Links For You (7/27/25) / / No Comments Good afternoon, programs. This past week was… frustrating. Incredibly slow. Don’t really want to get into it but luckily I’ve had a very lazy and relaxing weekend. I’m counting my blessings but – like I said – frustrating. Let’s just get to the links, shall we? Importing JSON is Easier Now Normally when importing JSON into my code, I’ll do a fetch and parse the response into JSON. Not a big deal, but, it’s now simpler as explained by Thomas Steiner on the web.dev blog: "JSON module scripts are now Baseline Newly available". This feature is "Baseline" available means it works in modern browsers. Check the post for a full... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 7/27/25, links
Searching Text in Street View / / No Comments The Pudding has created an amazing data journalism project that allows you to search New York for any word or combination of words. Called All Text in NYC, it’s a remarkable tool that lets you dive into the city’s written landscape – mined entirely from Google Street View images. From shop signs in Queens to murals in the Bronx, it captures the way language is woven into the physical space of Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Searching, Street, text, View
Getting Image Insights with Built-in Chrome AI and EXIF Data / / No Comments It’s been a busy few weeks for Chrome’s Built-in AI support. Since the last time I blogged about it, four features have gone GA (which still means they are Chrome only but not behind a flag anymore): Translator Summarizer Language Detector Prompt API (for extensions only) And while announced back at the end of May, Gemma 3n as a model is available in Canary, Dev, and Beta Chrome builds. To be clear, the percentage of folks who can use these new features is still really low, but all of these features also work really well in progressive enhancement, and can be backed up by server calls to an API if need be. I continue to be really excited about the possibilities these APIs unlock,... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Builtin, Chrome, data, EXIF, Getting, Image, Insights
Using AgentQL and Pipedream to Fix Missing RSS Feeds / / No Comments Last week I blogged about how I used AgentQL to scrape a web page, this blog to be precise, into pure data. If you don’t remember, AgentQL lets you pass a simple query string that is run against a web page and parsed into data. So for example, I was able to use this query on my home page to get a list of entries in pure data: { blogposts[] { url title date } } The REST API was incredibly easy, and I demonstrated in BoxLang how I could use AgentQL to turn my blog’s home page into a much simpler, smaller, HTML version. This of course begs the question, how else could we transform it? What about creating a RSS feed for a blog that doesn’t have one! Of course, if... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: AgentQL, Feeds, missing, Pipedream, using
GeoGuessr for Photos / / No Comments MapaPhoto In my never-ending quest to find alternatives to GeoGuessr, I want to like MapaPhoto – however, this latest ‘geoguessing’ game has just one too many annoying quirks to satisfy my wanderlust.MapaPhoto’s basic game concept is solid. If you’ve ever played GeoGuessr or any of its many imitators, you’ll be familiar with the idea: identify the location shown in a given image by Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: GeoGuessr, photos
Creating a Calendar with BoxLang / / No Comments Chalk this up to – "Here’s a simple idea for a quick and dirty blog post" that turned into a few hours of my holiday weekend. Not only that, this is probably the first of three or so blog posts so… buck up, buttercup, this is going to be a fun ride. A while ago I had written down (well, typed in, I use Microsoft To Do to record writing ideas) the idea of demonstrating calendar creation with BoxLang, specifically creating a dynamic calendar, with or without events, either entirely server-side, or using a combination of client-side code with BoxLang providing the API. For today’s post, I’m going to focus on (what I had assumed would be) the simplest version... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: BoxLang, calendar, creating
The Global News Map / / No Comments Over the years, there have been many attempts to map the news. With the advent of AI and its ability to automatically detect locations mentioned in news articles, we’re now seeing a resurgence in News Maps.The latest of these is Needle, which uses a large language model (LLM) to “best estimate general locations of stories posted in the past day, and pin them on the map.” Using the map, you Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: global, News
Links For You (7/13/25) / / No Comments My goal for this series of posts is to share interesting links every two weeks, and I’ve noticed that sometimes it feels like a split second between when these posts go out. I’m actually a week or so late on this one, which is fine, but dang does time go by quickly. Usually summer is pretty slow, but with the new job, new product launch, and lots of camps for the kids, I don’t feel like it’s ever let up. Despite that, I’ve managed to put in near ten hours of Star Wars Outlaws this weekend, so I’m still getting a chance to catch my breath. I put the controller down for a bit so I can share these fun links with yall. Enjoy! Using Transformers.js to Find Related... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 7/13/25, links