Links For You (8/9/25) / / No Comments Hello friends – another two weeks has gone by which means another links post to share. Sometimes, ok, pretty much every time, I’m shocked at how quickly I have to do these posts. It’s like I blink and half a month has flown by. In my last Links post I mentioned dealing with some frustrations, and they’ve gotten better, but I’m now dealing with the start of school which brings its own challenges. That being said – the family is happy and healthy, I’m employed, so I’ll take that as a win. Let’s get to the links! Why Women in Tech isn’t enough First up is pretty important post from Salma Alam-Naylor, "Why Woman in Tech isn’t... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 8/9/25, links
Ocean Warming Stripes / / No Comments These Ocean Warming Stripes show the alarming extent to which average global sea surface temperatures have risen in the 21st Century, compared to the norm of annual global temperatures dating back to 1850. In the visualization, each year since 1850 is represented by a colored stripe. The color of each stripe is determined by the average global sea surface temperature. As you can see, there has Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Ocean, Stripes, warming
Building a Comic Book Reader in BoxLang / / No Comments I’ve been a comic book reader for just about the same amount of time as I’ve been writing code. Any computer using comic book reader (and there’s probably quite a few) will know that electronic versions of comics let you read comics on your devices. These comics typically come in one of two formats, CBR and CBZ, which are literally just RAR and ZIP files, nothing more. Over the years, I’ve had fun building my own web-based readers for this format, with my last one from a bit over three years ago, "Reading Comic Books in the Jamstack". I thought it would be fun to tackle this in BoxLang and see what worked well and what proved difficult. I’ve got a complete... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: book, BoxLang, building, Comic, Reader
Mapping the MutiVerse / / No Comments Every town, every mountain, and every quiet river had its own poem waiting to be discovered. Meet MultiVerse – an interactive map where a single click anywhere in the world generates a unique poem inspired by that location. From the bustling streets of Tokyo to the silent hills of the Scottish Highlands, MultiVerse lets you explore not just geography, but language, emotion, and Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Mapping, MutiVerse
Using Chrome AI for Sentiment Analysis (Again) / / No Comments Every now and then I get an idea for a blog post/demo, prepare to write about it, and realize I’ve actually covered the topic in the past. Sometimes, though, it works out really well especially when the technology has changed quite a bit. Almost a year ago, I blogged about doing sentiment analysis with Chrome’s AI upcoming AI feature. At the time, it worked…. ok. The biggest issue at the time was the inability to provide a system instruction to the model as well as being able to shape the response a particular way. Thankfully, both of those are now supported. As a reminder, the prompt API for the web is still in an origin trial, see the docs for more information and join the... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Again, Analysis, Chrome, Sentiment, using
Solve the Global Treasure Hunt! / / No Comments Treasure Guessr is a new daily challenge game that requires you to identify a different location every day on an interactive map.The premise of Treasure Guessr is simple: you’re shown a small map of a mystery location, and your task is to pinpoint that location on a larger interactive map. Of course, this sounds easier than it really is – after all, the world is huge, and most of us only Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: global, Hunt, Solve, Treasure
Progressively Enhancing Product Reviews with Chrome AI / / No Comments While writing up my last blog post I mentioned that a new idea had occurred to me in regards to employing sentimenet analysis with Chrome’s built-in AI support (that, remember, is still way in beta). At lunch today I took a quick stab at a simple demo of what I had in mind and honestly, I’m pretty happy with how it came out. The Initial Demo The idea I had was an "imagined" ecommerce site with product reviews. I went to Google AI Studio and used a prompt to generate a set of product reviews. I used this prompt: Generate a list of 20 product reviews for a cat carrier named Cat Carrier Ultra 1000. The reviews should be a mix of positive and negative, with some being extremely... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Chrome, Enhancing, Product, Progressively, reviews
Zero Chance of Rain on Mars Today / / No Comments It’s currently a rather brisk -31 °C at Syrtis Major on Mars. Despite the chill, there’s only a light northerly wind of around 5 km/h. However, if you’re driving on Mars today, you might want to be cautious – visibility is extremely low!This weather report is brought to you by the Mars Explorer Weather Map, NASA’s new dashboard for visualizing atmospheric conditions on Mars.Since the Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: chance, Mars, rain, Today, Zero