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
Simple Charting with BoxLang / / No Comments Building a BoxLang and want to know how to do charting with it? The answer is simple… don’t! I kid! Sorry, but for many, far too many, years now I’ve argued that ColdFusion should not include a charting library. It’s a server-side language, and in my (definitely not) humble opinion, client-side code doesn’t belong there. (I’m fine not worrying about that though – I trust that team knows their clients better than I do and knows what they’re doing.) The good news (again, imo) is that BoxLang doesn’t ship with an embedded client-side charting library. That being, I can absolutely see cases where you may be building a web app in BoxLang and want... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: BoxLang, Charting, simple
The Map of Nazi Camps & Ghettos / / No Comments The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos is an interactive map documenting camps, ghettos, and Nazi-run sites of persecution across Europe and North Africa. This powerful digital tool brings to life one of the most staggering realities of the Holocaust: the sheer number and geographic reach of sites where millions were imprisoned, enslaved, and murdered between 1933 and 1945. Created by Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Camps, Ghettos, Nazi
Extracting Data from Web Pages with AgentQL and BoxLang / / No Comments I discovered AgentQL a few weeks ago and have been thinking about it quite a bit. In a nutshell, it lets you perform queries against a web page. They’ve got a simple query language that kinda reminds me of GraphQL, but simpler. So for example, consider the page you are on right now – if I wanted to get the tags, I could use this query: { tags[] } And it would return: { "tags": [ "#development", "#boxlang" ] } What if I wanted the links? I could change my query to express this: { tags[] { label url } } And then get: { "tags": [ { "label": "#development", "url":... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: AgentQL, BoxLang, data, Extracting, from, Pages