A Minimal Flight Tracking Map / / No Comments Minimal London Day 11 of the #30DayMapChalenge is to create a Minimal Map. For this task my Minimal London flight-tracking map strips away everything but the essentials – a bold black canvas, a clean blue river, crisp white bridges, and the silent drift of planes crossing the city in real-time.đź—ş What the Map ShowsAt its heart, the map visualizes:The River Thames, rendered as a smooth, blue line Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: flight, Minimal, Tracking
Road Orientations Map / / No Comments Road Orientations Map The topic for day 8 of the #30DayMapChallenge is Urban. For this challenge I decided to go old-school and convert Vladimir Agafonkin’s original Road Orientations from Mapbox to Maplibre. The original code analyzes street orientations and visualizes them as a polar histogram. I’ve just adapted Vladimir’s approach to work with MapLibre GL JS.What the Map ShowsThe Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Orientations, road
Checking for Spam Content with Chrome AI / / No Comments Earlier this week I mentioned I’m looking at my previous server-based generative AI demos and seeing which could possibly make sense using on-device AI with Chrome’s AI support. I remembered a demo from last year where I tested spam detection using Google Gemini. That demo had worked out rather well and so I thought I’d try it out in Chrome. Ok, but why? Spam detection is important, and a server-based solution could have many users, especially in sites that make use of a lot of user generated content. But what would be the point doing this in the browser? Consider the fact that many of the Chrome AI APIs help with writing, I think such a solution could be useful in helping flag... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Checking, Chrome, Content, spam
New York Mayoral Election Maps / / No Comments A number of elections took place yesterday, but by far the most talked-about was the race for New York City mayor – where Zohran Mamdani emerged victorious, securing over 50% of the vote.According to The New York Times’ interactive map, The Most Detailed Map of the N.Y.C. Mayoral Election (paywalled), Mamdani dominated in much of the city, outpacing former Governor Andrew Cuomo in a wide Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: election, maps, Mayoral, York
BoxLang’s Improved PDF Handling / / No Comments I’ve blogged about PDF support in BoxLang previously, including a quick introduction and a more robust demo later. Basically, the free PDF module provides excellent PDF creation capabilities out of the box. But what about PDF manipulation? My last two jobs involved PDF APIs, and while my next one most certainly does not (thank god), it’s still a feature near and dear to my heart. The BoxLang folks have made a shockingly huge amount of updates over the past few months, more than I’ve had a chance to keep up with, but one in particular caught my eye and I thought I’d call it out – the new PDF+ module. BoxLang’s commercial modules are part of the BoxLang+ plan.... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: BoxLang's, handling, improved
Creating a Generic Generative Language with Chrome AI / / No Comments As I explore Chrome’s on-device AI initiatives, one of the things I’m doing is looking at some of my older demos (kinda funny to think of ‘old’ GenAI demos) and seeing which may make sense in the browser versus API calls. Last July, I investigated creating a template language parser with Google Gemini. The idea was – take a string with tokens that defined a type of word and have Gemini replace it. So for example: My name is {{ name }} and my favorite food is {{ food }}. I asked Gemini to look for values inside brackets, use that as the seed of a random word, and replace it. So for example: My name is Frederic Dinglehooper the 3rd and my favorite food is sushi. I... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Chrome, creating, Generative, Generic, Language
Lines of Population / / No Comments County StripesPopulation Density Shown as Longitude and Latitude Stripes 🗺️ County Stripes – Exploring America’s Data in Stripes The theme for the second day of the #30DayMapChallenge is Lines. For this theme I’ve created a map that colors longitude and latitude lines based on population density.County Stripes is an interactive map that visualizes U.S. county data not just by county Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Lines, Population
What’s Missing from Human History? / / No Comments The Globe of History is a new interactive map that recounts 6,000 years of human events. In fact, not only does it recount history – it reinterprets it as well.For example, it reveals that what most historians have considered one of the most revolutionary and significant periods in human history was, in fact, a new dark age. That’s right – according to The Globe of History, only one significant Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: from, History, Human, missing, What's