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Comment by AndrewStephens | Hacker News Reader

This is cool. I am a total hypocrite; I say I blog for the love of it and being a slave to analytics is terrible but in reality I love the sense of immediate feedback when I see a bunch of hits on a project I spent hours on.

I did end up implementing a simple hit counter on my site just to satisfy my craven need for validation without resorting to full analytics. It doesn't beep at me, but maybe it should.

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Just to prove I am degenerate, I just threw a quick one-line shell script together that beeps when my hit counter triggers:

  tail -F -n 0 /var/log/visitlog | while read ; do printf '\a' ; done

Now if only somebody would visit my site.

I picture this like the classic Garfield comic where Jon just stares in increasing frustration at his rotary phone for multiple panels, to finally shout JUST RING ALREADY.

(His cat adds some dry remark which I have forgotten)

You probably already know this, but that comic is substantially improved without the cat.

https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

Now see I'm curious, would it be better if we had no context on what the comic _is supposed_ to be? Or is this only hilarious in comparison to the typical "i hate mondays, how many pieces of flair", type schtick the original goes for. Honestly i think it's the latter, cause after 20 of these or so they kind loose the appeal except for the very occasional guffaw. Though, is that still a higher laugh count than the original? I'm not about to read Garfield to find out

I think they mostly work as a derived work / commentary.

Hey, it's not like that at all. I don't have a rotary phone or a cat.

It beeps when Googlebot visits, too?

Actually no. My hit-counter uses javascript which filters out almost (but not quite) all of the bots. It probably misses some real users that have javascript turned off.

cool, i just visited. Did you hear it!?

It's https://sheep.horse/

Just visited!

oh a game that uses Ink? super cool!

Ink is such a cool language. I worked really hard on that game and entered it into an interactive fiction competition last year. It didn't come close to winning (I didn't expect it to) but people seemed to like it, especially if they grew up watching Star Trek.

I did my part and manually reloaded the page about once a second for 5 minutes so that Andrew could get their dev validation beep quota in for the day (unless it's not naive hits, and unique user based, in which case this has a been a fantastically hilarious waste of time).

I clicked to satisfy the earnest request for attention. I even read some of the blog once I got there!

Your latest post about Google results inspired me to write on this too with a link back to your article! Google Search Results are Increasingly Disappointing as AI Results Are Pushed at https://rietta.com/blog/google-search-results-decline-with-a...

I had fun with the game show quiz. Thanks.

Ok, I played Voyage of the Marigold for a little bit now. Is it possible to get out of the shoals? Also can you beat the dreadnaught near the last two sectors with 1 torpedo and lasers, or do you need 2 torpedoes?

Good stuff. Cheers.

Thank you for playing my game. Yes, it is possible to make it to the top right sector and deliver your cargo. It is not easy - I recommend choosing the option to take extra fuel right at the start since running out of fuel is usually what kills most runs.

The dreadnaught is tough but not impossible. Torpedoes will help but a few lucky hits with lasers will also do the job.

This is what I did as well. Not wanting to take away my users privacy I built my own simple counter in 2022. I wrote about The Raspberry Pi 400 in My Bedroom on my blog at the URL below.

I just downloaded a click sound and I think I'm going to see if adding it drives me crazy.

https://joeldare.com/private-analtyics-and-my-raspberry-pi-4...

Your solution looks very similar to what I implemented; only logging the page and time with no identifying data. I don't even have a real database.

I really hate that modern websites include multiple trackers - there is really no need for invasive analytics.

Why is wanting validation on something you spent hours on a bad thing to you?

Good question, it is not bad to enjoy attention for a project you worked on.

But I feel that, if unchecked, that same impulse can lead to deliberately doing projects specifically for validation which leads to low quality click-bait and vapid self-promotion. I think a healthy indifference for the public at large is a good thing.

That is one of the reasons I got rid of detailed, real-time analytics in favor of a simple hit counter (the other is privacy). If I really stuck to my principles I wouldn't even do that but I am a hypocrite.

When I was hosting a site run on bespoke PHP pages, I had a hit counter that used straight text files under the hood. It was surprisingly effective and a fun experience.

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