URL Rewriting with BoxLang MiniServer / / No Comments BoxLang recently released it’s 1.4 version, and one of the cooler parts of that update was many improvements to MiniServer. MiniServer is a lightweight web server that makes it easy to spin up and test BoxLang web applications. Updates in the last version included automatic .env loading (which is coming soon to the boxlang CLI as well), websocket support, health checks, and more, but the one I care the most about is URL Rewriting support. Rewrite support is fairly simple. To turn it on, pass --rewrites when running boxlang-miniserver. This will use the file index.bxm for any request that doesn’t match a file (no matter what the extension). You can also specify a particular file as... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: BoxLang, MiniServer, Rewriting
The Trump Appeaser’s Map / / No Comments Donald Trump says he will meet Vladimir Putin next week. He also says that an end to the war must involve “some swapping of territories”.I thought it might be worth creating an Appeasers Map to visualize an area of land roughly the size of Crimea overlaid on top of the United States. You can drag the shape around to see which areas of the United States you would be most prepared to give to Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Appeaser's, Trump
Links For You (8/9/25) / / No Comments Hello friends – another two weeks has gone by which means another links post to share. Sometimes, ok, pretty much every time, I’m shocked at how quickly I have to do these posts. It’s like I blink and half a month has flown by. In my last Links post I mentioned dealing with some frustrations, and they’ve gotten better, but I’m now dealing with the start of school which brings its own challenges. That being said – the family is happy and healthy, I’m employed, so I’ll take that as a win. Let’s get to the links! Why Women in Tech isn’t enough First up is pretty important post from Salma Alam-Naylor, "Why Woman in Tech isn’t... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 8/9/25, links
Ocean Warming Stripes / / No Comments These Ocean Warming Stripes show the alarming extent to which average global sea surface temperatures have risen in the 21st Century, compared to the norm of annual global temperatures dating back to 1850. In the visualization, each year since 1850 is represented by a colored stripe. The color of each stripe is determined by the average global sea surface temperature. As you can see, there has Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Ocean, Stripes, warming
Building a Comic Book Reader in BoxLang / / No Comments I’ve been a comic book reader for just about the same amount of time as I’ve been writing code. Any computer using comic book reader (and there’s probably quite a few) will know that electronic versions of comics let you read comics on your devices. These comics typically come in one of two formats, CBR and CBZ, which are literally just RAR and ZIP files, nothing more. Over the years, I’ve had fun building my own web-based readers for this format, with my last one from a bit over three years ago, "Reading Comic Books in the Jamstack". I thought it would be fun to tackle this in BoxLang and see what worked well and what proved difficult. I’ve got a complete... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: book, BoxLang, building, Comic, Reader
Mapping the MutiVerse / / No Comments Every town, every mountain, and every quiet river had its own poem waiting to be discovered. Meet MultiVerse – an interactive map where a single click anywhere in the world generates a unique poem inspired by that location. From the bustling streets of Tokyo to the silent hills of the Scottish Highlands, MultiVerse lets you explore not just geography, but language, emotion, and Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Mapping, MutiVerse
Using Chrome AI for Sentiment Analysis (Again) / / No Comments Every now and then I get an idea for a blog post/demo, prepare to write about it, and realize I’ve actually covered the topic in the past. Sometimes, though, it works out really well especially when the technology has changed quite a bit. Almost a year ago, I blogged about doing sentiment analysis with Chrome’s AI upcoming AI feature. At the time, it worked…. ok. The biggest issue at the time was the inability to provide a system instruction to the model as well as being able to shape the response a particular way. Thankfully, both of those are now supported. As a reminder, the prompt API for the web is still in an origin trial, see the docs for more information and join the... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Again, Analysis, Chrome, Sentiment, using
Solve the Global Treasure Hunt! / / No Comments Treasure Guessr is a new daily challenge game that requires you to identify a different location every day on an interactive map.The premise of Treasure Guessr is simple: you’re shown a small map of a mystery location, and your task is to pinpoint that location on a larger interactive map. Of course, this sounds easier than it really is – after all, the world is huge, and most of us only Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: global, Hunt, Solve, Treasure