Emulate Classic Video Games On A Raspberry Pi Zero With RetroPie

Are you into video games, because I certainly am. Did you grow up playing the classics on your Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Nintendo 64? I did, and I still can’t get enough of them. If you’re like me and love video games and want to go back to simpler times, you can actually build your own entertainment station that contains a mashup of all the best consoles.

We’re going to see how to use an incredibly affordable Raspberry Pi Zero W to create an entertainment system the size of a pack of gum that can emulate all the classics using a custom flavor of Linux called RetroPie.

Convert Data Between CSV And JSON With Simple JavaScript

A popular subject on the blog has always been around the conversion of one data format to another data format. For example we’ve already seen how to convert XML data to JSON data with JavaScript, but what if we wanted to work with comma separated value (CSV) data instead?

We’re going to see how to take a CSV file, parse it into JSON, make some changes, and then convert it back into a CSV file using Node.js and a few readily available packages.

Moving From Couchbase To HERE, The Adventure Continues

Back in 2015, I shared my story about becoming a Developer Advocate at Couchbase in an article titled, Ending My Adventure at UC Merced and Starting Fresh.

In the three years that I’ve been at Couchbase, I’ve had a positive impact towards spreading awareness, getting product adoption, and making developers successful. I’ve also grown as a developer as well as an evangelist in the process.

This is where my story at Couchbase ends and my new adventure with HERE begins!

Use The ChromeiQL Extension For Google Chrome To Test GraphQL Queries

As you probably know, I’ve been doing a lot with GraphQL recently. I’ve released tutorials that include Java with GraphQL, Node.js with GraphQL, as well as Golang with GraphQL, but I’ve only ever demonstrated testing those GraphQL APIs with cURL. If you’ve ever used cURL for anything, not specific to GraphQL, you’ll know it works well, but it isn’t the most friendly tool available.

We’re going to look at an alternative method to testing GraphQL queries using a convenient Google Chrome extension called ChromeiQL.

Convert Amazon Links In A Hugo Site To Affiliate Links With Gulp

As you may already know, The Polyglot Developer is a statically generated website built with Hugo. That means that there are no databases involved, no server side languages, only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

In the past I shared the automated Gulp workflow that I use when building my blog to maintain performance and a solid standing with search engine optimization (SEO).

I received a request from a subscriber recently around affiliate link generation on a Hugo website and I figured it would be an interesting topic to tackle. Typically a WordPress plugin or similar would handle the job, but since we’re working with a static website, we have to be inventive with our build scripts.

In this tutorial we’re going to see how to build a Gulp task that will replace all Amazon links with Amazon Associates links, which is another name for their affiliate program.

Using NW.js To Convert A Website Into A Desktop Application

A while ago, I ran into a situation where I needed to make web application into a desktop application for a corporate client. The idea was to leverage as much of the existing app as possible, while still meeting the requirement of having a “desktop” application.

As a primarily Java developer, I had no idea how to do this, so I started doing research and found out that my best bet would be using JavaScript technologies.

Enter NW.js, a powerful mashup of Google Chrome and Node.js that allows you to package a web application to be run on the desktop.

TPDP Episode #20: GraphQL For API Development

I am pleased to announce that the latest episode of The Polyglot Developer Podcast is available for download! If you’ve been keeping up with the blog recently, I’ve published quite a bit of content around GraphQL as I personally believe it to be the future for API development. Being able to access related and unrelated data on demand through a single endpoint is huge for the people consuming your data and huge for the developers creating the data because of specific model definitions.

In this episode titled, GraphQL for API Development, I’m joined by Lee Byron, one of the co-creators of GraphQL at when he worked at Facebook. Lee gives us all the details on how GraphQL came to be, why it is huge for development, and how to use it successfully in your next application.