Month: August 2025

Cookie permissions

Posted on by Andy Pierce

You may have noticed a new request for cookie permissions on the Fireplace Aquarium.  Nothing nefarious here, Google Analytics and such.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t be bothered with this kind of thing but I was notified that Microsoft Clarity would do something threatening (I didn’t really pay attention to what) if the situation was not fixed.  Seems the way of the future with Google heading that way as well. I do use the Google Search Console mainly to track whether anything has gone wrong with how the site interacts with the world. 

loss of Google indexing
loss of indexing

Here’s an example of how things can go wrong.  See the dip in clicks and impressions that started in early June this year?  That triggered a lot of calls to Dreamhost support because apparently Google was blocked from accessing the entire site.  Eventually things got fixed and all back to normal.  Still, it was helpful to be able to see there was an ongoing issue that needed resolution.

Implementing GDPR-compliant cookie permissions

Ok, having decided to go the GDPR compliant route, next question is how to do it?  Turns out there is a relatively harmless WordPress plugin called CookieYes (although it is also totally fine with me if in response you say “Cookie NO!”) which has lots of people using it and excellent ratings.  I installed it and it was mostly straightforward to get going.  Then it got complicated…

Google consent mode

Google has what they call ‘Google Consent Mode‘ (GSM) which similarly ensures all good with cookie permissions.  This is NOT easy to implement correctly.  The CookieYes platform kept telling me it wasn’t turned on, or was turned on but didn’t happen in the right order, or perniciously (from my point of view) that “Default consent set too late” which apparently is also a deal-breaker.

I don’t think a human can make it work.  Solution:  get an AI to help.  Progress on AI has been absolutely phenomenal over just the last six months.  These went from semi-joke just-make-a-bunch-of-stuff-up to actually incredibly useful.  In this case I went with ChatGPT5 (pro version).  Many, many back-and-forths and uploaded screenshots later, it all came together in a brilliant No error detected from CookieYes.

Unlike some of its predecessors, ChatGPT5 doesn’t really get very philosophical but I did ask it why the whole process was so complicated and difficult.  Here’s what it said:

  • Many knobs, many silos: CMP (CookieYes), GTM, GA4, WordPress, Site Kit, Autoptimize, cache/CDN. Each has different UX, terminology, and sometimes no public API.
  • Load‑order is brittle: One plugin adding a snippet in the wrong hook breaks compliance. AI needs reliable programmatic control, not just UI clicking.

Agentic AI – who is the agent?

Well… today it felt like I was the agent.  The AI knew everything and just needed a button-pushing monkey (me) to make it actually happen in the real world.  Rate of progress with these things, I expect shortly to be able to task the AI “make my cookies GDPR compliant” and hand it over a couple of passwords and hey-presto job done.

I for one welcome our robot overlords…

shout out to Will Whitten

Planting Saggitaria subulata

Posted on by Andy Pierce

It is a struggle to find plants that can thrive in the Shrimphaus.  The combination of low-KH high-GH “low tech” not-CO2 injected water seems to make things difficult.  I recently gave up on the reputedly “easy” Staurogyne Repens.  Still, lots of plants left to try.  This time we’re having a go with another “easy” plant:  Sagittaria subulata, otherwise known as “Dwarf sag”.

Sourced from Dennerle, I picked up a healthy-looking in vitro pot and installed it liberally around the Shrimphaus.  The plantlets came apart easily and there were beaucoup number of them.  Dennerle knows their stuff!

Dwarf sag first 100 days

We’re now 100 days in and the Dwarf sag seems to be doing ok.  It is growing although not all the plantlets thrived.  It’s an open question as to the balance between plant growth and algae growth but seems ok for now – if you look behind it in the ‘newly planted (left of tank)’ picture you can see the struggle the S. repens was having.  Reputed to be able to grow out of control and take over a tank, I haven’t seen much evidence of that in the Shrimphaus.  I’d be happy with just “grows modestly and looks ok”.  Low tech is slow tech so it’s important to have patience in this aspect of the hobby.  I haven’t noticed the shrimp pay much attention one way or another (which is good).