Integrating Algolia with BoxLang / / No Comments I’ve been using Algolia for my search on this blog for years and absolutely love the service. At a high level, Algolia is a hosted search service that lets you easily create search indexes (think of it as a search optimized version of your content) while also providing easy libraries to add a search UI to your page itself. If you type in the search bar on top and perform a search, you’ll see this yourself. My site here is static, all simple flat files with no database, so a solution like Algolia is vital. I thought I’d take a look at integrating Algolia’s REST APIs with BoxLang and was able to build a quick demo in less than an hour. Here’s what I did. Initial Setup As... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Algolia, BoxLang, Integrating
My Experience Asking GenAI to Design My Blog / / No Comments What was my experience using GenAI tools to design my blog? Well, you’re looking at it! As I mentioned last week, my new design came from one of my experiments using GenAI to help me design a new theme, but I wanted to share a bit more about the experience when I had time, and that time is now. About two or so months ago, I had the idea of testing out GenAI to create themes for small web apps. While my blog is actually huge (near seven thousand pages), design wise it’s basically: A home page A post page A "everything else" page That’s just three basic pages, all sharing a main layout with slight differences in what’s the main content of the page. I thought... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Asking, blog, design, Experience, GenAI
What States Would You Live In? / / No Comments Last year I created the World Level O map for Tripgeo. This fun travel-tracking tool colors the countries of the world based on whether you have lived there, stayed for a while, visited, passed through or never been. You are then awarded a level based on how well you’ve “covered” the globe.States I’d Live In is a map in the same sort of personal tracking ballpark. However on this map Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: live, States, Would
Links For You (9/13/25) / / No Comments Yeah, I’m not even going to try to comment on this past week. I can say I had two interviews, which I think went well, and I finished some demos I’ve been working for a while, so that’s a positive. Outside of that, just want to not think too much about the state of things and focus on sharing awesome, nutritious links for you to enjoy. Intl and Segmenters You know me and you know I love the Intl API, so first up is a look at getting accurate text lengths using Intl and the Segmenter feature. This post comes to us from Sangeeth Sudheer with the nicely named "Automagic" blog. Flight Data to the Database Next up is an incredibly cool post that demonstrates streaming real-time... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 9/13/25, links
The Google Maps Platform Awards Winners / / No Comments Google has announced the winners of the very first Google Maps Platform Awards. The awards were launched to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of the Google Maps API and were open to anyone who has used the Google Maps Platform over the past two decades.As one of the judges for the competition, I can attest to the overall quality of the maps submitted. Winners were named in 10 Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Awards, Google, maps, Platform, Winners
Time for something new… / / No Comments So, maybe you’re noticing a new look here. Or maybe this is your first time here. Either way, welcome to the new (and hopefully) improved raymondcamden.com, my little home on the internet. For the past few weeks, I’ve been sharing my experience using GenAI to generate a blog theme on my YouTube channel. My plan was to share those results here and ask folks which theme they thought would be best. I still plan on sharing those results here, but yesterday while frustrated and anxious, I decided, screw it, one theme really spoke to me, and it’s the one you see here. While I know I’ve still got stuff to fix here and there, I’m really happy with this update and I hope... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: new..., Something, time
The College Football Imperialism Map / / No Comments The CFB Charts Imperialism Map is a fan-created, season-long project that turns the college football season into a map-based “conquest” game. It started on Reddit and Twitter a few years ago and has become a tradition among college football fans.Here’s how it works (I think):Each FBS team begins the season owning the county in which its school is located (and probably all the nearest counties). Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: College, Football, Imperialism
Using Chrome’s Built-in AI to Improve AI Prompts / / No Comments Props for this article go to my best friend, Todd Sharp, who yesterday said something along the lines of, "Hey Ray, you should blog a demo of …" which is pretty much akin to bring out a laser pointer in front of a cat. Not only do I love getting ideas for new demos, his idea was actually pretty freaking brilliant, which means I get to pretend I’m brilliant as well. His idea was this: Given a user created prompt meant to be shipped off to a "proper" (i.e. maybe expensive) Generate AI API, can we use tools to help improve the prompt and make it "cheaper" before used. Given we’ve got AI in the browser via Chrome (ok, we will have it soon), this seemed... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Builtin, Chrome's, improve, Prompts, using