Earth Notes: On Website Technicals (2020-12)

Updated 2024-04-23.
Tech updates: vignette ads, year-end to-dos, Big Sur and FTDI, half traffic, time travel, 20/20.
Stalled on shifting services to the new RPi, but a seemingly-successful macOS upgrade to Big Sur after 'work' work was finished for the year. And the Google AdSense vignette ads continue to do well.

2020-12-31: 2020 Vision

Never again will 20/20 vision seem like such a good thing!

I would be happy to go with the aphorism: May next year not find us longing for this one.

2020-12-28: Time Travel

Google's Search Console grants the unexpected gift of time travel!

Screenshot 20201228 submitting a sitemap in the future
Apparently I have submitted a sitemap tomorrow? (And no, I have not submitted or re-submitted a sitemap for a while.)

2020-12-25: Half Traffic

Screenshot 20210117 minimum clicks on 20201225 by a reasonable margin over 3 months
Christmas Day saw less than 50% of normal page hits, as measured by Google ad page impressions, and in this three-month GSC graph of clickthroughs captured in mid-January.

2020-12-23: Big Sur and FTDI

I backed up everything on my Mac, and upgraded to Big Sur (macOS 11.1). I was prepared to roll back if FTDI and other Arduino-related stuff failed.

But a quick run-through indicates that I am still able to program via a USBTinyISP, and can still talk serial through my usual FTDI cable.

It is an early Christmas miracle!

2020-12-22: GSC Requests

The GSC request indexing tool came back today. I requested indexing for key pages that still have the http version marked canonical (currently 99 valid, 178 excluded as non-canonical dupes from https sitemap.xml) until after ~10 I got Quota exceeded[:] Sorry, we couldn't process this request because you've exceeded your daily quota. Please try submitting this again tomorrow.

2020-12-21: TODO

A few items from the top of EOU's to-do list:

  • STATSCAST? Generate per-hour (local time) 16WW electricity consumption (by month?) and compare with Elexon profile to see how much we have flattened 4-7 slot esp weekdays when Enphase is told we have a peak rate... Also look at (say) Agile pricing against that vs Ecotricity all-day rate. https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-london/ Elexon Profile Class 1 – Domestic Unrestricted Customers https://www.elexon.co.uk/operations-settlement/profiling/
  • Transcribe and caption EcoHome talk.
  • Allow <SECTION> without date?
            # TODO: allow a heading without a date (without ':')
            #     with the visuals and possible layout optimisation
            #     but without the "Comment" schema type?
    
  • Get TikTok account for EOU!
  • Split bat page (by month?, into a hierarchy?)
  • WARNING: .bats-at-16WW.html: FIXME Check 20201007 19:16 and 19:22
  • Generate WARNING for every img src and srcset item that is not globally readable.
  • Automate Review + Product/Service/Event/Book insert, eg with embedded comments and partial metadata using separate external script to make conforming warning- and error- free HTML5+microdata.
  • Add link through to Google Maps from coordinates and/or other address info.
  • Add pics of new kettle for measuring-appliances page, maybe in the Gallery.
  • Have licensing link for Gallery images link straight through to Gallery Ts&Cs page.
  • FIX test cases.
  • Create test case for home + other page for canonical/mobile/amphtml home/lite/amp links with correct prefixes, etc.
  • Measure T3/HP645A8-8GB240GBW10P Refurbished HP Probook 645 AMD A8 8GB 240GB 14 Inch Windows 10 Professional Laptop
  • Speed up page generation:
            Rebuilding note-on-site-technicals-41.html
            INFO: TS: START: 1602959696
            INFO: TS: THF: 1602959696
            INFO: TS: HEROIMG: 1602959696
        ***>
            INFO: SRCBYTES: IMG: 5395
            INFO: TS: ADS: 1602959697
            INFO: TS: START OUR CCS: 1602959697
        ***>
            INFO: TS: END OUR CCS: 1602959705
            INFO: TS: START TOC: 1602959705
            INFO: TS: END TOC: 1602959705
            INFO: TS: START PICKPAGE: 1602959705
            INFO: TS: END PICKPAGE: 1602959705
            INFO: TS: BEGIN BODY: 1602959705
            INFO: SRCBYTES: IMG: 8514
            INFO: SRCBYTES: IMG: 5840
            INFO: TS: BEGIN FOOTER: 1602959707
            INFO: TS: START MEDIA FOOTER: 1602959707
            INFO: TS: IN MEDIA FOOTER IMG: 1602959707
            INFO: TS: END MEDIA FOOTER: 1602959707
            INFO: rank 32 note-on-site-technicals-41.html
            WARNING: missing pgintro for non- short/noindex page .note-on-site-technicals-41.html...
            INFO: .note-on-site-technicals-41.html share42 hash tags= #tech
            INFO: TS: END: 1602959707
            INFO: note-on-site-technicals-41.html readability score 73; min 42.
            SEE .note-on-site-technicals-41.html.warn
    
  • Ensure INTFR (plus INTIFA2 and INTELEC) being correctly extracted from Elexon feed.
  • Add isPartOf / hasPart between main '/data/' set and elements of it.
  • Add link back to basic house data (note-on-data) from saving-* pages.
  • Apply X-Frame-Options: DENY only to html objects (currently www).
  • Add some theming to podcast pages?

2020-12-12: Wide Screen Vignette Ads

For the last four weeks or so wide-screen vignette ads placed by Auto Ads have done remarkably well, earning a substantial chunk of what I have recently been receiving in a whole year.

Not riches, but individual clicks up in the £1 region for example.

It all stopped while a major Google index update swept through for a few days at the start of the month. I am hoping that things will settle again, but at a higher level than before.

In a fit of greed or enterprise (discuss) I have cranked "Ad Load" up a little beyond the mid-point in case lots of ad money is flowing before Christmas. Who knows.

2020-12-26: On I moved the slider back to just under the mid-point to reduce possible visitor annoyance.

Most of the UK is under fairly harsh lockdown now. Many countries are not allowing visitors from the UK at all at the moment due to worries about the new variant. So a common fount of ads at this time of year — holidays — probably won't be happening!

2020-12-30: November and December have generated about as much revenue as the rest of 2020. Most is from this large-page interstitial, which is quite intrusive, through bearable IMHO.

Confession time: I am so close to a significant earning threshold at the end of the month that I briefly cranked up Ad Load to (nearly) maximum to see if I could hit it. Even though I thought that I was maybe above that sort of short-termism! B^>