Links For You (4/19/25) / / No Comments Normally I preface these posts with little updates and such, but I’m too busy today and am sitting on what could (possibly) be good news. So, let’s just get right into the links, shall we? Translating Live Streams in Real-Time with On-Device AI Models I’ve been real excited about Chrome’s upcoming AI on device efforts, so when my buddy Todd Sharp wrote up a cool demo of it, I had to share. In his post, Todd describes using on device transcription of a video source that then makes use of Chrome’s new AI feature to perform translation on the viewer’s side. Obviously this only works in Chrome Canary, but as an option in the future when it’s mainline, this... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 4/19/25, links
The Hotness Map No One Needed / / No Comments LooksMapping is a digital map that rates restaurants not by food or service, but by the attractiveness of their clientele. It scrapes millions of Google Maps reviews, runs each reviewer’s profile photo through an AI model trained to score “hotness” out of ten, and then color-codes restaurants accordingly – red for hot, blue for not.LooksMapping feels like a relic from a digital past – with the Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Hotness, Needed
Build Your Own Localized Events Calendar using Diffbot’s Knowledge Graph / / No Comments Finding out what’s going on in your city can be a bit of a chore. For me, I use a combination of Facebook, specifically accounts for local organizations and news channels, and our local Reddit forum. This is… haphazard at best. I’m sure local "city wide" calendars exist, but I’m not aware of any that is used by the majority of folks nor do I trust them to actually cover everything going on. Having played with Diffbot’s Knowledge Graph last month ("Automating and Responding to Sentiment Analysis with Diffbot’s Knowledge Graph"), I thought I’d do some digging to see what would be possible via their API. Here’s what I was able to... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Build, calendar, Diffbot's, events, Graph, Knowledge, Localized, using
The Tariff Busting Map Game / / No Comments Introduction: The Egg CrisisIn a world where breakfast has become a luxury, an evil empire has imposed crippling tariffs on eggs, sending prices skyrocketing. Omelettes are now a distant memory for the average citizen, and scrambled eggs are a delicacy only the wealthy can afford. But hope is not lost! Rebel forces have uncovered a loophole in the empire’s trade barriers – by launching eggs Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Busting, Game, Tariff
BoxLang Quick Tips – Working with JSON / / No Comments Welcome to another BoxLang quick tip – today I’m going to focus on working with JSON in BoxLang. Now, as you can probably guess, JSON is natively supported and supports what you would expect, going to and from JSON, but there’s some particularities of the support that may interest you, so I’ve dug into it. As with my other quick tips, you can skip to the video version at the bottom if you prefer. The Basics Converting data to JSON can be done two ways, either via the built in function (BIF) jsonSerialize or the member function toJSON. There’s no difference here, just use what makes sense for you: name = "Raymond"; age = 52; hobbies = ["beer","books","movies","video... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: BoxLang, JSON, Quick, tips, working
Spinning at a Thousand Miles an Hour / / No Comments I’m currently sitting in London, spinning at 640 miles per hour. My friend Sofía lives in Quito, Ecuador, and because of the equatorial speed bonus, she’s currently spinning much faster than me – at 1,037 mph. The Earth rotates once every 24 hours (roughly), and we all rotate with it. The circumference at the equator is about 24,901 miles, so at the equator, you’re spinning at about 1,037 Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: hour, miles, Spinning, Thousand
My First (and Last) Spotify Web App – Music Snob / / No Comments I’ve been a happy Spotify user for a few years now (I transitioned from Amazon Music after they cut features and generally ticked me off) and as I listen to music a lot, I’ve built a few integrations with their APIs over the years. Those integrations were simple tools that hit my own personal data and were just for fun, but I thought I’d take a crack at building a simple app with their Web API which would allow Spotify users to authenticate and see their own data. I built the app. But I 100% would not recommend working with the Spotify APIs going further. I’ll explain everything that went wrong, why I recommend this and so forth, but if you just want to see the app, scroll... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: first, last, Music, Snob, Spotify
Mapping the Red Sea Attacks / / No Comments The International Crisis Group has released an interactive story map, The Red Sea Attacks Explained, that does a great job of breaking down the background and consequences of the Houthis’ attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea.The map uses Mapbox’s Story Map template to great effect, illustrating the Houthis’ strategic strongholds and their disruptive impact on global trade routes. I Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: attacks, Mapping