Stories of Displacement & Return / / No Comments Journeys of Resilience of Refugees from Ukraine is an interactive map tracking the movements of refugees from Ukraine amidst the ongoing war. Created for the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), the map captures both the immense scale of forced migration and the stories of return and resilience that continue to unfold.Since Russia’s invasion, around 11 million Ukrainians Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Displacement, Return, Stories
30 Day Map Challenge / / No Comments November’s 30DayMapChallenge is fast approaching – and the daily themes for this year’s event have just been released!The #30DayMapChallenge is an annual, community-driven event that brings together mapmakers from all over the world. Started by Topi Tjukanov in 2019, it’s become a global celebration of cartography, creativity, and data visualization. Each day in November, participants Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: challenge
I Know What You Did Last Summer (with val town) / / No Comments With Halloween a few weeks away, it’s officially spooky season. My wife and I usually plan our costumes months in advance (mine’s been ready since July or so) and we love decorating the house (and yard) with all kind of fun and darkly horrific decorations. Two years ago, I built a great Halloween-themed web app using Glitch and Cloudflare: I Know What You Did Last Summer (With Glitch and Cloudflare) Unfortunately, Glitch is no more. These things happen and I have to thank the Glitch folks for creating an incredibly cool resource and also helping people safely migrate off their platform. One of my projects was the Halloween project from two years ago. While the serverless function... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: know, last, summer, Town
Mapping Russia’s Attack on Europe / / No Comments Each symbol on this interactive map represents an attempt by the Russian state to destabilize European democracy. The map visualizes Russia’s hybrid warfare against the West, which involves tactics as diverse as cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, physical sabotage, and even possible assassinations — actions that might seem minor in isolation but form part of a broader strategy to undermine Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: attack, Europe, Mapping, Russia's
Creating a GenAI Document Summarization Workflow in ColdFusion / / No Comments So this post comes from – I’m mostly sure – me forgetting to show a simple, but powerful demo at my presentation recently at the ColdFusion Summit. It’s nice and simple, but pretty darn useful so I decided to write a quick blog post about it and highlight the code. What’s a Document Workflow? Simply put, a document workflow is any process you would use to handle incoming documents. As an example, and one I’ve built many times over the past few years, you can use a workflow to convert all your incoming documents into PDF for easier handling. pdfRest has APIs for this and I’ll likely share a demo of them soon. (ColdFusion itself can convert HTML, PPTX,... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: ColdFusion, creating, Document, GenAI, Summarization, Workflow
The Atlas of American Gun Violence / / No Comments The Trace’s An Atlas of American Gun Violence is an interactive map that uses data from the Gun Violence Archive to visualize gun homicides and assaults across the contiguous United States.The map has drawn a fair amount of criticism on the MapPorn subreddit, with many dismissing it as “just a population density map.” I think this criticism is somewhat unfair. If you were to zoom Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: American, atlas, violence
Building a Document Q&A System with Google Gemini / / No Comments Document summarization is a powerful and pretty darn useful feature of generative AI, but a proper "question and answer" system can really enable users to interact with a document. This is why you see various document viewing apps, like Acrobat, adding these features to their programs. I thought I’d take a look at building such a system via a simple web app to see how difficult it would be, and honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Having this in your own web app, versus an external vendor, gives you more control over the experience as well. Here’s what I built. The Stack The web app lets you drag and drop a PDF into the page, it then renders a preview of the PDF on the left... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: building, Document, Gemini, Google, system
Mapping the Housing Crisis in Portugal / / No Comments The growth of short-term rental properties is a serious problem in Portugal and is contributing to a housing crisis that makes it increasingly difficult for residents to find affordable homes. des AL ojamento is a Mapbox story-map that vividly illustrates the proliferation of short-term rentals in Lisbon and Porto.Users can choose to explore the growth of ALs (Alojamento Local — Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: crisis, Housing, Mapping, Portugal