The Twelve (Generative) Days of Christmas / / No Comments I tend to have a lot of silly ideas. Not useful ideas. Not good ideas. Silly ideas. Randomly yesterday I was thinking about the Twelve Days of Christmas song. If you aren’t familiar with it, it starts off with a gift for one day, then repeats and adds a second day, and so on and so on. The gifts are: partridge in a pear treetwo turtle dovesthree French hensfour calling birdsfive gold ringssix geese a-layingseven swans a-swimmingeight maids a-milkingnine ladies dancingten lords a-leapingeleven pipers pipingtwelve drummers drumming I thought – what if I took each of these phrases and dropped them into an AI image generator? I did, and the results were… kinda fun. Before I show... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Christmas, Days, Generative, Twelve
Is Light Pollution Getting Better? / / No Comments David J. Lorenz’s Light Pollution Atlas 2006, 2016, 2020 includes global light pollution layers for three different years. It also includes a layer which shows where light pollution around the world has become better or worse during 2014-2020.This 2014-2020 light pollution trend layer shows that light pollution in most of the UK and France and in the eastern U.S. significantly reduced from Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: better, Getting, Light, Pollution
Awesome Netlify Updates / / No Comments For about two months now I’ve had on my queue to write about some of the incredibly cool updates Netlify has released but I just didn’t have the time. I’ve been hosting this blog on Netlify for a few years now and have been incredibly happy with the platform, but the updates the past two months have been both surprising and just really freaking cool. Here’s a quick look at what impressed me. As a quick aside, this isn’t necessarily everything announced recently and you can take a look yourself at their blog for more changes. Caching Improvements # This is an area I haven’t really done much in – both on my site or elsewhere. I generally let Netlify worry... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: awesome, Netlify, updates
Global Heating / / No Comments In 2023 the Earth’s global temperature was 1.05°C warmer than normal. This is extremely alarming as we are quickly approaching what many environmental scientists believe will be the tipping point for global heating. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels as a critical threshold. Beyond this point, the risks Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: global, Heating
The Live Music Mapping Project / / No Comments The combination of the Covid epidemic, inner-city gentrification and austerity has had a hugely negative impact on live music venues and the live music networks of many cities. The Live Music Mapping Project has been launched to help overcome these challenges by creating detailed maps of the local live ecosystem in individual cities. Currently the project has released interactive maps for seven Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: live, Mapping, Music, project
Adding Music Previews to My Now Page / / No Comments About two months or so ago I added a Now page to my site. It shows my current reading list, my last watched movies, my Untappd beer check-ins, and my most recent Spotify tracks. You can see that part here: When I built it, I used a Pipedream workflow to wrap calls to Spotify’s API. My Pipedream workflow gets my most recent tracks, slims down the data quite a bit, and returns just what I need. I use some client-side code to hit that endpoint and then render it out on the Now page. (I also use a bit of caching with LocalStorage such that the endpoint is only hit every ten minutes.) Currently, when rendering each track, I link to its URL and Spotify users can listen to the track completely.... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Adding, Music, Page, previews
The Live Amtrak Train Map / / No Comments Trains.fyi is a live interactive map which shows the real-time locations of passenger trains in the U.S. and Canada. The map uses colored markers to show the near real-time positions of trains from a number of different train companies in North America. The arrow on the markers show a train’s direction of travel and the colors indicate the transit operators of individual trains. If you click on Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Amtrak, live, train
How to Play Grand Poo World 3 / / No Comments The underground world of creating and streaming Super Mario World-based ROM hacks continues to gain popularity. This popularity is a tribute to the creativity of gamers and the quality of the original 30 year old video game’s mechanics. Over the past decade, incredible ROM hacks like Grand Poo World 1 and 2, Invictus, and Dram World have brought joy (and horror) to the Mario community. Sure, Nintendo released Mario Maker and Mario Maker 2, but I love SMW Central patches because they allow all of us to create, much like open source. The most anticipated hack in years, Grand Poo World 3, was just released and is taking the Super Mario World community by storm. You cannot, however, just download... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Grand, Play, World