Happy Sunday and Happy Saints Are Winning As I Write this day. Before I get into the links, some administrative. At the bottom of my posts, I've got share links. A few days ago I removed the share to Twitter link as I've gradually removed myself from that platform. I was on there a few weeks ago desperate for some technical help, but in general, I'm pretty much done with the platform. I've added a share to Bluesky (where you can find me as @raymondcamden.com) but unfortunately, it isn't quite working yet. I followed the directions for 'Action Intent Links', but even the example on their docs isn't working. I'm going to keep the share link for now, but may remove it. And now the Saints are losing. Sigh.

Oh... and I literally just checked again - the share link is working on the docs. And I tested here, it is working as well... as long as you are logged in. And the Saints got the lead back!

Static Maps with SVG

This is a cool post demonstrating how to build static, SVG-based maps on an 11ty website. In the post, he takes a location value from his frontmatter and passes it to a shortcode. He then makes use of the D3 library, geojson data for countries, and from this can generate a map. You can see an example on top of this blog post, Mumbai at Street Level.

Hacking Cars in JavaScript

I love seeing cool uses of web APIs, and this one just takes cake. Charlie Gerard writes about how they used WebUSB and additional hardware to intercept data being sent from a keyfob. It's a fairly detailed article, but as I said, I love eeing the web platform help out here: Hacking cars in JavaScript (Running replay attacks in the browser with the HackRF)

Cheerio 1.0 Released

I haven't used Cheerio in a few years, but when I did, it was incredibly helpful. Cheerio lets you use jQuery-style APIs in server-side code. When working with HTML, perhaps content loaded remotely with a fetch call, having the power of jQuery methods makes it much easier to get what you want out of the source.

The 1.0 release announcement details the long road to the release, new docs and new methods of working with the library.

As I said, it's been a hot minute since I used it, but it's a great tool and I'm happy to see the update!

Just For Fun...

As I wrap this up (and the Saints are winning going into halftime), Lunar Pilot is a web-based game where you write code to help a lunar module safely land on the moon. You use JavaScript - of course. I love this comment in the editor:

Generally simulation parameters are not selected for realism
but instead to try to make the game fun.

Amen. In games, fun should always trump realism.