UPDATE 08/05/2018: As of today, the Never Forget Tribute distribution has been disabled. The final count appears in the right sidebar for the time being.
Last week, I ran a check to evaluate the increment rate of the Never Forget Tribute hit counter. The observed rate seemed to be much lower than the hit statistics displayed in the right sidebar column.
The hit counter itself is accurate in that each time the tribute is served up remotely, the count increments. The hits per hour and hits per day figures, however, are an estimate based on extrapolation from a given date in the past where the number of hits was known. I had a back-burner plan to write a script that would keep a running estimation of the hit rate, but that never came to fruition. And, now, it seems, that won’t be necessary.
I updated the estimating script to more accurately extrapolate the hit rate from a known count from a week ago, and, as you can see, the hit rate is quite a bit lower than what it had been in the past. There are probably several reasons for the decline in the hit rate:
- several browser platforms have discontinued or reduced support for Flash® animations (i.e. Firefox, Chrome)
- the shift from computers to smart phone platforms which have minimal or no support for Flash®
- a general decrease in bloggers displaying the tribute
At any rate, we have decided to discontinue distribution of the Never Forget Tribute. It’s not that we have forgotten the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001, but that circumstances indicate that tribute hits are asymptotically approaching a zero hit rate.
We will NEVER FORGET 9/11!
The termination of support will be accomplished in a couple of stages:
- Initially, we will attach a notice to the tribute stating our intentions and a link to this post.
- Finally, we will disable the scripts that are activated with each remote link.
I expect the initial state to go into effect this week. Depending on responses in the comments here (if any), I will deactivate the distribution within a month.
OPTIONAL – For those displaying the tribute, you may remove the code from your website as follows:
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://capnbob.us/graphics/never.php"></script>
The ffile name may also be never118.php or never100.php.
Today not only marks the Autumnal Equinox, but an even dozen years that this humble blogger has been posting here. We are still at the status quo from last year when I posted that we were not as dynamically involved in political commenting then and still are today. The only difference is that at this time last year we thought that Donald Trump might be defeated in the POTUS contest, which, thankfully, is contrary to what actually finished with the result of Felonia Pantsuit‘s loss.
This morning at about 10:34:40 Arizona time, the hit counter for the Never Forget Tribute rolled past ninety-four million. The hit counter displays an approximation of the number of times that the Tribute has been accessed since August of 2005, the date when it was made available to other websites. Knowing the exact count is virtually impossible, since we only began tracking it after it had been deployed for a couple of years. We used an extrapolation algorithm to establish the approximate count back then, and have incorporated a real-time hit counter since.
Now that I have upgraded to a smartphone, it has become obvious to me that our websites are definitely not handheld mobile friendly. Shortcomings we have noted include small text size and flaky mobile application plug-in support for our various Flash® animations.