Old School Times Two

Oh how sophisticated we have become in our old age. There used to be a time when just about every web page that was hip and up-to-date had a silly "hit counter" on it. It counted the number of times the page was viewed in a very simple-minded way. It didn't care about unique hosts or anything useful like that, it just incremented its count every time the page was accessed.


Hit counter!

Well, the good old days are back! In an effort to beat the nixie tube theme to death I offer you, free to use, your very own nixie tube hit counter. It will remember any page you stick it in, it will increment every time the page is displayed (of course, actually, every time the image is displayed), and it will impress your visitors with old-timey geek power. Or not. Either way feel free to stick it on your page and have a go.

(NOTE: The program is, as I said above, simple-minded. It just looks at the referrer and bases the count on that. This means that "http://www.yoursite.com/" and "http://yoursite.com/" and "http://yoursite.com/index.html" will all have accurate but different counts. I might improve this in the future but probably not.)

To use the super-cool nixie page counter, just use it like an image, so:

   <img src="http://kovaya.com/nixie-count.cgi"
       alt="Nixie Hit Counter!" width=210 height=77>

That's all there is to it. Now there is no guarantee that it will continue to operate so don't base a business model on it, but if you think its fun and want to try it out, please do. Thoroughly tested but bug reports should go to the email address in the sidebar over there.

Happy counting!

Nixie Tube Fun

Your IP Address

Nixie tubes are a retro-technology well beloved by artsy nerds everywhere. My own memories of nixies are as the classiest digital displays, before being supplanted by the MAN-1 seven segment LED display. Today, nixie tubes are lovingly turned into clocks of very modern accuracy and even unlikely wristwatches.

The nixie tube was the invention of the Haydu Brothers Laboratories which was purchased by the much larger Burroughs Corporation who made it a commercial product in 1954. The name comes from the designation assigned to the "Numeric Indicator Experimental No. 1" by Burroughs who trademarked it.

Lately I don't have time to build my own clock, though I would like to. I have settled for building you a slightly useful toy. The display shows your IP address, and improbably, I knew ahead of time just how many digits I would need to display it.

Maybe I will build a clock eventually, it would be nice on my desk.