 is Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Gardening, Welcome, Zone