AI with BL / / No Comments Forgive the somewhat cutesy title. I hate vague titles that only serve to be clickbait, but given the subject, I couldn’t help it. This post is about AI, specifically Generative AI, with BL, AKA BoxLang. This has always been possible with BoxLang and any GenAI service that had a REST API, but recently the team released an impressive AI Module that makes this a lot easier. So what does it do? Much like LangChain, the BoxLang AI module provides a unified interface to work with multiple different AI providers. This makes it a bit easier to switch from one service to another. I don’t necessarily see people doing that willy nilly. Each service has it’s unique strengths and weaknesses... more → Posted in: JavaScript
Introducing ESA’s Satellite Stories / / No Comments The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a new educational platform designed to explain the vital role that satellites and Earth observation play in advancing Earth science, combating climate change, and driving scientific research and technological innovation.Edukeo uses Lobelia’s Globe Story Engine and TeroMaps framework to create immersive, interactive stories. These stories are Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: ESA's, Introducing, Satellite, Stories
Updates to my Table Sorting Web Component / / No Comments It’s been a while since I touched my <table-sort> web component, but last night I had a few interesting ideas and thought I’d do a quick update. For folks who may not remember, I first blogged about this way back in March of 2023. The basic idea was to take an existing table, wrap it in my web component, and sorting would be added automatically. Nice and simple. As an example: <table-sort> <table> <!-- existing table here --> </table> </table-sort> The only real "feature" was that if you included numeric="X", it would consider the Xth column as numeric and ensure sorting worked properly. X in this context could be one column,... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Component, Sorting, table, updates
Mapping the Cultural Impact of Gentrification / / No Comments The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) has released an interactive map which visualizes the gentrification of American cities over the last 50 years. Cities are constantly evolving. But behind many urban developments lies a deeper story of community transformation – one that often comes with a negative cost for the original residents. The Displaced by Design interactive map is a Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Cultural, Gentrification, Impact, Mapping
Links For You (6/22/25) / / No Comments Greetings, programs. This has been a quite excellent weekend so far, and today will be awesome for one reason alone – there’s not one dang thing on our calendar. A day with nothing to do is a glorious day indeed. I spent this morning finishing prestige 10 in COD and catching up on my comics ("One World Under Doom" is incredible). Now let’s get to the links… What exactly do I do? I’ve had to explain developer advocacy and evangelism for years now, but I absolutely love this explanation by Ashley Willis, "What Is Developer Advocacy (2025 Edition)". In it, she goes into great detail about the job myself, and many of my friends, love, and talks about... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 6/22/25, links
Paving Paradise for the Ultra Rich / / No Comments Say Goodbye to Your Outdoor LifeThe Wilderness Society has identified over 250 million acres of public land that Republicans are preparing to sell under new legislation. If the SENR Bill passes, then you can expect to spend a lot more time indoors.Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has already been dubbed a “Reverse Robin Hood Bill.” The legislation contains a range of measures explicitly Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Paradise, Paving, Rich, Ultra
Upcoming Webinars / / No Comments Good morning, programs. I wanted to share some news about two upcoming webinars. The first is my next Code Break show, "Building Desktop Apps with Python and Flet – Part Deux", happening next Tuesday, June 24th, at 12PM CST. As you can tell by the title, I’ll be continuing my look at the awesome Flet project and seeing if I can finish the app I started last time. If you don’t remember, it’s quite deadly… (And be sure to check out the last session for the first part!) Next, on July 23rd, 11AM CST, I’m hosting a free webinar where I’ll live code building a BoxLang application. My plan is to see how far I can get in an hour (which means I need... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Upcoming, Webinars
Sorting Out Your Monarchs with BoxLang / / No Comments I know what you’re thinking right now – a monarch problem? How did Raymond know I had a monarch problem? What can I say, with great age comes great wisdom, or, more likely, random code challenges. I’ve mentioned "rendezvous with cassidoo" before as one of the newsletters I subscribe to. Authored by the very interesting Cassidy Williams, this short and sweet newsletter always has interesting content and always ends with a basic code challenge, what she calls her ‘interview question of the week’. This weeks question was pretty fun: Given an array of strings representing the names of monarchs and their ordinal numbers, write a function that returns the list... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: BoxLang, Monarchs, Sorting